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Prudence and past selves
- Source :
- Philosophical Studies. 175:1901-1925
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2017.
-
Abstract
- An important platitude about prudential rationality is that I should not refuse to sacrifice a smaller amount of present welfare for the sake of larger future benefits. I ought, in other words, to treat my present and future as of equal prudential significance. The demands of prudence are less clear, however, when it comes to one’s past selves. In this paper, I argue that past benefits are possible in (at least) two ways, and that this fact cannot be easily accommodated by traditional approaches to prudential rationality. Against univocal accounts of prudential rationality, I hold that the possibility of past benefits suggests that a bias toward the present and future is defensible when it comes to some welfare goods, but that prudential reasons are temporally neutral between when it comes to the success or failure of one’s long-term projects.
- Subjects :
- Philosophy of mind
media_common.quotation_subject
Platitude
05 social sciences
Metaphysics
Prudence
Rationality
06 humanities and the arts
0603 philosophy, ethics and religion
050105 experimental psychology
Epistemology
Philosophy of language
Philosophy
060302 philosophy
Sacrifice
Economics
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Positive economics
Welfare
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15730883 and 00318116
- Volume :
- 175
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Philosophical Studies
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........2caba221fa402458b969a02292397fff