Campaigns Manager for Open Cages UK, also pursuing a PhD in philosophy at St Andrews University.
Paul Retallick
Karma: 30
Was Parfit right when he said that ‘If there were no such normative truths, nothing would matter, and we would have no reasons to try to decide how to live’?
Thanks for the question! So, the quote comes from Parfit’s summary of the final part of On What Matters (part 6 - Normativity) - page 619 of volume II. I’m just looking at it now, and it seems he is simply referring to ‘irreducibly normative truths.’ His exact account of those irreducibly normative truths would be beyond my ability to summarise (and is, I suppose, the work of the entire section). But, more broadly, I think it’s accurate to say something like ‘Parfit believed that if there were no irreducibly normative truths nothing would matter.’ I’m particularly interested in this question because Parfit appears to have played a key role in converting Singer to moral realism. I’m curious if Singer now also holds this view about things mattering and, therefore, has different beliefs about whether anti-realism is compatible with things like EA.