Thoughts on Parfit

The thoughts that jump to the front of my mind regarding Parfit's piece are ones of confusion and a lack of satisfaction. Throughout his writings he suggests multiple hypotheticals, many complicated responses to hypotheticals, which he does not offer complete answers too in every situation, and he relies on a plethora of assumptions without much reasoning. All of this makes it in some cases difficult to follow, particularly when it comes to following his opinion.By the end you do come away with a clear point and conclusion; however, this conclusion is simply "many moral theories need to be revised". If Parfit had taken the time to try and reason as to why a certain theory was better, the writing may have been much more substantial. Regardless, the principle he seems to supporting, principle (B), I do agree with. It would be bad if people are worse off than what they might have been. In the case of depletion or conservation, or any of the situations regarding a large group of people, it seems rather obvious to me depletion is not a good idea. To be honest the amount of hypotheticals he presents creates a great mess of ideas to sift through to find the one conclusion he meagerly offers up.

Still, Parfit's goal is one that seems both pluasible and in general good. Future people should be able to blame those in the past for poor mistakes that lead them to lives that are not as good as they could be. Placing blame on the past does not assist in helping the present. Hopefully it instead makes people now realize that we are responsible for the future and the generations ahead of us. As parents can be blamed for the way children turn out, so can we be blamed for the generations after us; we must not hurt ourselves, but we cannot ignore the consequences of our actions.