Derek Parfit
1942–2017 · Analytic Ethics · Prominent
Parfit was a British philosopher at All Souls in Oxford. He argued in Reasons and Persons in 1984 that no deep further fact makes you the same person you were at ten. You are a bundle of linked experiences, and identity is not what matters. He reached that by argument, then found the Buddha had said the same. He held in On What Matters in 2011 that Kantians, utilitarians and contractualists climb one mountain from different sides.
Signature
The position Parfit is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Identity
- strongly leans Changing
- Ethics Basis
- Categorical Imperative / Non-Utilitarian Consequentialism
Positions on the 1 axes the sources answer
- Identity
- strongly leans Changing (91 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
19 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Parfit refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Categorical Imperative / Non-Utilitarian Consequentialism
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Human Nature
- No-Self
What is human nature?