I don't know a lot about Derek Parfit, but one interesting philosopher who claims to have solved Parfits' problems about population and moral theory is David Benatar [1]. His solution is anti-natalism, which he defends extensively in his book Better Never to Have Been, The Harm of Coming into Existence.<p>[1] <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/32901/chapter-abstract/276643008" rel="nofollow">https://academic.oup.com/book/32901/chapter-abstract/2766430...</a>
The moral obligation to future people is a strong current that runs through Kim Stanley Robinson's <i>Ministry for the Future,</i> a recent semi hope-punk book of his.<p>Fun to run across an earlier line of inquiry here, in Parfit.<p>And a code I strongly believe in. Orienting yourself to best help the future, perhaps even futures beyond your time. As the Greek proverb goes:<p>> <i>A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.</i>
<i>"Few works of philosophy have the urgency of Reasons and Persons, which was written with extraordinary speed, driving its author to the brink of collapse and its publisher to despair."</i><p>Makes me feel slightly less bad about abandoning my first attempt at reading this very dense book. I was trying to read it in short bits (the book is split into quite short sections but with a big apparatus of parts, chapters, sections and so on with implied cross referencing) during a busy time.<p>I'll try again over the summer in a more concentrated way.<p>No recourse to spirits or pills though...