Self-bias, time-bias, and the metaphysics of self and time

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 104, Issue 7, 2007, Pages 350-373

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EID: 60949649865     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/jphil2007104717     Document Type: Review

References (18)

1. This is the thought behind the famous argument against egoism in Section59 of G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica (New York: Cambridge, 1903): "The onlyreason I can have for aiming at 'my own good' is that it is good absolutely thatwhat I so call should belong to me - good absolutely that I should havesomething, which, if I have it, others cannot have.... What Egoism holds, therefore, is that each man's happiness is die sole good - that a number ofdifferent things are each of them die only good thing there is - an absolutecontradiction!"
2. Classic variants of which are in Hector-Neri Castañeda, "Onthe Logic of Attribu tions of Self-Knowledge to Others, " this JOURNAL, LXV, 15 (August 8, 1968): 439-56,
3. and John Perry, "The Problem of the Essential Indexical, "Noûs, XIII (1979): 3-21,
4. and David Lewis, "Attitudes De Dicto and De Se, " The Philosophical Review, LXXXVIII (1979): 513-43.
5. Largely due to the discussion in chapter 8 of Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (New York: Oxford, 1984).
6. See Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1907), pp. 381, 382.
7. See section 45 of Raw's, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard, 1971).
8. Bergstrom, The Alternatives and Consequences of Actions (Stockholm:University Press, 1966), p. 125.
9. See, for example, George Schlesinger, Timely Topics (New York: St.Martin's, 1994).
10. This view may have origins in Aristotle. A contemporary version of theview is pro posed by Michael Tooley, in Time, Tense and Causation (New York:Oxford, 1997).
11. A view developed in Storrs McCall, A Model of the Universe (New York:Oxford, 1994).
12. The first and most famous presentist was Saint Augustine. For moreup-to-date expositions of the view, see John Bigelow, "Presentism and Properties, " in James Tomberlin, ed., Philosophical Perspectives 10(Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 35-52,
13. and Dean Zimmerman, "Temporary Intrinsics and Presentism, " in Peter van Inwagen and Zimmerman, eds., Metaphysics: The Big Questions (Maiden, MA: Blackwell 1998), pp. 206-19.
14. I will not place the theory in any historical context here, but it picksup on themes from the work of a great many philosophers. It could, for example, be presented as the solution to a problem that troubled Ludwig Wittgenstein, theproblem of how to retain the basic Humean idea about self-knowledge (that thetruth with which I am con fronted, when I direct my attention towards my ownexperience, is not that I am in pain but that there is pain, not that I see redbut that there is a sensation of red) without being forced to be a solipsistabout other minds. See Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, C.K. Ogden, trans. (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1922), §5.557-§5.641,
15. and Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, G.E.M. Anscombe, trans.(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1953), §402-§420.
16. See Gideon Rosen, "Modal Fictionalism, " Mind, XCIX (1990):327-54, and onwards.
17. The trickiness nins very deep. Indeed, it may be that there is nosatisfactory way of answering all such questions without appealing to anintransitive "better than" relation. See Larry Temkin, "AContinuum Argument for Intransitivity, " Philosophy and Public Affairs, XXV, 3 (1996): 175-210,
18. and Alistair Norcross, "Comparing Harms: Headaches and Human Lives, " Philosophy and Public Affairs, XXVI, 2 (1997): 135-67.