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The impure non-identity problem
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Tomlin, Patrick (2022) The impure non-identity problem. In: McMahan, Jeff and Campbell, Tim and Goodrich, James and Ramakrishnan, Ketan, (eds.) Ethics and Existence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192894250
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Abstract
Some of Derek Parfit’s most significant work concerns the non-identity problem. Briefly put, this is the problem of how, morally speaking, we should understand cases in which we can act in one way, and produce persons with sub-optimal lives, or act in another way, and produce different persons with better lives. Discussions of the non-identity problem tend to assume that it is a single problem, raising a single set of moral issues. This chapter seeks to complicate this picture. It introduces ‘Impure Non-Identity Cases’. These are cases in which a policy, or group of acts, is a non-identity case, and so nobody is harmed, or made worse off, by the policy, or group of acts, but some (and maybe even all) of the individual acts within the policy or group are not non-identity cases, and are harmful. The chapter investigates the moral implications of such cases, and the problems and questions they raise, aside from those raised by ‘Pure Non-Identity Cases’.
Item Type: | Book Item | ||||||
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Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BJ Ethics |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Philosophy | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Parfit, Derek, Ethics, Philosophy | ||||||
Publisher: | Oxford University Press | ||||||
Place of Publication: | Oxford | ||||||
ISBN: | 9780192894250 | ||||||
Book Title: | Ethics and Existence | ||||||
Editor: | McMahan, Jeff and Campbell, Tim and Goodrich, James and Ramakrishnan, Ketan | ||||||
Official Date: | 20 January 2022 | ||||||
Dates: |
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DOI: | 10.1093/oso/9780192894250.001.0001 | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | Specific material reused Tomlin, Patrick (2022) The impure non-identity problem. In: McMahan, Jeff and Campbell, Tim and Goodrich, James and Ramakrishnan, Ketan, (eds.) Ethics and Existence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192894250, reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 18 May 2022 | ||||||
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