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    The separateness of persons objection to utilitarianism i... — Carmelics
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Personal Identity
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The separateness of persons objection to utilitarianism is not serious, because the metaphysical distinction between persons that the objection relies on is not a deep fact.

    ConsequentialismPersonal Identity
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Parfit's reductionism entails that personal identity consists in overlapping chains of psychological continuity, not a further separately-existing fact.
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    • 2.If personal identity reduces to psychological continuity relations, then the boundary between persons is a matter of degree, not a discrete metaphysical divide.
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    • 3.A moral constraint that presupposes a discrete divide between persons inherits the instability of that presupposition, undermining the separateness objection's foundational premise.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Utilitarianism aggregates welfare across time-slices within a life just as it does across persons, and if intra-personal aggregation is permissible, the asymmetry the objection relies on requires a robust self/other distinction.
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    • 2.Reductionism about personal identity, as developed by Parfit in Reasons and Persons, dissolves the deep self/other distinction by showing that what matters in survival is psychological continuity, which admits of degrees across persons as well as times.
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    • 3.Without a deep self/other distinction, the separateness of persons objection cannot generate a principled asymmetry between aggregating welfare within a life and aggregating welfare across lives.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.The separateness of persons objection depends on a hard-and-fast metaphysical distinction between persons (i.e., the non-identity of different persons).
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    • 2.The non-identity of different persons depends on the further fact of personal identity.
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    • 3.If reductionism about personal identity is true, personal identity is not a further fact — it is not a deep metaphysical fact.
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    Topics

    Personal IdentityConsequentialism

    Connections

    1 topic

    Moral Responsibility1 linked

    Related

    A distinction that is not grounded in a deep fact is not a distinction worth tak...A moral constraint that presupposes a discrete divide between persons inherits t...If personal identity reduces to psychological continuity relations, then the bou...If reductionism about personal identity is true, personal identity is not a furt...
    +6 moreShow less
    Parfit's reductionism entails that personal identity consists in overlapping cha...Reductionism about personal identity, as developed by Parfit in Reasons and Pers...The non-identity of different persons depends on the further fact of personal id...The separateness of persons objection depends on a hard-and-fast metaphysical di...Utilitarianism aggregates welfare across time-slices within a life just as it do...Without a deep self/other distinction, the separateness of persons objection can...

    Similar

    The separateness of persons objection depends on a hard-and-fast metap...88%Sanction utilitarianism does not face the problems that act utilitaria...79%Contractualism with the individualist restriction diverges from utilit...77%This metaphysical distinction between selves and sets of lives undermi...76%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: identity-ethics
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    First, one might identify a serious objection to utilitarianism, say, and then show how considerations of personal identity (or at least of what matters in identity) dissolve the objection. This is the approach Parfit takes in Reasons and Persons. The objection he is concerned to refute is Rawls' famous “separateness of persons” charge, the contention that utilitarianism fails to take seriously the distinction between persons, because it controversially jettisons interpersonal distributive
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit