I don’t at all disagree with Parfit’s assessment that 2>3 by much more than 1>2 (and, incidentally, Reasons and Persons is an excellent book, though rather dense) but I wonder whether he’s right that “most people”—by which I think he probably really means something like “most people who would ever consider such a question in the first place”—think otherwise.
Maybe he means that most people (out of everyone, including those who never have considered the question) would give that answer if asked out of the blue.
Yes, perhaps he does, but if so I don’t know why he’s paying any attention—in a quite technical work of philosophy aimed at professional philosophers—to the question of what “most people” would unreflectively say to a question of that sort.
I don’t at all disagree with Parfit’s assessment that 2>3 by much more than 1>2 (and, incidentally, Reasons and Persons is an excellent book, though rather dense) but I wonder whether he’s right that “most people”—by which I think he probably really means something like “most people who would ever consider such a question in the first place”—think otherwise.
Maybe he means that most people (out of everyone, including those who never have considered the question) would give that answer if asked out of the blue.
Yes, perhaps he does, but if so I don’t know why he’s paying any attention—in a quite technical work of philosophy aimed at professional philosophers—to the question of what “most people” would unreflectively say to a question of that sort.