Rationality and Future Discounting

Topoi 39 (2):245-256 (2018)
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Abstract

The best justification of time-discounting is roughly that it is rational to care less about your more distant future because there is less of you around to have it. I argue that the standard version of this argument, which treats both psychological continuity and psychological connectedness as reasons to care about your future, can only rationalize an irrational—because exploitable—form of future discounting.

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Arif Ahmed
Cambridge University

Citations of this work

The Normative Standard for Future Discounting.Craig Callender - 2021 - Australasian Philosophical Review 5 (3):227-253.
Social bias, not time bias.Preston Greene - 2024 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 23 (1):100-121.
Doing Less Than Best.Emma J. Curran - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Cambridge

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1984 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
Why We Should Reject S.Derek Parfit - 1984 - In Reasons and Persons. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Survival and identity.David Lewis - 1976 - In Amélie Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons. University of California Press. pp. 17-40.
I Survival and Identity.David Lewis - 1976 - In Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), Identities of Persons. University of California Press. pp. 17-40.

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