Some philosophers make you see the world with greater clarity. Others leave you more perplexed. Derek Parfit was one of the latter, a rare thinker whom you may wish never to read because once you familiarise yourself with his intricate ideas they can’t be unthought.
“What Parfit showed is there are a great many acts that seem wrong even though there is no one for whom they are worse. These are acts that cause bad effects in the lives of people who would never have existed had the acts not been done,” David Edmonds explains in his gripping biography of the scruffy-haired Oxford don, who died in 2017, aged 74.
The ‘nonidentity problem’ tries to reconcile the idea that a flawed existence is better than no existence with the idea that bringing someone into existence in certain circumstances is morally wrong
Edmonds has written previous books on the enigmatic Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna circle of logical positivism, so he is well qualified to take on Parfit, a complicated but influential moral philosopher possibly best known for exploring the “nonidentity problem”. This tries to reconcile two competing ideas. First, that a flawed existence is better than no existence at all. Second, that bringing someone into existence in certain circumstances is morally wrong – for example, if someone was born into slavery as a result of rape – even if it is not wrong for that individual, given that they would not otherwise exist.
Parfit examined the problem in the context of policies surrounding population growth, economics and environmentalism. Although his focus was on the future, the nonidentity problem had the potential to “discombobulate attitudes to the past”, Edmonds observes. “Adolf Hitler made the lives of scores of millions of people much worse – but not the life of this author. This author (a child of refugees) certainly owes his existence to Adolf Hitler. Given Hitler’s disruptive impact on the world, the same is probably true for most readers.”
The nonidentity problem thus raises an awkward question for students of history: can historic injustices properly be said to have caused harm? While you’re mulling that over – and whether it means Irish people can ever justifiably complain about British colonialism again – consider a more complicated puzzle.
Imagine we had a choice between one population where everyone ranked 100 on a wellbeing scale and a slightly larger population where everyone ranked 98. Shouldn’t we favour the latter?
Parfit applied the nonidentity problem to population ethics, taking the standard utilitarian approach that we should try to minimise individual harm and maximise individual happiness. If you are deciding between two policies affecting the future population, we should choose the outcome in which people have a higher quality of life. That seems straightforward.
But imagine we had a choice between one population where everyone ranked 100 on a wellbeing scale and a slightly larger population where everyone ranked 98. Shouldn’t we favour the latter? Since it is better for an individual to exist at a 98 wellbeing ranking than not exist at all, it also better at a 95 ranking, or a 90 ranking, and so on.
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This leads to what Parfit called the “repugnant conclusion”, namely: “For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living.”
Parfit was very troubled by this conclusion and tried desperately to find what he called “Theory X” to solve it. “Theory X surely had to exist, he thought. He searched for it for several decades. He was still searching for it when he died,” Edmonds writes. Informing Parfit’s reasoning was a general credo that “the aim of all actions should be to reduce suffering”. It made him an influential figure in the effective-altruism movement, whose members pledge a portion of their income – typically 10 per cent – to impactful causes.
Derek Parfit exemplified the ideal philosopher, whose job it was not to provide solutions but to encourage others to figure out answers to questions they never realised had really mattered
Edmonds, who has made radio programmes for the BBC and is perhaps best known for producing, with Nigel Warburton, the podcast series Philosophy Bites, gives a clear-sighted account of a man who seemed to oscillate between genius and naivety. Something of a cult hero among professional philosophers, Parfit devoted much of his life to writing the three-volume On What Matters, which sought to provide an irrefutable rational foundation for moral philosophy. It was an undertaking of heroic proportions even if, by common agreement, the book is next to impossible to read.
On one level, his life could be seen as a failure. But, on another, he exemplified the ideal philosopher, whose job it was not to provide solutions but to encourage others to figure out answers to questions they never realised had really mattered. The nature of human identity was a core concern throughout. He was a reductionist, believing people do not exist apart from their component parts. This resulted in some strange conclusions about the nature of life and death.
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Edmonds describes how Parfit wrote a letter to his friend Joyce Carol Oates, the author, when her first husband died, in 2008. “I am very sorry to learn that Ray died a couple of weeks ago,” Parfit wrote. “When someone I loved died I found it helpful to remind myself that this person was not less real because she was not real now, just as people in New Zealand aren’t less real because they aren’t real here.”
Oates was grateful for the letter of condolence but unconvinced by Parfit’s argument. “She compared it to trying to console an amputee that his leg was still real and existed in New Zealand.”
Whether or not reductionism made sense, Parfit took consolation in the idea that there is no individual self. In a passage of writing that has added poignancy following his death, he described having a eureka moment:
“My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness... When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.”
It was about the closest Parfit ever came to certainty, and in one sense at least he has been proven right. Parfit’s puzzling has wormed its way into contemporary ethical inquiries across philosophy departments. As Edmonds’s engaging book attests, the man who searched in vain for Theory X is very much alive.
Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality, by David Edmonds, is published by Princeton University Press
Ask a sage
What happens to us when we die?
Derek Parfit replies: “I find it very comforting to think that all [death] means is that there will be no future person who is related to me in a certain way.”
