Philosophy and Literature Blog

The fundamental problem Parfit is going to have is the idea that there is some "objective" content to facts that yield proper beliefs and, from that, actions.  Facts, assuming they can be formulated in an objective way, which is not exactly a postmodern position, must then additionally yield objective implications.  Even those who believe in objective facts may have problems with the notion that there are objective moral implications.  Look, either there are or there aren't objective implications.  If there are, then they are valid for all people, irrespective of a person's cultural background etc..., if there aren't, then the interpretations of facts are culturally relative.  And this is assuming that the facts themselves have objective content. Of course, these days people these days say that facts are "value-laden" -- this is a way of describing the cultural relativity in the depiction of the "objective" world itself.  The advantage of thi...

Parfit starts with the following: "We are the animals that can both understand and respond to reasons. Facts give us reasons when they count in favour of our having some belief or desire, or acting in some way."(pg.50) I love this opening!  It summarizes a take on that which is distinctly human, that corresponds to our ability to do science as well as to consider ethics.  We move from facts to beliefs and from beliefs to rationality: "Though it is facts that give us reasons, what we can rationally want or do depends instead on our beliefs." Facts are already not something separate from beliefs and morality; they provide us with "reasons". (pg. 50) How can a fact provide us with reasons? Only if facts are already constructed by some reasoning faculty, perhaps.  Facts don't just hang out there neutrally.  If they did, nothing could be done with them; they cannot be said to 'count' for or against anything. The notion that there is this gulf...

I love the following from the beginning of On What Matters: "My debts to Sidgwick are easy to describe.  Of my reasons for becoming a graduate student in philosophy, one was the fact that, in wondering how to spend my life, I found it hard to decide what really matters.  I knew that philosophers tried to answer this question, and to become wise.  It was disappointing to find that most of the philosophers who taught me, or whom I was told to read, believed that the question 'What matters?' couldn't have a true answer, or didn't even make sense.  But I bought a second-hand copy of Sidgwick's book, and I found that he at least believed that some things matter"(pg. 41) This makes me like Parfit a lot, maybe he and Sidgwick can convince me that something matters, that would be cool.

  I don't know too much about Derek Parfit yet but he seems to want to combine Kantianism and consequentialism, at least according to the introduction.  He also seems to think that the "Formula of Universal Law" can be saved in a form like "Everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will."(pg. 22)    Without having read the guts of Parfit's arguments I can say at the outset that I'm going to have difficulty accepting this kind of moral foundation.  I'm not convinced that I have to behave in a way that any "rational being" would will.  I don't think that there is a rational being, or anything such as rationally willing something.  Parfit has chapters on Nietzsche, and perhaps he deals with this issue, but I don't see how Parfit is going to be successful.  If I don't believe in rationality, and I don't believe in rationally willing anything, I don't see how I'm going ...