unselfishness – The Phantom Self

The Apparent Rationality of Prudential Concern

Consider the following apparently straightforward inference:

I do not expect to die soon. Therefore I expect to be alive in the future. I expect I will have experiences in the future. I anticipate having experiences in the future. Because experiences can be pleasant or unpleasant, I have reason to care about the quality of those experiences.

Notice the flow of argument: from a straightforward prediction of fact—that my death is not imminent—and the seemingly innocuous observations that persons persist through time, that persons have experiences, and that experiences vary in quality, to the conclusion that I have a reason to care about the quality of my future experiences. The steps in the argument seem innocent and deeply familiar. These ideas are so closely linked as to seem inseparable.

I suggest they seem inseparable because the core concept of a person is that of a subject of experience that persists through time. Because experiences can be pleasant or unpleasant, we think a subject has reason to care about their quality in the future.

By “subject of experience” I just mean whatever has experiences. I am not claiming that the concept of a person is that of a Cartesian ego, or a spiritual substance, or a biological organism, or its brain, or any sort of psychological entity. I claim only that the concept of a person is of something that has experiences. This claim is uncontroversial.

The above argument illustrates how a motivational idea—having a reason to care about something—can be embedded in what appears to be a straightforward factual description. Continue reading “Anticipation and the Extreme Claim”

Our investments in the future do not stop paying dividends when we die. Other beneficiaries may cash the cheques, but that does not represent a loss to ourselves, because our connections to them are not fundamentally different from our connections to ourselves during our remainder of our lifetimes. In that way, it’s as though someone else always cashes the cheques.

In practice, this means we need not hold all our future eggs in one basket. We have no reason to invest only in ourselves. It is no less rational to work towards goals that benefit other people, or the non-human world, than it is to work for our own benefit. They may be goals for places far outside our homes, and for times following our personal deaths. We can commit ourselves to goals at future times when there will be no one alive for whom we now feel full-blown self-concern. Like Terry Fox, we can engage with a future in which we will no longer exist. Continue reading “Engaging with the Future”