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    The preference for future goods is unfortunate. — Carmelics
    Home/Afterlife & Death
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The preference for future goods is unfortunate.

    Afterlife & Death
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.If we cultivated temporal insensitivity (like the life- or pleasure-gourmand), we could lower our sensitivity to death.
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    • 2.With temporal insensitivity, towards the end of life we would be comforted by the pleasures we have accumulated, even though our supply of future pleasures cannot be increased.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Future-directed preferences are constitutive of rational agency and goal-directed action, not merely contingent psychological biases (Bratman).
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    • 2.Eliminating the preference for future goods would undermine the motivational structure required for long-term planning and prudential reasoning.
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    • 3.A disposition that dismantles rational agency cannot be 'fortunate' merely because it reduces anxiety about death.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The Epicurean comfort Parfit seeks through temporal insensitivity is available only by misrepresenting what death actually deprives us of (Nagel's deprivation account).
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    • 2.If future goods have genuine value, the appropriate response to their loss is grief, not cultivated indifference engineered to suppress that recognition.
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    Afterlife & Death

    Related

    A disposition that dismantles rational agency cannot be 'fortunate' merely becau...Eliminating the preference for future goods would undermine the motivational str...Future-directed preferences are constitutive of rational agency and goal-directe...If future goods have genuine value, the appropriate response to their loss is gr...
    +3 moreShow less
    If we cultivated temporal insensitivity (like the life- or pleasure-gourmand), w...The Epicurean comfort Parfit seeks through temporal insensitivity is available o...With temporal insensitivity, towards the end of life we would be comforted by th...

    Similar

    If we take this bias for granted, it is better for us to have goods in...77%We have a far-reaching bias toward preferring that good things be in o...73%If some form of preferentialism is true, then something is bad for us ...73%Our attitude about future life should match our attitude about past li...71%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: death
    Parfit
    View source passageHide passage
    According to Parfit, we have a far-reaching bias extending to goods in general: we prefer that any good things, not just pleasures, be in our future, and that bad things, if they happen at all, be in our past. He argues that if we take this extensive bias for granted, and assume that, because of it, it is better for us to have goods in the future than in the past, we can explain why it is rational to deplore death more than we do our not having always existed: the former, not the latter, deprives us of good things in the future (he need not say that it is because it is in the past that we worr...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The passage states that Parfit considers the preference for future goods "unfortunate" precisely because cultivating temporal insensitivity could lower sensitivity to death and provide comfort from accumulated past pleasures, which are the premises extracted.

    Confidence: Parfit's evaluative claim about the bias, with supporting reasoning clearly present in the text.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit