Time bias and prudential rationality: a defense of the rational permissibility of future bias

Prudence is often claimed to rationally require temporal neutrality. Time biases like future bias are thus rejected as rationally impermissible as the temporal location of a good is deemed to be rationally insignificant. However, we appear to have a strong tendency to be future-biased in the case of...

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書目詳細資料
主要作者: Low, Kang Sheng
其他作者: Andrew T. Forcehimes
格式: Final Year Project
語言:English
出版: Nanyang Technological University 2024
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在線閱讀:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174511
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機構: Nanyang Technological University
語言: English
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總結:Prudence is often claimed to rationally require temporal neutrality. Time biases like future bias are thus rejected as rationally impermissible as the temporal location of a good is deemed to be rationally insignificant. However, we appear to have a strong tendency to be future-biased in the case of hedonic goods. This has raised a long-standing debate regarding the rational permissibility of future bias. In this paper, I propose that the debate can be framed in terms of whether we have more than one type of prudential self-interest. I argue that we have two robust kinds of temporal identities and perspectives from which we evaluate our self-interests – the future-facing perspective and the whole-life perspective –, and that each perspective is equally valid and deserves equal priority. I then argue that rationality is perspectival and depends on both perspectives, and insofar as we sometimes ought to adopt the future-facing perspective, we have a rationale to rationally permit future bias in those cases.