Parfit's Objection to Personal Identity and Its Ethical Significance
In response to the classical view of personal identity that he has compiled,Parfit in Reason and Man puts forward strong objection to each of the following:firstly,if the reductionism is followed,personal identity will become an empty question that cannot provide an answer of substance;secondly,in terms of non-reductionism,there is insufficient empirical evidence for a mental entity such as the Cartesian ego,but instead,there is a great deal of evidence to disprove it.As a support for the"further facts"view,the presuppo-sition of empirical subjects is not necessary,since impersonal descriptions are perfectly possible.Parfit thus concludes that it is not personal identity that matters,but rather the psychological relatedness and continuity for the right kinds of reasons,what he calls the relation R.He then analyses the two main reasons for these views:the presuppositions of the atomic individual,and the natural desire for the individual's self-perpetuation.Parfit's objection aims at the ethical dimension.In Reasons and Persons,his objection is actu-ally directed at the presupposition of the atomic individual as the basis of the theory of self-interest,and then criticizes the individualistic perspective adopted by the mainstream Western ethical theory.The subsequent development of this objection in On What Matters is primarily a critique of the meta-ethical dimension of Kan-tian ethics and a revision of its normative ethics.Parfit's objection not only reveals the inherent problems with the individualistic perspective of mainstream Western ethics,but also demonstrates that they are fundamen-tally flawed in responding to many of the major realities of our time.
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