Rationality and Future Discounting

Topoi 39 (2):245-256 (2018)
  Copy   BIBTEX

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.

Similar books and articles

Discounting, Time Preference, and Identity.Shane William Frederick - 2000 - Dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University
Measurement-theoretic foundations of time discounting in economics.Conrad Heilmann - 2008 - The Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS), London School of Economics.
Discounting future health.Hilary Greaves - forthcoming - In Norheim Emanuel Jamison Johansson Millum Otterson Ruger and Verguet (ed.), Global health priority-setting: Cost-effectiveness and beyond. Oxford University Press.
Discounting the future, yet again.Geoffrey Brennan - 2007 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 6 (3):259-284.
Climate change, intergenerational equity and the social discount rate.Simon Caney - 2014 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 13 (4):320-342.
Principled Utility Discounting Under Risk.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2019 - Moral Philosophy and Politics 6 (1):89-112.

Analytics

Added to PP
2018-02-20

Downloads
529 (#33,317)

6 months
112 (#33,436)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

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

Add more citations

References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
Survival and identity.David Lewis - 1976 - In Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons. University of California Press. pp. 17-40.
Survival and Identity.Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.) - 1976 - University of California Press.
Nonclassical Minds and Indeterminate Survival.J. Robert G. Williams - 2014 - Philosophical Review 123 (4):379-428.

View all 7 references / Add more references