Utilitarianism and personal identity

Journal of Value Inquiry

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 183-199

  Shoemaker, David W ^a  

^a University of Memphis   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0033147978     PISSN: 00225363     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1004400627563     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
2. Ibid., pp. 210-211.
3. Ibid., p. 210.
4. Ibid., p. 207.
5. Ibid., p. 206.
6. Ibid., pp. 254-266.
7. Ibid., pp. 302-306.
8. Although he insists elsewhere that talk of successive selves is not to be taken literally. See Parfit's Postscript to a reprinted version of "Later Selves and Moral Principles," in Ted Honderich and Myles Burnyeat, eds., Philosophy As It Is (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 211.
9. Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 336.
10. Ibid., p. 330.
11. Ibid., p. 331.
12. Ibid., p. 336.
13. For an argument similar to this one, see Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 342-345.
14. See, for example, Parfit's discussion in Reasons and Persons, pp. 342-343.
15. John Broome, "Utilitarian Metaphysics?" in Jon Elster and John E. Roemer, eds., Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 70.
16. Ibid., pp. 70-71.
17. Ibid., p. 72.
18. Ibid., pp. 73-79.
19. Ibid., p. 81.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 83.
22. Ibid., p. 79.
23. J.J.C. Smart, in J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 23.
24. Ibid.
25. Broome discusses a somewhat similar example and reply in Broome, p. 82, fn. 11.
26. James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 36.
27. Ibid.
28. I am grateful to Andrew Cross for this suggestion.
29. Smart, Utilitarianism: For and Against, p. 69.
30. Bernard Williams, "Persons, Character and Morality," in Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 205-207.
31. Ibid., p. 206.
32. Ibid., p. 209.
33. I am grateful to Andrew Cross for pointing out this final fall-back position.
34. I am indebted to Eric Cave, Andrew Cross, William Harms, Penelope Maddy, Alan Nelson, Brian Skyrms, Gary Watson, a University of California, Irvine colloquium audience, and the editor of the Journal of Value Inquiry for their extremely helpful remarks on earlier drafts of this paper.