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Derek Antony Parfit FBA (/ ˈ p ɑːr f ɪ t /; 11 December 1942 – 2 January 2017 [3] [4]) was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Reasons and Persons is a 1984 book by the philosopher Derek Parfit, in which the author discusses ethics, rationality and personal identity.. It is divided into four parts, dedicated to self-defeating theories, rationality and time, personal identity and responsibility toward future generations.
Derek Parfit. This debate about further facts concerning personal identity over time is most closely associated with Derek Parfit. In his Reasons and Persons, he describes the non-reductionist's view that "personal identity is a deep further fact, distinct from physical and psychological continuity". [1]
Personal identity is the unique numerical identity of a person over time. [1] [2] Discussions regarding personal identity typically aim to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time.
The psychology of self and identity is a subfield of Psychology that moves psychological research “deeper inside the conscious mind of the person and further out into the person’s social world.” [1] The exploration of self and identity subsequently enables the influence of both inner phenomenal experiences and the outer world in relation to the individual to be further investigated.
Parfit's conclusion is similar to David Hume's view and also to the view of the self in some forms of Buddhism, though it does not restrict itself to a mere reformulation of them. For besides being reductive, Parfit's view is also deflationary: in the end, "what matters" is not personal identity, but rather mental continuity and connectedness.
According to Parfit, it is rational for people who perceive very little connectedness with their future self to act in ways that neglect the future self (e.g., by smoking). The psychological work that followed did not similarly argue for Parfit's normative view but has instead attempted to test the descriptive validity of Parfit's theory. [6]
Identity formation, also called identity development or identity construction, is a complex process in which humans develop a clear and unique view of themselves and of their identity. Self-concept , personality development , and values are all closely related to identity formation.