An Identity Crisis in Philosophy
Issue: • Author/s: Samuel Kahn
Topics: Epistemology, Ethics, Metaphysics, Ontology
The following seems to be a truism in modern day philosophy: No agent can have had other parents (IDENTITY). IDENTITY shows up in discussions of moral luck, parenting, gene editing, and population ethics. In this paper, I challenge IDENTITY. I do so by showing that the most plausible arguments that can be made in favor of IDENTITY do not withstand critical scrutiny. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I document the prevalence of IDENTITY. In the second, I examine a defense of IDENTITY on the basis…
Choosing Who Lives our Life
Issue: Issue 09 • Author/s: Luca Stroppa
Topics: Ethics, Metaphysics
The relationship between Parfit’s theory of Personal Identity and his research on Population Ethics is underexplored. In this paper I both examine this relationship and support the principle stating that it is moral to cause the greatest total wellbeing. Once introduced the basic concepts of Population Ethics and Parfit’s theory of Personal Identity, I report Parfit’s distinction between Different Number Choices, that affect both the number and the identity of future people, and Same Number Choices, that affect only future people’s identity. Parfit underlines how, in Different Number Choices, it…