Derek Parfit

Jeff Vandermeer creates an obscure and intricate ecological system in his 2014 novel Annihilation, and names it Area X. The main character, a female biologist, joins an expedition to investigate this expanding and changing zone, and finds out “the Event,” which appears that humankind will eventually be transformed into other organisms in Area X, is “arriving like a kind of wave” (190). Many critics see Annihilation as an allegory for humanity’s situation in the face of a rapidly changing…

Finally, I will explain why race and gender can’t cease to exist. At the beginning, we should know that thought experiments are used in discussions about personal identity because there are cases that we can’t investigate empirically. For example, Derek Parfit suggests a case that we separate a person brain’s two hemispheres and place them into two distinct bodies without brains.…

Attempting to Understand Personal Identity The most important concept in the work by Gary Foster, “Internet Dating: Challenges to Love and Personal Identity,” is the idea of personal identity and what makes up one’s personal identity. In his work Gary Foster states that personal identity is the result of each person’s unique set of characteristics, but he also apparently thinks that it is not just the characteristics themselves but each person’s own unique embodiment of those same…

What is that makes a person’s identity? Is it the appearance, such as body shape, hair, facial features, or is it someone’s mental thoughts and memories? In “The Self and the Future”, Bernard William’s analyzes the topic of personal identity with possible objections and outcomes. He brings forth the idea of the body theory and the mind theory while creating two thought experiments to further prove his point that both are necessary. In this paper I will consider what exactly creates personal…

Egoism and Altruism are two ideas widely known in philosophy as two opposing ideas based on the actions of individuals. Egoists believe that people always act in their own self interest no matter what the situation is( Philosophy Questions & Theories, pg 28). Altruists believe that individuals will always act for the benefit of others. ( Philosophy Questions & Theories, pg 28). It is commonly known to be called “unselfishness”. These two ideas highlight the differences between two extreme…

I would be prepared to travel in a device that ‘destroyed’ me and built only one copy, because I believe that the persistence of identity over time is implausible in any circumstance. Subsequently, I find nothing so unique about the device that I should fear its usage – it would not ‘destroy’ me in a way that is different from life itself. I shall demonstrate why such persistence is implausible by examining two ‘persistence conditions’ (Olson, 2002, edited Zalta, 2016) used to prove it, namely…

Danielle Dennett’s short tale Where Am I? focuses on the metaphysical and physical dilemma where the idea of the self truly supervenes with the aid of a sci-fi short tale. Insofar, there is a constant displacement in where the idea of the self is, when separated which is as four locations in the tale.insofar viewing these possible locations in his story, and explaining why he can possibly be each these locations. I will thereafter interpret these ideas further with a philosophical view in how…

Abortion Abortion wasn’t always legal in America, until the early ‘70s. Before abortion was legal women who had the money will usually pay a doctor to do it for them. However, for many women that wasn’t always the case. Those who wanted an abortion, but couldn’t afford it will place a coat hanger in their vagina or they would drink hard drugs and or other chemicals. On January 22, 1973 in the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, was when abortion was finally legal, because the courts had realized it…

The Repugnant Conclusion. Derek Parfit, in “Overpopulation and the Quality of Life”, defines the Repugnant Conclusion as follows: “Compared with the existence of very many people— say, ten billion—all of whom have a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger number of…