Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Search for Solution to Energy Policy and Further Future

Parfit's arguments in his piece come mostly in the forms of multitudes of questions rather than succinct and sturdy beliefs. Filled with varying point of views and "for-instances", Parfit has attempted to redevelop the thought process involved in deciding and justifying choices about "intergenerational rights and duties". Yet, how can he claim they are insufficient if he comes to no better conclusion of his own?
He finds the current or most popular views to be wrong or underdeveloped. While not exactly coming to a specific argument for justifying policy decision-making, he generally feels that we are responsible, no matter who or how many come into existance in the future, for policies affecting the standard of living for those humans further along, especially if we can cause their lives to be better or worse because of it.
While hoping for general summations at the ends of paragraphs or any hint of strong support for a single claim for his own belief, I was met with more and more questions and more and more scenarios than I would have liked to come across.
Parfit offered explanations to examples of situations and their implications in relevance to what other people may find to be true and morally relevant; and for his own "intuitions", gave weak suggestions to what may be an acceptable claim. In fact, he changes claims throughout the text, trying to find a suitable and supportable position. He instead concludes his text with the thought that, "...this part of morality...concerned with human welfare, cannot be explained in person-affecting terms. It's fundamental principle will not be concerned with whether acts will be good or bad for those people whom they affect" (Parfit, 372). This leads me to believe that he spent his whole time explaining and questioning what is good or bad to just dismiss it altogether and leave us with the notion that "...moral theories may need to be revised" (372)...but how so? Give something solid!
I understand that he argues against standard views and traditional ways of justifying "intergenerational rights and duties", and he did this by breaking down and disecting situations; but he offers nothing in return or replace of them. He calls for a "claim X"...better and wider than claim B ("If the same number of lives would be lived either way, it would be bad if people are worse off than people might have been") and can sometimes be used in congruence with PAP statement ("It is bad if people are affected for the worse"). Both of these, apparently, are better than his original claim A ("It is bad if those who live are worse off than those who might have lived"), which can only be supported and weighed if he examined more deeply into moral theory...a task he finds too massive to attack.
If he is ending his piece with the idea that human welfare morality cannot be supported in identifying good or bad acts or outcomes, why do all of his statements try to incorporate those conditions? If he realized that such an examination is too much for him to accomplish, why bother at all? I feel he has not persuaded anyone to follow a better method of justifying policies and plans for the future because he offered nothing in return. I'm not sure if Parfit would believe in this, and I'm not even sure I would totally agree with such a notion, but...in an anthropocentric, increase common good point of view...perhaps the following could be fit into an argument or statement: All human life has value and so we must consider all persons and increasing the common good (a long-term goal). Whether a person is of a present or future existence, this does not change the fact they are human beings. Therefore, moral consideration and common good must still be acknowledged.

No comments:

Post a Comment