Derek Parfit | The Non-Identity Problem

About this event

A live, text-driven seminar on major works in philosophy (mostly analytic). We read the paper together, slowly—stopping to clarify terms, reconstruct arguments, and stress-test claims. Next week's reading: https://www.notion.so/Philosophy-Meetings-2332a602b2fc804f9be6e50c13d7d3a8?source=copy_link WARNING Browse the current and upcoming papers, along with past readings and meetings: https://opaque-artichoke-859.notion.site/Philosophy-Meetings-and-Readings-2332a602b2fc804f9be6e50c13d7d3a8 Expect highly technical material, dense terminology, and high abstraction. It is full of philosophical jargon and complex technical terms. Your expectation should be to treat it as a graduate seminar in philosophy. We don't assume you have a degree in philosophy, but we do assume philosophical maturity and/or a crazy level of passion for deductive reasoning. HELPFUL https://notebook.google.com/notebook/149b4bde-aaf0-4e3f-b95f-21470db0d2e3/artifact/1f99edfa-d4b5-462f-a381-1bddcc0e448c?utm_source=nlm_web_share&utm_medium=google_oo&utm_campaign=art_share_1&utm_content=&utm_smc=nlm_web_share_google_oo_art_share_1_ and https://notebook.google.com/notebook/149b4bde-aaf0-4e3f-b95f-21470db0d2e3/artifact/444f9869-2a85-4456-a75b-e830f9ed7d72?utm_source=nlm_web_share&utm_medium=google_oo&utm_campaign=art_share_1&utm_content=&utm_smc=nlm_web_share_google_oo_art_share_1_ DETAILS What does it mean to harm someone? At first, the answer seems obvious: you harm a person when you make their life worse than it otherwise would have been. Derek Parfit’s famous Non-Identity Problem shows that things become much stranger when our choices affect not only how future people live, but which people exist at all. Suppose someone chooses to have a child under conditions that predictably result in a serious disadvantage. Later, the child asks: “Why did you choose this for me?” The natural response is that the parent harmed the child. But Parfit points out a problem. If the parent had made a different choice—perhaps waiting several months before conceiving—then a completely different child would have existed. So the comparison is not: this person with a worse life versus this same person with a better life. It is: this person exists versus this person never exists at all. If that person’s life is still worth living, can we really say they were made worse off? And if nobody was made worse off, what exactly makes the original decision wrong? This puzzle becomes even more important when we think about future generations. Decisions about climate, technology, public policy, war, or economics can change the course of history so much that different people will eventually be born depending on which choices we make. That creates a disturbing possibility: A future generation may suffer because of our choices, yet the individuals in that generation may owe their very existence to those same choices. So can they say that we harmed them? Parfit’s problem challenges a basic idea in moral philosophy: Must something be worse for someone in order to be morally worse? This seminar will explore Parfit’s Chapter 16, “The Non-Identity Problem,” from Reasons and Persons. Some of the questions we will discuss: • What does it actually mean to harm someone? • Can a person be wronged by being brought into existence? • Can an action be morally bad even if it makes no particular person worse off? • Do future people have claims against us? • Should morality evaluate what is best for individuals, or can one possible future simply be better than another? The paper begins with a strange puzzle about reproduction, but quickly develops into a much larger question about how morality should deal with future people whose existence depends on the very decisions we are trying to judge. No background in philosophy is required. The reading is short, but the problem is not.