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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that We should not be indifferent about the extent of our pasts.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.The value of a past life is fully captured at the moment of death; after death, no subject exists to benefit from having had an extensive past.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Without a surviving subject who can be benefited or harmed, retrospective preferences about past duration are merely sentimental and carry no normative weight.
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    • 3.Epicurus's symmetry argument entails that our rational indifference to prenatal non-existence should extend to any preference about the magnitude of past experience.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Buddhist and Stoic traditions converge on the view that attachment to accumulated personal history is a source of suffering rather than genuine flourishing.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.If the self is constituted moment-to-moment rather than as a continuous narrative accumulation, then preferring 'more past' conflates quantity of lived time with the quality of present awareness.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity undermines the notion that a numerically identical subject persists across a thousand years to 'own' and benefit from that history.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Being in the grip of forward-looking pursuits is important, but we have passive interests as well, which make a more extensive past preferable.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Having been devising and pursuing plans in the past is worthwhile.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.If fated to die tomorrow, most of us would prefer to have a thousand years of glory behind us rather than fifty.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

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    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.