PHIL 202 Handout #5

PHIL 202: Practical Reason
Winter 2004; David O. Brink
Handout #5: Temporal Neutrality and Asymmetrical Attitudes

TEMPORAL NEUTRALITY

Temporal-neutrality is the claim that the temporal location of benefits and harms within a life should have no normative significance, as such, independently of any effect on overall well-being.
Temporal neutrality condemns temporal bias.
Prudence is temporally neutral.
Temporal neutrality requires making short term sacrifices for the sake of later greater benefits (now-for-then sacrifice).
Prudence's temporal neutrality is supported by appeal to compensation. Because benefactor and beneficiary are the same, now-for-then sacrifice is automatically compensated.

PAST AND FUTURE SUFFERING

Most of us would prefer to learn that our suffering is in the past, even if this suffering is greater than would be future suffering. This is brought out in Parfit's case of My Past or Future Operations (Reasons and Persons, sect 64). There is a painful operation that requires the patient's cooperation and can only be performed without the use of anesthetic. But doctors induce amnesia after the operation to block memories of these painful experiences (which are themselves painful). I wake up in my hospital bed and ask my nurse whether I have had the operation. He knows that I am one of two patients, but doesn't know which. Either I had the longest operation on record yesterday (ten hours) or I am due for a short operation later today (one hour). I find myself with the strong preference that it be true that my suffering is behind me, even if that makes it greater. Is this preference irrational?
The preference may be robust, but is it rational? Notice several qualifications and complications.

Parfit must really appeal to a double sort of temporal relativity. The preference is not simply for earlier, rather than later, suffering. If we keep the time of the two possible procedures fixed, but ask whether we prefer the greater earlier suffereing from a point in time that is either prospective or retropsective with respect to both possible operations, then we prefer the later shorter suffering. So it's not about earlier and later; it's about past and future.
The preference seems to be peculiar to certain goods and bads. While I seem to have this preference about my own pain, I don't have this preference about my own disgraces. I might well prefer a smaller future disgrace to a larger past disgrace. I'd rather be the one who will commit a minor faux paux this evening than the one who made a major fool of himself last night.
The focus needs to be not just on past and future pains, but on my past and future pains. As Parfit himself notes (sect. 69), my preferences about the pain of others, including loved ones, seems to be temporally neutral. I am told that my mother has a terminal disaease that has become quite painful and will soon kill her. When I am told that this earlier news was substantively correct but mistaken about the timing so that my mother has already died a painful death, I feel no relief.
All else being equal, prospective pain is worse than past pain that one cannot remember, because one anticipates the prospective pain and this anticipation is itself painful. For the comparison to be fair, (a) the past suffering must be an experience one can recollect, as prospective pain can be anticipated, or (b) there must be administration of a drug that blocks anticipation and recollection in connection with the future pain.
Evolution may have favored agents who look to the future, rather than the past.

When we take into account these complications and qualifications, this may shake our belief in the rationality of the asymmetry in our preferences about past and future suffering. If we have an evolutionary explanation of why have the temporal bias, we may be less likely to think that such a temporal bias is rational, because now we have an explanation of why we have the bias even if it is not rationally defensible.

THE SYMMETRY ARGUMENT
The Epicureans saw the main aim of philosophy as confrionting and, if possible, removing the fear of death, which, as hedonists, they saw as bad because it causes anxiety. They thought that fear of death was predicated largely on fear of retribution from anthropomorphic gods. They offered many different sorts of reasons why we should not fear death -- they argued that if gods do exist we have reason to think that they do not interfere in human affairs and that even if the gods do exist and interfere in human affairs, we are invulnerable to harm after death. Some of these arguments assume that death brings nonexistence; others do not. The argument that concerns us purports to show that we have no reason to fear death even if -- indeed, because -- it implies our nonexistence. Lucretius appeals to a parallel between our prenatal and postmortem nonexistence to counteract fear of death.

From all this it follows that death is nothing to us and no concern of ours, since our tenure of the mind is mortal. In days of old, we felt no disquiet when the hosts of Carthage poured into battle on every side -- when the whole earth, dizzied by the convulsive shock of war, reeled sickeningly under the high ethereal vault, and between realm and realm the empire of mankind by land and sea trembled in the balance. So, when we shall be no more -- when the union of body and spirit that engenders us has been disrupted -- to us, who shall then be nothing, nothing by any hazard will happen any more at all. Nothing will have power to stir our sense, not though earth be fused with sea and sea with sky. [DRN iii 830-51]

Later, he expresses what seems to be the same appeal to symmetry.

Look back again to see how the immense expanse of past time, before we were born, has been nothing to us. Nature shows us that it is the mirror-image of the time that is to come after we are dead. Is anything there terrifying, does anything there seem gloomy? Is it not more peaceful than any sleep? [DRN iii 972-77]

This Symmetry Argument is ingenious. Here is its structure.

Death brings nonexistence.
Postmortem nonexistence is no different than prenatal nonexistence.
We do not regret our prenatal nonexistence.
Hence, we should not regret our death.

The Epicureans notice an asymmetry in our attitudes toward past and future nonexistence. They reject this asymmetry as irrational and propose to make our attitudes toward death consistent with our attitudes toward prematal nonexistence. The Epicureans appear to endorse temporal neutrality. But notice that this is not the only way to defend temporal neutrality. Symmetry is a two-edged sword; the parity of prenatal and postmortem nonexistence could be exploited to expand regret, as well as to contract fear.

Death brings nonexistence.
Postmortem nonexistence is no different than prenatal nonexistence.
We do regret our death.
Hence, we should regret our prenatal nonexistence.

Indeed, this may seem more natural if we have no independent explanation of why death is not a bad thing. Of course, elsewhere the Epicureans appeal to the Existence Requirement -- one can't be harmed if one doesn't exist. But even if one cannot be harmed in death, one can be harmed by death, because it deprives the person whom it befalls of possible goods. But if what is bad about death is that the nonexistence that it brings prevents us from enjoying goods we would have enjoyed had we continued to exist, then symmetry suggests that we do have reason to regret our prenatal nonexistence. Had we existed earlier (and lived until the same date), we would have enjoyed more goods than we in fact will. This is not, of course, to say that it's rational for us to mope around regretting that we weren't born earlier; it's only to say that our prenatal nonexistence is an appropriate object of regret.

Should considerations of symmetry make us give up our asymmetrical attitudes to prenatal nonexistence and death? One reply is that because our origin is essential to us (Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 110-15), we could live longer, but could not have lived earlier (cf. Nagel, "Death" and Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 175).

Parfit dismisses this defense of asymmetry by claiming that we can regret the impossible (175). We can regret the impossible, but should we? If not, then it becomes more important to decide if it would be possible for us to have been born earlier than we were.
Essentiality of origin implies that one essentially develops out of a certain zygote, not essentiality of date of birth.
At most, it implies essentiality of time of conception, which is compatible with earlier birth, if a shorter gestation period is possible.
In fact, it's not clear that same zygote requires same time of conception. Perhaps the uniqueness of zygotes is like that of snowflakes.
Even if essentiality of origin implied essentiality of date of birth, so that it is not metaphysically possible that we existed earlier than we did, it is still possible to discover that what we thought was our date of birth is incorrect and that we were in fact born earlier. For instance, we could discover that the adoption agency confused my birth records and those of baby Doe such that I could learn that I was actually born earlier than I thought I was (cf. Mitsis's use of Kripke's distinction between metaphysical and epistemic possibilities to make this point). Such a discovery could be a legitimate basis for rejoicing.