ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Derek Parfit's position more closely, exploring how his argument depends on a reductionist view of personal identity. This view also raises difficult problems for contemporary understandings of well-being and how these understandings are applied to social policy and welfare practice. Classical liberal accounts of well-being and its enhancement depend on particular views of self-interest, attitudes to time, and personal identity. Parfit's insights raise serious difficulties for classical liberals, such as Henry Sidgwick, Adam Smith, and John Rawls, as he is fundamentally challenging their accounts of rationality, individual self-interest, and, by implication, well-being promotion. Underpinning Parfit's objection to temporal neutrality, and the classical liberal view of rationality and self-interest, is his reductionist view of personal identity which radically contrasts with the non-reductionist view underpinning these classical liberal accounts. Policy debate over pensions typically focuses on problems governments have persuading younger workers to invest in their futures, given their present preferences which do not regard this investment as important.
