Parfit Quotes & Sayings

If there were no such normative truths, nothing would matter, and we would have no reasons to try to decide how to live. Such decisions would be arbitrary. We would not be the animals that can understand and respond to reasons. In a world without reasons, we would act only on our instincts and desires, living as other animals live. The Universe would not contain rational beings. — Derek Parfit

Normativity, I believe, is very different from motivating force. Neither includes, or implies, the other. Other animals can be motivated by their desires and beliefs. Only we can understand and respond to reasons. — Derek Parfit

What am I more than elaborate sentience? — Derek Parfit

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. — Derek Parfit

Criticizing himself again, Sidgwick writes: I am not an original man: and I think less of my own thoughts every day. — Derek Parfit

Well, he was scarcely a parfit gentil knight; as Wolfie said, he looked like some Hollywood Geronimo trying to kick a ninety-dollar habit. — Peter Matthiessen

Watersheds come in families; nested levels of intimacy ... As you work upstream toward home, you're more closely related. The big river is like your nation, a little out of hand. The lake is your cousin. The creek is your sister. The pond is her child. And, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, you're married to your sink. — Michael Parfit

While reasons are provided by the facts, ... rationality ... depends instead on our beliefs. [ ... ] [I]f I believe falsely that my hotel is on fire, it may be rational for me to jump into the canal. But I have no reason to jump. I merely think I do. And, if some dangerous treatment would save your life, but you don't know that fact, it would be irrational for you to take this treatment, but that is what you have most reason to do. — Derek Parfit

That summer, there was a Name the Babies contest, an annual event organized by the Whale Museum on San Juan Island. A young girl from Bellingham submitted the winning entry. The little orca should be named "Luna", she wrote, because "the whale explores the ocean like the moon explores the Earth. — Michael Parfit

Can the magic of flight ever be carried by words? I think not. — Michael Parfit

Pilots track their lives by the number of hours in the air, as if any other kind of time isn't worth noting. — Michael Parfit

We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination. — Derek Parfit

No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing — Derek Parfit

Unfortunately for ethical egoism, the claim that we will all be better off if every one of us does what is in his or her own interest is incorrect. This is shown by what are known as "prisoner's dilemma" situations, which are playing an increasingly important role in discussions of ethical theory ... At least on the collective level, therefore, egoism is self-defeating - a conclusion well brought out by Parfit in his aforementioned Reasons and Persons. — Peter Singer

I have enormous respect for Derek Parfit, although he seems to me bound within an unfortunate philosophical tradition - rather like the extraordinarily brilliant exponents of Ptolemaic astronomy in the Middle Ages. — Philip Kitcher

It is not enough to ask, 'Will my act harm other people?' Even if the answer is No, my act may still be wrong, because of its effects on other people. I should ask, 'Will my act be one of a set of acts that will together harm other people?' The answer may be Yes. And the harm to others may be great. If this is so, I may be acting very wrongly, like the Harmless Torturers. — Derek Parfit

Everybody is always saying what a parfit, gentle knight I am, but it has nothing to do with me. It is Arthur's idea. It is what he has wished on all the younger generation, like Gareth, and now it is fashionable. — T.H. White

The "I" is a grammatical fiction (Nietzsche). There are bundles of impressions but no underlying self (Hume). There is no survival because there is no person (Buddha, Parfit). — Max More

This part of Kant's view is, I believe, a profound truth. We can be morally responsible in several other ways, or senses, but no one could ever be responsible, I believe, in any way that could make them deserve to suffer. Nor, I believe, does anyone deserve to be less happy. — Derek Parfit

What now matters most is that we avoid ending human history. If there are no rational beings elsewhere, it may depend on us and our successors whether it will all be worth it, because the existence of the Universe will have been on the whole good. — Derek Parfit