Care for one's own future experiences

Abstract

We care for our own future experiences. Most of us, trivially, would rather have them pleasurable than painful. When we care for our own future experiences we do so in a way that is different from the way we care for those of others (which is not to say that we necessarily care more about our own experience). Prereflectively, one would think this is because these experiences will be ours and no one else's. But then, of course, we need to explain what it means to say that a future experience will be mine and how knowledge of this fact renders it rational for me to care for this experience in a special way. Indeed most philosophers take this route. But in doing so, they quickly stumble on insuperable problems. I shall argue that the problem of egocentric care, as it is sometimes called, can be solved by turning things upside down: it is much more fruitful to think that the special kind of care we feel for some future experiences (and not others) is part of what makes them ours should they occur. This requires an explanation of egocentric care for future experiences that does not draw in a theory of personal identity, but rather contributes to one. I will attempt to provide this explanation by making use of the idea of a diachronic mental holism.

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this paper was read at a conference on personal identity and practical reasoning at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I benefited greatly from the comments and criticism of the audience in general, but I would like to thank Marya Schechtman, David Velleman, Michael Bratman and Anthony Laden in particular. I would like to thank the editors of this journal for their comments on a further draft.

Notes

This does not imply that the H-theory tells us nothing about our reasons for acting. However, the reasons the H-theory talks about are merely ‘motivating reasons’, not ‘normative reasons’ (the distinction is Michael Smith's; Smith 1994).

The idea that personal identity is co-constituted by care for one's own future experiences is Marya Schechtman's (Schechtman 1996), at least in one interpretation. Other co-constituting notions are, for example, responsibility for past deeds.

Some would say that I* care for the immediate future successor of this present state, just over the edge of the ‘now’. As long as this alteration does not require a theory of personal identity—and I do not believe it does—I have no problems with it.

In fact, the process of singling out ought to co-constitute a theory of personal identity.