Parfit

Treating the Dead Well

by Stephen Rainey
June 5, 2018June 5, 2018

Written by Stephen Rainey

What happens after we die? This might be taken as an eschatological question, seeking some explanation or reassurance around the destiny of an immortal soul or some such vital element of our very being. But there is another sense that has at least as much importance. What should we do with dead bodies?

According to a Yougov survey from 2016, a majority of UK residents prefer cremation over burial, with their ashes scattered in some meaningful place. This could be good news, given the apparent dwindling of burial space globally. In the face of this sort of constraint, the re-use of graves becomes necessary, which can cause distress to the families of even the long dead.

Less commonly, dead bodies can be donated to medical science and put to use for purposes of research and medical training. Research suggests the rate is low owing to ‘non-cognitive factors’ such as ‘the desire to maintain bodily integrity, worries that signing a donor card might ‘jinx’ a person, and medical mistrust.’

Maybe we should think again about how we treat dead bodies. There could come a time when cremation and burial might be considered a waste of resources, given the uses to which cadavers can be put. One body can be used to train many surgeons in complex procedures by being pared into relevant sections – individual limbs, organ systems, brains. Nevertheless, whilst a corpse is indeed a valuable object, it was also previously a subject. The nature of bodies as post-persons does seem to deserve some special consideration. If we can account for this, we might be in a position to recommend very generally why we ought to respect the bodies of the dead.Read More »Treating the Dead Well

Vagueness and Making a Difference

by Theron Pummer
September 24, 2015

Do you make the world a worse place by purchasing factory-farmed chicken, or by paying for a seat on a transatlantic flight? Do you have moral reason to, and should you, refrain from doing these things? It is very unlikely that any individual act of either of these two sorts would in fact bring about a worse outcome, even if many such acts together would. In the case of factory-farming, the chance that your small purchase would be the one to signal that demand for chicken has increased, in turn leading farmers to increase the number of chickens raised for the next round, is very small. Nonetheless, there is some chance that your purchase would trigger this negative effect, and since the negative effect is very large, the expected disutility of your act is significant, arguably sufficient to condemn it. This is true of any such purchasing act, as long as the purchaser is ignorant (as is almost always the case) of where she stands in relation to the ‘triggering’ purchase.

Does it benefit a person to bring them into being?

by Roger Crisp
August 20, 2015August 19, 2015

Over the last four decades or so, philosophers have spent a good deal of time on this somewhat peculiar question. Why? After all, it’s not a question that people ordinarily ask, like ‘Do animals have rights?’ or ‘Is abortion permissible?’.Read More »Does it benefit a person to bring them into being?

Moral Agreement on Saving the World

by Theron Pummer
May 18, 2015

There appears to be lot of disagreement in moral philosophy. Whether these many apparent disagreements are deep and irresolvable, I believe there is at least one thing it is reasonable to agree on right now, whatever general moral view we adopt: that it is very important to reduce the risk that all intelligent beings on this planet are eliminated by an enormous catastrophe, such as a nuclear war. How we might in fact try to reduce such existential risks is discussed elsewhere. My claim here is only that we – whether we’re consequentialists, deontologists, or virtue ethicists – should all agree that we should try to save the world.

Population Ethics and Indeterminacy

by Theron Pummer
March 20, 2015March 21, 2015

How should we compare a decrease in average quality of life with a gain in population size? Population ethics is a rigorous investigation of the value of populations, where the populations in question contain different (numbers of) individuals at different levels of quality of life. This abstract and theoretical area of philosophy is relevant to a host of important practical decisions that affect future generations, including decisions about climate change policy, healthcare prioritization, energy consumption, and global catastrophic risks.