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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 341 He makes his case by pointing out, first, that a human life naturally divides into periods: infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, maturity, old age, and, second, that "such a division into ‘times of life' tends to be accompanied, in most of us, by a sense of the greater importance or significance of certain times of life in comparison with others" (14). He maintains, for example, that "we have a definite tendency to discount youthful misfortune or success" (14), as well as the achievements and failure of senescence (18-21), as unimportant in comparison to those of mature adulthood. Slote contends that "Rawls, Sidgwick and others who have assumed the equal status of all times of life have not taken this sort of common judgment sufficiently into account" (15). It is difficult to know, however, quite what to make of this empirical generalization about how we in fact view different periods of our lives (if it is a fact), without some degree of higher-level theorizing which Slote does not provide. Can Slote mean to say that the fact that we do view periods in our lives this way shows that it is rational so to view them? For surely Nagel et al. can concede that we may typically think of some periods of life as more important than others, without undermining their thesis that "rationality implies an impartial concern for all parts of our life. The mere difference of location in time, of something's being earlier or later, is not in itself a rational 28 ground for having more or less regard for it." Nagel et al. might explain our typical behavior in one of at least two ways. Either we may irrationally view a period of our life as more important than others, i.e., by exhibiting a timepreferential bias in that very judgment, or else we may view that period as more important than others, not because of its mere temporal location, but because of other concomitant factors contingently connected with its temporal location. Call these contingency reasons. In neither case would Slote be affirming a claim with which Rawls et al. would take issue. Consider the first possibility. Doubtless the trials and tribulations of childhood and adolescence seem of momentous significance at the time, just as a burgeoning sense of self-confidence may lead the young adult to devalue the accumulated wisdom, insight, and tolerance of the aged. We may, indeed, typically overestimate the significance of temporally proximate states of affairs at every time of life, just because of their temporal proximity. But clearly it would be a mistake for Slote to maintain that from the temporal perspective of maturity, we take more seriously the successes and failures of maturity because of their temporal proximity to us. That would merely illustrate his claim that we have a pure time preference, not that it is rational to have it. Hence the perspective from which we evaluate a pure time preference as rational cannot be itself time preferential. 28 Rawls, op. cit. Note 2, 293; italics added. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
