“If there were no [irreducibly] normative truths, nothing would matter, and we would have no reasons to try to decide how to live. Such decisions would be arbitrary. We would not be the animals that can understand and respond to reasons. In a world without reasons, we would act only on our instincts and desires, living as other animals live. [S]ome things, I have claimed, matter, and there are better and worse ways to live.”

— Derek Parfit, On What Matters: Volume Two (2011)