PEA Soup

Parfit on Normative Irreducibility

Derek Parfit has recently circulated an argument against what he calls Non-Analytical Naturalism, which he understands as the thesis that normative truths are reducible to natural truths.  He begins by stipulating that he will use 'normative' as an abbreviation for 'irreducibly normative':

When some normative word cannot be analyzed or defined in non-normative terms, we can call this word, and the concept it expresses, irreducibly normative.  That is what I shall mean by 'normative'...

His central argument then appears to be that Non-Analytic Naturalism is (by definition) inconsistent with normativity, and hence false. 

Parfit on Scanlon

Something has always bothered me about Parfit's treatment of Scanlon's contractualism both in his "Justifiability to Each Other" and in the new Climbing the Mountain. Finally after years of being troubled by this I think I'm starting to be able to put my finger on it.

Parfit’s State-Given Reasons

The great discussion on the previous posting got so much off the topic that I thought I’d start another threat just on the interesting issue we were discussing. This is Parfit’s account of state and object given reasons. I’m sure we’ve touched in this in our virtual-reading group too but I’ve forgotten what we concluded then.

Parfit's Climbing the Mountain, Chapter 13: Conclusions

This is the last installment of our virtual reading group on Derek Parfit's Climbing the Mountain.  As Dave noted a couple of weeks ago, the most recent version of the manuscript includes a new final chapter, Chapter 13.  We hadn't built this chapter into our schedule, so there won't be a précis this week, but the Comments section is open for discussion.  Thanks to everyone who has helped make this a fruitful reading group.

 

Parfit’s CtM, Chapter 12: Consequentialism

(This marks the eleventh of twelve “meetings” of our virtual reading group on Derek Parfit’s Climbing the Mountain—see here for further details. Next week, we will discuss the final chapter, Chapter 13, of the July 22^nd version of the manuscript, which can be found here.)

 

In this chapter, Parfit argues that the Kantian Contractualist Formula (KC) requires everyone to follow the same principles that the universal acceptance version of Rule Consequentialism (UARC) requires everyone to follow: that is, those whose universal acceptance would make things go best in the impartial reason-involving sense. Such principle are, as Parfit calls them, “UA-optimific.” Here is the argument, pretty much in Parfit’s own words:

Parfit's CtM, Chapter 11: Contractualism

This marks the 10^th of 11 virtual meetings on Derek Parfit’s Climbing the Mountain.  First, though, a programming note: next week, we’ll be discussing chapter 12 of the latest version of Parfit’s manuscript, available here.  As it turns out, though, there’s a 13^th chapter in the new manuscript, and we hadn’t planned on that with the rotating schedule we set up for posting this summer.  So here’s the plan for now: next Thursday, Doug will post a summary/discussion of the latest version’s chapter 12, and then the following week we’ll simply set up a post to have an open discussion on the latest version’s chapter 13.  And if a new version of the manuscript comes out in the meantime, well, we give up.

There are three main discussions in this chapter.  The first focuses on objections to Rawlsian contractualism, the second focuses on how what Parfit calls Kantian contractualism avoids the objections to Rawlsian contractualism, and the third explores how certain interpretations of, and revisions to, Scanlonian contractualism can render it a very plausible way to defend the Deontic Beliefs Restriction without abandoning appeal to our moral intuitions as worthless.  I won’t spend a lot of time on the first two issues: I think Parfit’s mostly right, but at any rate he’s simply reiterating (in many cases) objections made by others, albeit in succinct and very clear ways.  I mostly, then, want to try and figure out his defense of a version of Scanlonian contractualism in the final section.

Parfit Addendum

Sorry folks, but I forgot to mention in my post yesterday that Parfit has sent along yet another updated manuscript, with the final chapter bearing the most revisions.  What we'll do, then, is discuss this most up-to-date version of Chapter 12 in two weeks (but we'll discuss the  June 7 version -- the one we've been using for the past several weeks --  of Chapter 11 next week).  The new manuscript is available here: Download 1Climb26JulyUS.pdf

Parfit, CtM Chapter 10: Impartiality

This is the 9^th of 11 virtual meetings on Derek Parfit’s book manuscript, Climbing the Mountain.

In this pivotal chapter, Parfit finally ties together several of the loose threads of the last several chapters to come very close to endorsing a kind of Kantian “supreme principle of morality,” which turns out to be contractualist in nature.  He begins with an interesting discussion of the Golden Rule, which Kant dismissed as “trivial,” and “unfit to be a universal law.”  What Parfit does, though, is show why Kant’s objections to the Golden Rule can actually be answered.  If he’s right, Kant’s contempt for the formula is unjustified.  Perhaps, however, Kant’s Formula of Universal Law is just a better principle than the Golden Rule?  This, as it turns out, is false as well.  In terms of making us more impartial, the Golden Rule, Kant’s Consent Principle, and the Impartial Observer Formula (according to which we are to determine what it would be rational to choose from the imagined point of view of an impartial observer, rather than from our own or an affected party’s point of view) are all superior to the Formula of Universal Law.

Conference on Parfit

There's going to be a conference on Parfit's Climbing the Mountain at the University of Reading in November entitled "Parfit Meets Critics -- Critical Evaluations of Climbing the Mountain." The critics include James Lenman, Seiriol Morgan, Jenns Timmermann, Gideon Rosen, Michael Ridge, Michael Smith, and Michael Otsuka.  And Parfit will actively participate in the discussions as well. It looks like a great conference that will be of particular interest to those who have been involved with our virtual reading group on Parfit's manuscript. Further details on the conference are available here:

http://www.rdg.ac.uk/Phil/Conferences/Parfit%20conference.doc

Parfit's CTM, Chapter 9: What if everyone did that?

This marks the eighth of eleven e-meetings of our virtual reading group on Derek Parfit’s Climbing the Mountain—see here for further details. Next week, we will discuss Chapter 10 of the June 7th version of the manuscript, which can be found here.

In Chapter 9, Parfit brings some more tough questions to bear on (what he is calling) Kant’s Law of Nature Formula (LNF), to see if it gets the intuitively correct answers in various cases. Parfit holds that when we’re asking, with LNF, whether we could rationally will that some maxim be acted on by everyone, the comparison class is whether it could be acted on by no one. And, according to Parfit, the best version of LNF is that it is irrational to will that everyone act on some maxim if there is a better alternative maxim for everyone to act on.

The kinds of cases considered in this chapter are tricky insofar as the permissibility of an act seems to depend on what other agents are doing.