Reasons And Persons

Author : Derek Parfit
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 560 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 1986-01-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191622441

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Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit Pdf

This book challenges, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. The author claims that we have a false view of our own nature; that it is often rational to act against our own best interests; that most of us have moral views that are directly self-defeating; and that, when we consider future generations the conclusions will often be disturbing. He concludes that moral non-religious moral philosophy is a young subject, with a promising but unpredictable future.

Author : Andrea Sauchelli
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : Ethics
ISBN : 1138595136

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Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons by Andrea Sauchelli Pdf

Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons is an outstanding introduction to and assessment of Parfit's book, with chapters by leading scholars of ethics, metaphysics and of Parfit's work. Ideal for students of ethics, metaethics, metaphysics and anyone interested in Derek Parfit's philosophy.

Author : Derek Parfit
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2017-02-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191084379

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On What Matters by Derek Parfit Pdf

Derek Parfit presents the third volume of On What Matters, his landmark work of moral philosophy. Parfit develops further his influential treatment of reasons, normativity, the meaning of moral discourse, and the status of morality. He engages with his critics, and shows the way to resolution of their differences. This volume is partly about what it is for things to matter, in the sense that we all have reasons to care about these things. Much of the book discusses three of the main kinds of meta-ethical theory: Normative Naturalism, Quasi-Realist Expressivism, and Non-Metaphysical Non-Naturalism, which Derek Parfit now calls Non-Realist Cognitivism. This third theory claims that, if we use the word 'reality' in an ontologically weighty sense, irreducibly normative truths have no mysterious or incredible ontological implications. If instead we use 'reality' in a wide sense, according to which all truths are truths about reality, this theory claims that some non-empirically discoverable truths-such as logical, mathematical, modal, and some normative truths-raise no difficult ontological questions. Parfit discusses these theories partly by commenting on the views of some of the contributors to Peter Singer's collection Does Anything Really Matter? Parfit on Objectivity. Though Peter Railton is a Naturalist, he has widened his view by accepting some further claims, and he has suggested that this wider version of Naturalism could be combined with Non-Realist Cognitivism. Parfit argues that Railton is right, since these theories no longer deeply disagree. Though Allan Gibbard is a Quasi-Realist Expressivist, he has suggested that the best version of his view could be combined with Non-Realist Cognitivism. Parfit argues that Gibbard is right, since Gibbard and he now accept the other's main meta-ethical claim. It is rare for three such different philosophical theories to be able to be widened in ways that resolve their deepest disagreements. This happy convergence supports the view that these meta-ethical theories are true. Parfit also discusses the views of several other philosophers, and some other meta-ethical and normative questions.

Author : Peter Singer
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2017-01-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191084393

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Does Anything Really Matter? by Peter Singer Pdf

In the first two volumes of On What Matters Derek Parfit argues that there are objective moral truths, and other normative truths about what we have reasons to believe, and to want, and to do. He thus challenges a view of the role of reason in action that can be traced back to David Hume, and is widely assumed to be correct, not only by philosophers but also by economists. In defending his view, Parfit argues that if there are no objective normative truths, nihilism follows, and nothing matters. He criticizes, often forcefully, many leading contemporary philosophers working on the nature of ethics, including Simon Blackburn, Stephen Darwall, Allen Gibbard, Frank Jackson, Peter Railton, Mark Schroeder, Michael Smith, and Sharon Street. Does Anything Really Matter? gives these philosophers an opportunity to respond to Parfit's criticisms, and includes essays on Parfit's views by Richard Chappell, Andrew Huddleston, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, Bruce Russell, and Larry Temkin. A third volume of On What Matters, in which Parfit engages with his critics and breaks new ground in finding significant agreement between his own views and theirs, is appearing as a separate companion volume.

Author : Brian Hedden
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 219 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198732594

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Reasons Without Persons by Brian Hedden Pdf

Brian Hedden defends a radical view about rationality, personal identity, and time. He argues that what it is rational to do should not depend on your past beliefs or actions, which are not part of your current perspective on the world. His impersonal approach holds that what rationality demands of you is solely determined by your evidence.

Author : Derek Parfit
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 560 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198249085

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Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit Pdf

Part 1 discusses ways in which theories about morality and rationality can be self-defeating and Part 2 the relations between what a single person can rationally want or do at different times, and what different people can rationally want or do. Parts 3 & 4 tackle personal identity and our obligations to future generations.

Author : Jeff McMahan,Tim Campbell,James Goodrich,Ketan Ramakrishnan
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2021-05-11
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192646293

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Principles and Persons by Jeff McMahan,Tim Campbell,James Goodrich,Ketan Ramakrishnan Pdf

Derek Parfit, who died in 2017, is widely believed to have been the most significant moral philosopher in well over a century. The twenty-one new essays in this book have all been inspired by his work. They address issues with which he was concerned in his writing, particularly in his seminal contribution to moral philosophy, Reasons and Persons (OUP, 1984). Rather than simply commenting on his work, these essays attempt to make further progress with issues, both moral and prudential, that Parfit believed matter to our lives: issues concerned with how we ought to live, and what we have most reason to do. Topics covered in the book include the nature of personal identity, the basis of self-interested concern about the future, the rationality of our attitudes toward time, what it is for a life to go well or badly, how to evaluate moral theories, the nature of reasons for action, the aggregation of value, how benefits and harms should be distributed among people, and what degree of sacrifice morality requires us to make for the sake of others. These include some of the most important questions of normative ethical theory, as well as fundamental questions about the metaphysics of personhood and personal identity, and the ways in which the answers to these questions bear on what it is rational and moral for us to do.

Author : Jeff McMahan,Tim Campbell,James Goodrich,Ketan Ramakrishnan
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 590 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2022
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192894250

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Ethics and Existence by Jeff McMahan,Tim Campbell,James Goodrich,Ketan Ramakrishnan Pdf

Derek Parfit, who died in 2017, is widely believed to have been the best moral philosopher in well over a century. The twenty new essays in this book were written in his honour and have all been inspired by his work--in particular, his work in an area of moral philosophy known as 'population ethics', which is concerned with moral issues raised by causing people to exist. Until Parfit began writing about these issues in the 1970s, there was almost no discussion of them in the entire history of philosophy. But his monumental book Reasons and Persons (OUP, 1984) revealed that population ethics abounds in deep and intractable problems and paradoxes that not only challenge all the major moral theories but also threaten to undermine many important common-sense moral beliefs. It is no exaggeration to say that there is a broad range of practical moral issues that cannot be adequately understood until fundamental problems in population ethics are resolved. These issues include abortion, prenatal injury, preconception and prenatal screening for disability, genetic enhancement and eugenics generally, meat eating, climate change, reparations for historical injustice, the threat of human extinction, and even proportionality in war. Although the essays in this book address foundational problems in population ethics that were discovered and first discussed by Parfit, they are not, for the most part, commentaries on his work but instead build on that work in advancing our understanding of the problems themselves. The contributors include many of the most important and influential writers in this burgeoning area of philosophy.

Author : Aristotle
Publisher : 右灰文化傳播有限公司可提供下載列印
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2017-04-20
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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NICOMACHEAN ETHICS by Aristotle Pdf

�EVERY art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. But a certain difference is found among ends; some are activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce them. Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the products to be better than the activities. Now, as there are many actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are many; the end of the medical art is health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that of strategy victory, that of economics wealth. But where such arts fall under a single capacity- as bridle-making and the other arts concerned with the equipment of horses fall under the art of riding, and this and every military action under strategy, in the same way other arts fall under yet others- in all of these the ends of the master arts are to be preferred to all the subordinate ends; for it is for the sake of the former that the latter are pursued. It makes no difference whether the activities themselves are the ends of the actions, or something else apart from the activities, as in the case of the sciences just mentioned.�

Author : T. L. S. Sprigge
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2020-07-20
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781000072884

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The Rational Foundations of Ethics by T. L. S. Sprigge Pdf

Originally published in 1988, this landmark study develops its own positive account of the nature and foundations of moral judgement, while at the same time serving as a guide to the range of views on the matter which have been given in modern western philosophy. The book addresses itself to two main questions: Can moral judgements be true or false in that fundamental sense in which a true proposition is one which describes things as they really are? Are rational methods available in ethics which can be expected to produce convergence on shared moral views on the part of those who use them intelligently?

Author : Francis Herbert Bradley
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 1876
Category : Ethics
ISBN : STANFORD:36105002094899

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Ethical Studies by Francis Herbert Bradley Pdf

Author : John Stuart Mill
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 1887
Category : Utilitarianism
ISBN : STANFORD:36105020092826

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Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill Pdf

A renowned writer on animals offers a collection of stories about the cats he has known.

Author : David Shoemaker
Publisher : Broadview Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2008-10-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781551118826

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Personal Identity and Ethics by David Shoemaker Pdf

The relationship between personal identity and ethics remains on of the most intriguing yet vexing issues in philosophy. It is commonplace to hold that moral responsibility for past actions requires that the responsible agent is in some respect identical to the agent who performed the action. Is this true? On the other hand, can ethics constrain our account of personal identity? Do the practical requirements of moral theory commit us to the view that persons do remain identical over time? For example, does the moral status of abortion or stem cell research depend on whether personal identity is based on psychological or biological properties? Or is it the case that personal identity is not, in fact, relevant to ethics? Personal Identity and Ethics provides the first comprehensive examination of these issues. Topics include personal identity and prudential rationality; personal identity’s significance for moral responsibility and ethical theory; and the practical consequences of accounts of personal identity for issues such as abortion, stem cell research, cloning, advance directives, population ethics, multiple personality disorder, and the definition of death.

Author : Jonathan Dancy
Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1997-08-25
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0631168710

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Reading Parfit by Jonathan Dancy Pdf

Reading Parfit brings together some of the most distinguished scholars in the field to discuss and critique Derek Parfit's outstanding work, Reasons and Persons,

Author : Timothy O'Connor
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2002-11-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190288433

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Persons and Causes by Timothy O'Connor Pdf

This provocative book refurbishes the traditional account of freedom of will as reasons-guided "agent" causation, situating its account within a general metaphysics. O'Connor's discussion of the general concept of causation and of ontological reductionism v. emergence will specially interest metaphysicians and philosophers of mind.