I agree that it’s less readable than all books Jiri mentioned except maybe Superintelligence.
Pro-tip for any aspiring Reasons-and-Persons-readers in the audience: skip (or skim) section I and II. Section III (personal identity) and IV (population ethics) is where the meat is, especially section III.
FWIW, I actually (and probably somewhat iconoclastically) disagree with this. :P
In particular, I think Part I of Reasons and Persons is underrated, and contains many of the most useful ideas. E.g., it’s basically the best reading I know of if you want to get a deep and principled understanding for why ‘naive consequentialism’ is a bad idea, but why at the same time worries about naive applications of consequentialism or the demandingness objection and many other popular objections to consequentialism don’t succeed at undermining it as ultimate criterion of rightness.
(I also expect that it is the part that would most likely be perceived as pointless hair-splitting.)
And I think the most important thought experiment in Reasons and Persons is not the teleporter, nor Depletion or Two Medical Programs, nor the Repugnant Conclusion or the Absurd Conclusion or the Very Repugnant Conclusion or the Sadistic Conclusion and whatever they’re all called—I think it’s Writer Kate, and then Parfit’s Hitchhiker.
Part II in turn is highly relevant for answering important questions such as this one.
Part III is probably more original and groundbreaking than the previous parts. But it is also often misunderstood. I think that Parfit’s “relation R” of psychological connectedness/continuity does a lot of the work we might think a more robust notion of personal identity would do—and in fact, Parfit’s view helps rationalize some everyday intuitions, e.g., that it’s somewhere between unreasonable and impossible to make promises that bind me forever. More broadly, I think that Parfit’s view on personal identity is mostly not that revisionary, and that it mostly dispels a theoretical fiction most of our everyday intuitions neither need nor substantively rely on. (There are others, including other philosophers, who disagree with this—and think that there being no fact of the matter about questions of personal identity has, e.g., radically revisionary implications for ethics. But this is not Parfit’s view.)
Part IV on population ethics is all good and well. (And in fact, I’m often disappointed by how little most later work in population ethics does to improve on Reasons and Persons.) But its key lessons are already widely appreciated within EA, and today there are more efficient introductions one can get to the field.
All of this is half-serious since I don’t think there’s a clear and reader-independent fact of the matter of which things in Reasons and Persons are “most important”. It’s also possible, especially for Part I, that what I think I got out of Reasons and Persons is quite idiosyncratic, and doesn’t bear a super direct or obvious relationship to its actual content. Last but not least, it’s been 5 years or so since I read Reasons and Persons, so probably some claims in this comment about content in Reasons and Persons are simply false because I misremember what’s actually in there.
Thanks for the contrarian take, though I still tentatively stand by my original stances. I should maybe mention 2 caveats here:
I also only read Reasons and Person ~4 years ago, and my memory can be quite faulty.
In particular I don’t remember many good arguments against naive consequentialism. To me, it really felt like parts 1 and 2 were mainly written as justification for axioms/”lemmas” invoked in parts 3 and 4, axioms that most EAs already buy.
My own context for reading the book was trying to start a Reasons and Persons book club right after he passed away. Our book club dissolved in the middle of reading section 2. I kept reading on, and I distinctively remember wishing that we continued onwards, because sections 3 and 4 would kept the other book clubbers engaged etc. (obviously this is very idiosyncratic and particular to our own club).
I agree that it’s less readable than all books Jiri mentioned except maybe Superintelligence.
Pro-tip for any aspiring Reasons-and-Persons-readers in the audience: skip (or skim) section I and II. Section III (personal identity) and IV (population ethics) is where the meat is, especially section III.
FWIW, I actually (and probably somewhat iconoclastically) disagree with this. :P
In particular, I think Part I of Reasons and Persons is underrated, and contains many of the most useful ideas. E.g., it’s basically the best reading I know of if you want to get a deep and principled understanding for why ‘naive consequentialism’ is a bad idea, but why at the same time worries about naive applications of consequentialism or the demandingness objection and many other popular objections to consequentialism don’t succeed at undermining it as ultimate criterion of rightness.
(I also expect that it is the part that would most likely be perceived as pointless hair-splitting.)
And I think the most important thought experiment in Reasons and Persons is not the teleporter, nor Depletion or Two Medical Programs, nor the Repugnant Conclusion or the Absurd Conclusion or the Very Repugnant Conclusion or the Sadistic Conclusion and whatever they’re all called—I think it’s Writer Kate, and then Parfit’s Hitchhiker.
Part II in turn is highly relevant for answering important questions such as this one.
Part III is probably more original and groundbreaking than the previous parts. But it is also often misunderstood. I think that Parfit’s “relation R” of psychological connectedness/continuity does a lot of the work we might think a more robust notion of personal identity would do—and in fact, Parfit’s view helps rationalize some everyday intuitions, e.g., that it’s somewhere between unreasonable and impossible to make promises that bind me forever. More broadly, I think that Parfit’s view on personal identity is mostly not that revisionary, and that it mostly dispels a theoretical fiction most of our everyday intuitions neither need nor substantively rely on. (There are others, including other philosophers, who disagree with this—and think that there being no fact of the matter about questions of personal identity has, e.g., radically revisionary implications for ethics. But this is not Parfit’s view.)
Part IV on population ethics is all good and well. (And in fact, I’m often disappointed by how little most later work in population ethics does to improve on Reasons and Persons.) But its key lessons are already widely appreciated within EA, and today there are more efficient introductions one can get to the field.
All of this is half-serious since I don’t think there’s a clear and reader-independent fact of the matter of which things in Reasons and Persons are “most important”. It’s also possible, especially for Part I, that what I think I got out of Reasons and Persons is quite idiosyncratic, and doesn’t bear a super direct or obvious relationship to its actual content. Last but not least, it’s been 5 years or so since I read Reasons and Persons, so probably some claims in this comment about content in Reasons and Persons are simply false because I misremember what’s actually in there.
Thanks for the contrarian take, though I still tentatively stand by my original stances. I should maybe mention 2 caveats here:
I also only read Reasons and Person ~4 years ago, and my memory can be quite faulty.
In particular I don’t remember many good arguments against naive consequentialism. To me, it really felt like parts 1 and 2 were mainly written as justification for axioms/”lemmas” invoked in parts 3 and 4, axioms that most EAs already buy.
My own context for reading the book was trying to start a Reasons and Persons book club right after he passed away. Our book club dissolved in the middle of reading section 2. I kept reading on, and I distinctively remember wishing that we continued onwards, because sections 3 and 4 would kept the other book clubbers engaged etc. (obviously this is very idiosyncratic and particular to our own club).
If I had to pick two parts of it, it would be 3 and 4 but fwiw I got a bunch out of 1 and 2 over the last year for reasons similar to Max.
(Hey Max, consider reposting this to goodreads if you are on the platform.)
(done)