7 ms·

Derek Parfit: The Perfectionist at All Souls

26 points by miobrien 3y ago

rektide 3y ago
The moral obligation to future people is a strong current that runs through Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future, a recent semi hope-punk book of his. Fun to run across an earlier line of inquiry here, in Parfit. And a code I strongly believe in. Orienting yourself to best help the future, perhaps even futures beyond your time. As the Greek proverb goes: > A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.
- tuatoru 3y ago
  I've never understood the reasoning, except maybe as nerd-sniping. If there is any technological progress, then future people collectively will be much richer than us, and so they will be able to solve their problems much more easily than we can. Even problems they inherited from us - those should be trivially cheap for them to solve in a few hundred years. I see it as "they owe us" (for enabling their existence at all) rather than "we owe them". And if there isn't any more technological progress, then there won't be many future people. Our obligations to present people, to enable them to have their own self-determined futures, seem far more important to me.
  - dnissley 3y ago
    This comment seems to assume that technological progress is cumulative in nature and that we can't go backwards -- it's either the same level as now or will increase. There will be future collapses, dark ages, etc. The question is when, not if. History is already full of so many examples of this.
dang 3y ago
Related: How to Be Good: The Philosopher Derek Parfit (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037240 - Jan 2020 (6 comments) Why anything? Why this? (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13315746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13315746 - Jan 2017 (77 comments) Derek Parfit has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13304873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13304873 - Jan 2017 (38 comments) How to Be Good: Derek Parfit's Moral Philosophy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273495 - March 2016 (16 comments)
2b3a51 3y ago
"Few works of philosophy have the urgency of Reasons and Persons, which was written with extraordinary speed, driving its author to the brink of collapse and its publisher to despair." Makes me feel slightly less bad about abandoning my first attempt at reading this very dense book. I was trying to read it in short bits (the book is split into quite short sections but with a big apparatus of parts, chapters, sections and so on with implied cross referencing) during a busy time. I'll try again over the summer in a more concentrated way. No recourse to spirits or pills though...
greenie_beans 3y ago
trying to remember the fiction book where derek parfit was mentioned. was it a michael bible book? blake butler?
zvmaz 3y ago
I don't know a lot about Derek Parfit, but one interesting philosopher who claims to have solved Parfits' problems about population and moral theory is David Benatar [1]. His solution is anti-natalism, which he defends extensively in his book Better Never to Have Been, The Harm of Coming into Existence. [1] https://academic.oup.com/book/32901/chapter-abstract/276643008 https://academic.oup.com/book/32901/chapter-abstract/2766430...
- scandox 3y ago
  The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror by Thomas Ligotti is another fun read advocating an orderly winding down of the human project. Personally I find all this moral arithmetic with pleasure and pain pretty strange. I think it's reasonable to exist for a few moments in eternity and see how it goes.
  - zvmaz 3y ago
    There's a serious moral problem with bringing human beings into existence and guaranteeing that bad things will happen to them, including death.
    - scandox 3y ago
      Well first of all I don't agree that death is a bad thing, personally. Second of all morality is not the primary concern of most individuals' existence, despite all the talk that goes on.
    - dlkf 3y ago
      No there isn’t
    - whythre 3y ago
      Why? Why does the bad inherently outweigh the good? I feel like this the philosophy of the mentally ill. My own life has not been perfect but I am glad to have been born and my children would say the same.
- 3y ago
thedailymail 3y ago
https://archive.is/RzLH7 https://archive.is/RzLH7
archon1410 3y ago
I remember reading an account of how Parfit cared deeply about the suffering of the world that he would cry talking about ethics.

26 points by miobrien 3y ago

The moral obligation to future people is a strong current that runs through Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future, a recent semi hope-punk book of his. Fun to run across an earlier line of inquiry here, in Parfit. And a code I strongly believe in. Orienting yourself to best help the future, perhaps even futures beyond your time. As the Greek proverb goes: > A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.

tuatoru 3y ago
I've never understood the reasoning, except maybe as nerd-sniping. If there is any technological progress, then future people collectively will be much richer than us, and so they will be able to solve their problems much more easily than we can. Even problems they inherited from us - those should be trivially cheap for them to solve in a few hundred years. I see it as "they owe us" (for enabling their existence at all) rather than "we owe them". And if there isn't any more technological progress, then there won't be many future people. Our obligations to present people, to enable them to have their own self-determined futures, seem far more important to me.
- dnissley 3y ago
  This comment seems to assume that technological progress is cumulative in nature and that we can't go backwards -- it's either the same level as now or will increase. There will be future collapses, dark ages, etc. The question is when, not if. History is already full of so many examples of this.

dang 3y ago

Related: How to Be Good: The Philosopher Derek Parfit (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037240 - Jan 2020 (6 comments) Why anything? Why this? (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13315746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13315746 - Jan 2017 (77 comments) Derek Parfit has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13304873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13304873 - Jan 2017 (38 comments) How to Be Good: Derek Parfit's Moral Philosophy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273495 - March 2016 (16 comments)

2b3a51 3y ago

"Few works of philosophy have the urgency of Reasons and Persons, which was written with extraordinary speed, driving its author to the brink of collapse and its publisher to despair." Makes me feel slightly less bad about abandoning my first attempt at reading this very dense book. I was trying to read it in short bits (the book is split into quite short sections but with a big apparatus of parts, chapters, sections and so on with implied cross referencing) during a busy time. I'll try again over the summer in a more concentrated way. No recourse to spirits or pills though...

greenie_beans 3y ago

trying to remember the fiction book where derek parfit was mentioned. was it a michael bible book? blake butler?

zvmaz 3y ago

I don't know a lot about Derek Parfit, but one interesting philosopher who claims to have solved Parfits' problems about population and moral theory is David Benatar [1]. His solution is anti-natalism, which he defends extensively in his book Better Never to Have Been, The Harm of Coming into Existence. [1] https://academic.oup.com/book/32901/chapter-abstract/276643008 https://academic.oup.com/book/32901/chapter-abstract/2766430...

scandox 3y ago
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror by Thomas Ligotti is another fun read advocating an orderly winding down of the human project. Personally I find all this moral arithmetic with pleasure and pain pretty strange. I think it's reasonable to exist for a few moments in eternity and see how it goes.
- zvmaz 3y ago
  There's a serious moral problem with bringing human beings into existence and guaranteeing that bad things will happen to them, including death.
  - scandox 3y ago
    Well first of all I don't agree that death is a bad thing, personally. Second of all morality is not the primary concern of most individuals' existence, despite all the talk that goes on.
  - dlkf 3y ago
    No there isn’t
  - whythre 3y ago
    Why? Why does the bad inherently outweigh the good? I feel like this the philosophy of the mentally ill. My own life has not been perfect but I am glad to have been born and my children would say the same.
3y ago

thedailymail 3y ago

https://archive.is/RzLH7 https://archive.is/RzLH7

archon1410 3y ago

I remember reading an account of how Parfit cared deeply about the suffering of the world that he would cry talking about ethics.