Parfit's Mistakes in Moral Mathematics

Derek Parfit is one of my favorite philosophers; Max's 2019 holiday was based on his book On What Matters

I have huge respect for him but even such an amazing human can make mistakes because of lack of any emotional connection with animals.

This a fascinating piece on him - a quasi bio of him:

"Like my cat, I often simply do what I want to do." This was the opening sentence of Derek Parfit's philosophical masterpiece, Reasons and Persons. He believed that it was the best way to begin his book because it showed something important about people. Often we are not as special as we think we are. For instance, when people simply do what they want to do they appear to be utilizing no ability that only people have. On the other hand, when we respond to reasons, we are doing something uniquely human, because only people can act in this way. Cats are notorious for doing what they want to do, and the sense of proximity between a cat and its owner pleasingly heightens our sense of their similarity. Hence, there could be no better way for this book to begin.

However, there was a problem. Derek did not, in fact, own a cat. Nor did he wish to become a cat owner, as he would rather spend his time taking photographs and doing philosophy. On the other hand, the sentence would clearly be better if it was true. To resolve this problem Derek drew up a legal agreement with his sister, who did own a cat, to the effect that he would take legal possession of the cat while she would continue living with it.

Clearly, he didn't live with any animals (which I didn't realize until I read this piece) but like many people he went on to stereotype animals based on pure subjectiveness (this is no ordinary human bein but this is from a master of objectiveness):

Perhaps Derek's deepest held belief was that, contrary to much of popular opinion, there are objective facts about what we ought to do. This is what he meant when he talked about ‘reasons', and it was the recognition of these facts, either intellectually or merely by the application of common sense, that he saw as setting people apart. A cat cannot help its carnivorous ways, and it cannot help but follow its instincts to hunt and to kill, even if it no longer needs to. However, people understand that our actions can produce suffering. Once we become aware of this we seem to face a choice. Either we make a conscious attempt to dismiss this fact (animals don't really suffer, nothing we can do could reduce the amount of suffering in the world) or we feel we ought to change our behaviour, for instance by becoming vegetarian or giving money to charity.

It's just amazing that a person of his caliber can make such a simple and profound mistake. With absolutely no experience, he draws conclusions about the cat that it has no control over its instincts (to be clear, I happy that he understands that animals do suffer).

I have lived with Fluffy and Garph for a while now and I can objectively state that they never do anything just instinctively. As a matter of fact, I call Garph, the little Buddha. Well, you don't have to live with cats to know this. A rudimentary national geography documentary can explain that cats (and even reptiles) don't kill because of just "instincts". They do only when they are hungry and need something to eat. Otherwise, they leave their prey alone and they don't hurt them. I repeat they don't meaninglessly hurt or kill other animals unless they are threatened or hungry. 

Humans are the only creatures which kill for pleasure (hunting, sport), kill for gluttony (farm factories), kill to discover "cure" even when they "believe" animals are very different than us (animals testing even of depression medications like Prozac) and multitudes of other meaning-less suffering and slaughter. 

There is something fundamentally wrong with us. The first step for moral progress is to accept this fact and start from this baseline to move forward. But it seems like we continue to live in a myth of human exceptionalism with a delusion that our senses and brain captures exactly how the universe is. 

My other favorite philosopher (or rather one of my all-time favorite human being), Montaigne  in Essays has more realistic and humble view of his cat:

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.

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In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.

We need more Montaigne's now more than ever.