Derek Parfit


“It would be natural to want the best theory about rationality not to be self-effacing. If the best theory was self-effacing, telling us to believe some other theory, the truth about rationality would be depressingly convoluted. It is natural to hope that the truth is simpler: that the best theory would tell us to believe itself. But can this be more than hope? Can we assume that the truth must be simpler? We cannot.”

Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 24