> Sometime around 1982 or ’83, the philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards moved from London to Oxford, having ended her first marriage. She had become well known a few years earlier for writing “The Skeptical Feminist,” a fierce attack on anti-rational tendencies in the women’s movement, and was teaching philosophy of science at the Open University. She was very beautiful and very feminine. She attended a seminar that Parfit was teaching. She had never encountered anyone like him: he was obviously a strange person, but not in any of the usual ways. Afterward, Amartya Sen, a friend, who was co-teaching the seminar, greeted her, and, when she left, Parfit asked Sen who she was.
D.P.: I read some of Sam Scheffler’s recent work and he’s arguing that people care about the future of humanity much more than they realize. And I think that’s right, actually.
J.R.R.: The Future of Humanity Institute people keep talking about engineering humans to make them more moral.
I think the author might be quoting 2011-era conversations between Parfit and Richards (recorded while interviewing both of them), rather than conversations from back when they first met.
D.P.: I read some of Sam Scheffler’s recent work and he’s arguing that people care about the future of humanity much more than they realize. And I think that’s right, actually. J.R.R.: The Future of Humanity Institute people keep talking about engineering humans to make them more moral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Humanity_Institute says it was founded in 2005. Does anyone know what she could have been referring to in the 80s?