Parfit, the Reductionist and Moral Commitment Argument - Essay Example

? Parfit’s, the Reductionist and Moral Commitment Argument In his book (Reasons and Person), Derek Parfit supports the Reductionist view concerning personal identity. According to this view, it is consistent to claim that person’s existence consists in the brain and body existence and a number of mental and physical events. In this regard, Parfin’s believe is that the facts concerning personal identity exist in particular facts about the connectedness of psychology and that personal identity could be reduced to the said connectedness. Parfin is informed that his view concerning personal identity is not whatever many individuals perceive about persons. In this case, if Parfit’s view is correct then many individuals have a false belief concerning personal identity. Additionally, since a good number of individual’s views concerning morality rely on their view on personal identity, individuals should also have to change their own believes concerning morality. In this regard, Parfits argue out that, in most situations, changes of this kind show out an improvement over an individual’s former belief and is in consistence with an individual’s moral judgment. One perceives Parfit argument to be a threat to the moral judgment that is considered. Specifically, it is a judgment undermining the substantial moral commitment notion. This paper explores Parfit’s argument, which says that it is consistent to say claim that the existence of a person is consisted in the existence of the body and brain, and a number of mental and physical events and at the same time the person's existence is different from this. This paper also gives out the nation analogy in support of this argument. As stated in his book, Parfit believes that whatever matters for deliberation about rationality and morality is not personal identity but connectedness or psychological continuity. Despite the fact that personal identity is nothing affair, connectedness and psychological continuity, appear in degrees. In this respect, Parfit argues out that personal identity does not carry out the relevance of morality but psychological continuity. Additionally, he claims that one can defensibly claim that the continuity of psychology carries past crimes desert with is. Because of the degree of psychological connectedness and continuity, the application of moral commitment will equally be demonstrated in degrees. Whenever the psychological continuity degree changes to a great magnitude in a life, one may no longer be held responsible of their prior commitments. One may say that following the view of Parfit moral commitment should be proportioned to Relatedness degrees. In his argument, Parfit uses one example in promises. When one is Non-Reductionist he takes personal identity as whatever matters in consideration of morals. As personal identity is a nothing affair, it appears that an individual’s personal experience would extend on parts of his life. This means that, if one takes personal identity as whatever matters, it appears that whenever one makes promises while he is still young, he is morally expected to uphold the promise his old age. This would be considered true even though one could have a weak psychology in relation to his youth. Despite this, concerning the view of parfit, one’s responsibility is proportional to the psychological continuity degree and connectedness. Having this view, one is not bound to uphold the already made commitments especially when he was young. One may think and treat specific aspects in his past and future as selves that are different, instead of being parts that are equal in his life. Just like someone else could not commit another individual to something, equally a former self could not be in a position, to make commitments on one’s part. Indeed Parfit argues that when one considers a commitment, the personal identity fact appears to enter twice. In this regard, it is essential to consider the continuity degree between one’s own selves and the continuity holding between the individual whom the commitments were made to. In addition to this, Parfin points out that the results of this commitment fit into the moral intuition well compared to the view of the Non- Reductionist. He argues out that the use of the successive selves’ language and adoption of view of Reductionist in these matters appears to be both natural and understanding. He gives out an example showing out the reason for this. The given example is about a Russian who was young with tendencies that are idealistic and was to inherit substantial portion of some property. Having his ideals, he had intentions of giving the land to the peasants. He also knew that a person would change after some time thus his ideals could fade. In the prevention of this possibility, he asked his wife to make a promise that she would consent, not in revoking a document that was legal which he signed while giving out the land. Parfin had a thought that if the Russian man does alter later on in his life by asking her wife to revoke the given document, it would be acceptable for the wife to term herself as having commitments with the young man. In this case, the wife refused to be removed from her commitments by the Russian man. Considering this view, The Russian man in his middle age has some sense, not he whoever she had a commitment. In the Russian man’s case, one may discover that the Parfit’s theory results are appealing. Many people would agree with the issue that, when his wife revoked the document it was another betray concerning her former commitment. Another example is when a soldier is held behind his own enemies. In captivity, he goes through some severe torture. He could be deprived sleep, beaten, deprived sunlight, water and food. Under immense torture, he goes ahead and provides the enemy with information that is classified even though he had vowed never to release it. In this case, the soldier should not be held to be morally blameworthy in the breaking of the commitment or promise in such a situation. Parfit’s view argues out that it could be claimed that this happened due to the extreme torture that he went through which rendered him to have a week R-Relation to the young soldier who had made a promise. Another example involve individual person who lost control on his mental faculties. Parfit think most people would accept the fact that a person’s commitment towards persons would substantially be modified whenever such persons happen to be mentally disturbed. His view gives out the explanation of the reason why it is so. Commitments fail to hold to them in an equal manner that they did previously since they now tend to be weakly R-Related to the originally made persons who made the commitment. Additionally, this person would normally not be held stricken with Alzheimer’s responsibility of their earlier commitments. In these arguments, it appears that Parfit’s View of Reductionist actually gives out some support that is positive and explanatory force towards the intuitions on morality in certain situations. The appeal that the theory of Parfit’s may have in consideration of such situations I have thinking that the outcomes of Parfit’s view are damaging to the normal concepts concerning moral commitment. In this respect, there are a number of examples that explains the relationship between morality and personal identity. The first example is a scenario where one is a struggling artist, not sure of his potentials, despondent concerning his situation, and wishing to have all these come to an end. However, when he is about to let it go, a wealthy investor surface upon him. Having pity on him, he gives out an offer of using his influence and wealth in helping the artist’s career and in making his name be prominent in the circle of arts. In return, the investor makes a commitment with the artist that whenever he is in need of any favour the artist should also help him. This favour made the artist become a successful artist. His works fetched outstanding prices and his presences gave a command of admiration and respect of high degree. His patron, on the other hand, did not fare on so well for a long time. His employees gives him a financial ruin and had to be reduced to live on the street. One day when the artist was walking with his friends inside the park, the former patron spots him and asks him to keep his promise in helping him. Anyone will, on natural domain, imagine that the artist should honour his commitments as he had promised. However, on account of Parfit this would not be the case. This is so because the artist that is successful is related weekly to the starving wreck artist who almost killed himself a number of years ago. Apart from this, the decrepit investor before the artist has remarkably little continuity to the prosperous and commanding investor that the artist made a promise that day. According to Parfit we would claim reasonably that neither the artist nor the former investor is the same selves like the ones involved in making the commitments. The second example, in this case, is somewhat fantastic although does not necessarily add support to what I tent to interpret as being the problem with the view of Parfit. According to the view of Parfit, we must always weigh promises and other commitments that relate to degrees of R-Relations. However, as seen, the R-Relation might both fail to hold in one life and might even branch across in more than one life. Following this, on the theory of Parfit the R-Relation might range over multiple selves, with each individual life being thought of as just but a series of successive selves alongside the psychological continuity and the connectedness that matters, which always comes in degrees. The major problem in this case, is whether, if all these factors are given, we are able to even make sense out of the idea of a promise or a commitment. In effect, once they are made their forces start weakening on Parfit’s view because R-Relations are always degenerate. In theory, their scope can be infinite: in any case, one could indefinitely reduplicate himself thereby cause me be committed to a countless generation of him. This examples show that results of Parfit’s view is counterintuitive, and his theory makes it hard to construct any general principles that concern the scope of our commitments and the nature. The actual problem, in this case, is that should commitments such as the promises have any sort of practical hold over us, then we are forced to handle them as having two features. In the first place, the force of promises always holds precisely as it concerns holding through various changes associated with psychological character. Surely, the primary reason we are made to influence others in making promises is actually to assure ourselves that these people would remain committed despite such psychological changes. Indeed, supposed the strength of a promise holds its full strength limited to the degree of psychological continuity with the connectedness being equivalent to that of a person that makes the commitment as presently constituted, one will not need the promise at all because he/she already knows that in his/her present state he/she should be willing to take on the obligation. In a similar situation, there is that problem of relevance. In other words, according to Parfit’s view one has to specify the necessity of degree of R-Relatedness in order for a commitment to hold. Moreover, specifying the relevance of the kind of continuities is needed for purposes of our commitments now that within a single life there are many different types of continuity. An attempt to get a workable framework of a practical deliberation accounting for such specifications is somewhat hopeless. Therefore, it appears to me that if one is to give promises to any real weight he/she needs to take persons as a basic unit upon which to range. Secondly, I would maintain that as a practice, common moral deliberation always presuppose that commitments and other promises cannot be degenerate in such a way that Parfit’s View entails they should be. That is, if commitments are supposed to practically hold upon us then we cannot afford to alter their degree of strength over time. However, this does not imply to us that we might not end up having degrees of obligation within various commitments. Neither is certain types of commitments be said to be stronger than other types, but rather whatever degree of strength they have cannot be changed simply in relation to some temporal connections that are between us. Here, once again I am simply not sure the sort of sense we could practically make out of Parfit’s view where he implies that we are just obligated to our promises only for varying degrees since our degrees of R-Relatedness in respect to our past changes. If I should make a promise not to tell the secret, then what does it imply to say that whenever my degree of R-Relatedness to past self changes, in this case, I might only be obliged to a certain degree never to tell it? Suppose we then attach a real, practical efficacy to promises and suppose their strength over us does not temporally degenerate. Then, the expected response will be to take the personal identity as our basis of commitments rather than using the R-Relation. If we then have to reject Parfit’s view on the issues, we can have an account of the type of situations they handled so well. However, I do not think that, as such, this is too difficult. The cases that Parfit’s theory mostly seemed to give a natural explanation for could easily be covered through considering other moral obligations we have. In this respect, we seem to be having other general commitments towards persons, which include acting for their welfare, perhaps not harming them, and so on. In some cases, it is simply possible for other moral considerations to override our promises and commitments, without supposing that selves that are involved are in fact, different. In the same way, we may arguably disregard certain promises and commitments in certain situations due to other mitigating non-moral factors. Thus, even if we are to take the intrinsic nature of our own commitments to be invariable, this may, as well be extrinsic factors, which allow us to be somewhat released from our promises and commitments. My concerns are not actually meant to indicate that Parfit’s theory of personal identity is quite wrong. For the most part, indeed, I find his Reductionist View to be quite convincing. What I feel about the issue is that if we want to show certain sorts of moral commitments and give them any practical weight, then we must suppose that they all apply to persons. In this case, in many respects, my personal view is somehow close to that of Christine Korsgaard whose argument is that, at times, we may occasionally have practical reasons to regard ourselves as being the same person over time even though we do not have the deep metaphysical ones (Macfarquhar, 45). In other terms, it might be that if certain basic assumptions that we seem have about commitments and other practicable deliberation hold, we might have to suppose that they all range over persons even if we lack the deep metaphysical grounds for our doing so. In matters of practical deliberation, it may seem at least that we must suppose that commitments often hold between persons or otherwise, if we take up Parfit’s suggestions that concern the implication of the metaphysics of persons in issues of morality and rationality, then I think I have shown that we would have to radically reconsider a number of our basic assumptions concerning the range of applicability, as well as our commitments. Work Cited Macfarquhar, Larrisa. Analysis of ideas: How to be good. New York: New Yorker press. 2011. Read More