Niko Kolodny and John MacFarlane’s “Ifs and Oughts” popularized this thinker’s dilemma about miners trapped in one of two flooding shafts from his unpublished paper “What We Together Do.” In a book, he imagined a Russian nobleman who creates a contract to ensure his future-self is unable to avoid giving away his estate. That book by this thinker promotes a “critical present aim theory” over the “self-interest theory,” which he argues is “directly collectively (*) self-defeating.” This thinker used the example of a 14-year old girl who must decide between her child never existing or it having a “bad start in life” to illustrate the non-identity problem. That example appears in a book in which this thinker argues a “mere addition” produces a preference for larger populations of less happy people. For 10 points, name this philosopher who discussed the “repugnant conclusion” in his book Reasons and Persons. ■END■
ANSWER: Derek Parfit [or Derek Antony Parfit]
<Caleb Kendrick, Philosophy>
= Average correct buzz position