Reasons and Persons

This post criticizes Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit, which I just read.

I think I would have been impressed by this book if I had read it five years ago, as a naïve kid who didn’t know much about philosophy. But as things are, I think that everything it says is very confused and poorly thought out, and overall, it is the worst thing I’ve ever read. I’m not sure whether to even call it philosophy – it’s more like a kind of Buddhism built up from a bunch of vague undefined ideas and sci-fi thought experiments.

There’s a religious side to Plato and Aristotle too, but the difference to me is that for them, the religious stuff is really just a cute way to represent what are really some scientific theories. When Plato says that the forms are imperishable and perfect, this is (or can be) really just an exciting way to communicate the fact that in typical human experience, our concepts don’t change when our sensations do, and they don’t have the limitations that we observe. When Aristotle talks about souls, that’s really just the way in which we understand living things to move by themselves – Plato does seem to believe in immortality in a deeper way, but at least that’s a way for him to understand the origin of our ideas here on earth, since they can’t come totally from the senses, so there’s some sophistication there.

But when Parfit uses his obfuscations about identity to basically say that there’s no separation between our psychological experiences and those of other people, this doesn’t come from anything that otherwise helps you understand the world. He’s just making things up, and trying to make them sound plausible by making you imagine fictional scenarios.

A method followed throughout much of the book is the anti-rational method of making up principles for the reason that they support previously-preferred conclusions, and of arguing against opposing theories because they lead to a so-called “absurd” conclusion, not in the sense of self-contradictory or incomprehensible, but of disliked. This is done very clearly in §26, §50, and §52, and most egregiously throughout Part 4, where each chapter is about a specific disliked conclusion, which he makes up various theories to try to reject. I have spoken against this method here and here. In brief, if you already supported your conclusions before you chose your principles, then your conclusions were never rational – rationalization, despite what the word sounds like it means, cannot make conclusions become rational, but rather can only make them appear reasonable to the uneducated.

What follows is a series of some of the worst things Parfit says in the book. This covers only a small part of Reasons and Persons, mostly from its beginning; this is because the book was very long and very bad, and most of the wrong things it said were said too vaguely to be worth the interpretation work they would take to discuss.

Rational irrationality

Derek Parfit believed in such a self-contradictory thing as rational irrationality. The phrase is his own, although he does not use it in the following extended quotation.

Schelling’s Answer to Armed Robbery. A man breaks into my house. He hears me calling the police. But, since the nearest town is far away, the police cannot arrive in less then fifteen minutes. The man orders me to open the safe in which I hoard my gold. He threatens that, unless he gets the gold in the next five minutes, he will start shooting my children, one by one.

What is it rational for me to do? I need the answer fast. I realize that it would not be rational to give this man the gold. The man knows that, if he simply takes the gold, either I or my children could tell the police the make and number of the car in which he drives away. So there is a great risk that, if he gets the gold, he will kill me and my children before he drives away.

Since it would be irrational to give this man the gold, should I ignore his threat? This would also be irrational. There is a great risk that he will kill one of my children, to make me believe his threat that, unless he gets the gold, he will kill my other children.

What should I do? It is very likely that, whether or not I give this man the gold, he will kill us all. I am in a desperate position. Fortunately, I remember reading Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict. I also have a special drug, conveniently at hand. This drug causes one to be, for a brief period, very irrational. Before the man can stop me, I reach for the bottle and drink. Within a few seconds, it becomes apparent that I am crazy. Reeling about the room, I say to the man: ‘Go ahead. I love my children. So please kill them.’ The man tries to get the gold by torturing me. I cry out: ‘This is agony. So please go on.’

Given the state that I am in, the man is now powerless. He can do nothing that will induce me to open the safe. Threats and torture cannot force concessions from someone who is so irrational. The man can only flee, hoping to escape the police. And, since I am in this state, he is less likely to believe that I would record the number of his car. He therefore has less reason to kill me.

While I am in this state, I shall act in irrational ways. There is a risk that, before the police arrive, I may harm myself or my children. But, since I have no gun, this risk is small. And making myself irrational is the best way to reduce the great risk that this man will kill us all.

On any plausible theory about rationality, it would be rational for me, in this case, to cause myself to become for a period irrational. [...] (§5)

Obviously, it is always irrational to become irrational, so he is wrong. What the hell is wrong with him? And he thinks “any plausible theory about rationality” has to go along with this bullshit.

Self-effacing truth

Later, Parfit discusses the possibility that an ethical theory called “S” might lead us, in some circumstances, to conclude that we ought to stop believing the theory:

If S told us to believe some other theory, this would not support this other theory. But would it be an objection to S? Once again, S would not be failing in its own terms. S is a theory about practical not theoretical rationality. S may tell us to make ourselves have false beliefs. If it would be better for us to have false beliefs, having true beliefs, even about rationality, would not be part of the ultimate aim given to us by S. [...]

Suppose that S told everyone to cause himself to believe some other theory. S would then be self-effacing. If we all believed S, but could also change our beliefs, S would remove itself from the scene. It would become a theory that no one believed. But to be self-effacing is not to be self-defeating. It is not the aim of a theory to be believed. If we personify theories, and pretend that they have aims, the aim of a theory is not to be believed, but to be true, or to be the best theory. That a theory is self-effacing does not show that it is not the best theory. [...]

Though S would not be failing in its own terms, it might be claimed that an acceptable theory cannot be self-effacing. I deny this claim. It may seem plausible for what, when examined, is a bad reason. It would be natural to want the best theory about rationality not to be self-effacing. If the best theory was self-effacing, telling us to believe some other theory, the truth about rationality would be depressingly convoluted. It is natural to hope that the truth is simpler: that the best theory would tell us to believe itself. But can this be more than a hope? Can we assume that the truth must be simpler? We cannot. (§9)

Apparently he believes that “practical rationality” may possibly tell us to believe what is false, unlike “theoretical rationality”. But of course, nothing that tells us to have false beliefs deserves the name of rationality, since reason is, fundamentally, the faculty with which we seek knowledge. Parfit deceptively distorts language, and then pretends that someone could only protest against this if moved by wishful thinking.

For any theory about actual rationality, to conclude that it is rational to believe something is the same as to conclude that it is true, which is why no such theory can be self-effacing, never mind “the best” theory. A theory that claims to be about rationality, but does not conceive of reason as the faculty that seeks knowledge, is really a misleadingly-named theory about something other than rationality – in this case, a theory of Parfit’s wicked delusions.

Actions from passion more virtuous

The following is how Parfit says that a hedonistic utilitarian might try to defend his claim that acting morally is a mere means:

He might first appeal to the unattractiveness of what Williams calls moral self-indulgence. Compare two people who are trying to relieve the suffering of others. The first person acts because he sympathises with these people. He also believes that suffering is bad, and ought to be relieved. The second person acts because he wants to think of himself as someone who is morally good. Of these two people, the first seems to be better. But the first person has no thoughts about the goodness of acting morally, or the badness of wrongdoing. He is moved to act simply by his sympathy, and by his belief that, since suffering is bad, he ought to try to prevent it. This person seems to regard acting morally as a mere means. It is the second person who regards acting morally as a separate aim that is in itself good. Since the first person seems to be better, this supports the claim that acting morally is a mere means. (§19)

Of course, it makes no sense to believe that the first person, on any account, even seems to be better. This strange passage cannot be interpreted in any reasonable way, and is simply insane.