Parfit's Benefit On Personal Identity

Reductionism argues that persons are nothing over and above the existence of certain mental/physical states. It is this positions that is endorsed by Derek Parfit in arguing that personal identity is nothing more than this stripped down definition. According to such an account, persons are not irreducible states of consciousness like many of us seems to intuitively think but instead, can be broken down into their individual parts. In this essay, I shall argue that Parfit's account is wrong in how it threatens our developed moral collectivity. The issues of personal identity is attached to perceptions of ourselves and those around us and so is neccesarily, a moral issue. To not threaten the ethics which lay the basis for everything from our judicial system to our everyday interaction, we have to dismiss ideas which may be metaphysically correct but practically useless.

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If we make a promise when we are young we are still morally required to uphold it in our old age. And this will be true even if we are very feebly psychologically related to our adolescence, because we are still that same person. however, on Parfit's view our responsibility will be proportioned to the degree of psychological continuity and connectedness that exists. He showcases this point with an example of a young Russian due to inherit a large amount of wealth. Given his present ideals, he intends to give the land to the peasants. Although he also acknowledges that people change over time, and thus that his ideals may fade, In order to prevent this possibility he asks his wife to promise that she will never consent to revoke a legal document that he has signed given the land away. Such an analogy is intended to show how the husband acknowledges how our internal identities shift but ignores the consequences that