ABSTRACT
In examining the Mere Means Principle, which Parfit finds indefensible, we are led to Parfit’s own principle, Rough Definition of the Mere Means Principle. This principle highlights the importance of the notions of attitude, act, and well-being. The notions of act and attitude play a significant role in Kant’s theory but evidently not in Parfit’s theory, while the notion of well-being plays a significant role in Parfit’s theory but self-evidently not in Kant’s theory. While examining Parfit’s Rough Definition, several counterexamples are offered, and it is shown why Parfit’s Rough Definition, serving as a substitute for the Mere Means Principle, is playing an important, if unobtrusive, role in his own moral theory. Unlike T. M. Scanlon and Onora O’Neill, who emphasize the importance of actual consent, Parfit leans towards possible consent. Furthermore, Parfit, having sharply distinguished the notion of the wrongness of an act from the notion of the attitude of merely using someone as a mere means, has left the former notion, or its moral grounding, unexplained. If the notion of the wrongness of an act is to be explained in significant part on the basis of well-being, then one might fear that a consequentialist element in his moral theory is already put into play. This may alert us to a potentially serious problem in considering Parfit’s quintessential thesis, namely, the Ultimate Derivation.
