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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| Format: | Final Year Project |
| Language: | English |
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Nanyang Technological University
2024
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174511 |
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| Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | 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. |
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