Personal identity and the unity of agency: A Kantian response to Parfit

Korsgaard, Christine M.

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139174503.014

Cited by 64 publications

(42 citation statements)

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“…Among philosophers, however, Parfit's claims about diminishing psychological connectedness with our future selves has received considerable attention and been contested by many (see e.g [17,36]). Those who oppose the Parfitian view of personal identity typically argue that personal identity over time is unified by an ego or a soul and this entity is indivisible and irreducible over time.…”

Section: Pure Time Preferencementioning

confidence: 99%

Discounting, Preferences, and Paternalism in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Tinghög

2011

Health Care Anal

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When assessing the cost effectiveness of health care programmes, health economists typically presume that distant events should be given less weight than present events. This article examines the moral reasonableness of arguments advanced for positive discounting in costeffectiveness analysis both from an intergenerational and an intrapersonal perspective and assesses if arguments are equally applicable to health and monetary outcomes. The article concludes that behavioral effects related to time preferences give little or no reason for why society at large should favour the present over the future when making intergenerational choices regarding health. The strongest argument for discounting stems from the combined argument of diminishing marginal utility in the presence of growth. However, this hinges on the assumption of actual growth in the relevant good. Moreover, current modern democracy may be insufficiently sensitive to the con-cerns of future generations. The second part of the article categorises preference failures (which justify paternalistic responses) into two distinct groups, myopic and acratic. The existence of these types of preference failures makes elicited time preferences of little normative relevance when making decisions regarding the social discount rate, even in an intrapersonal context. As with intergenerational discounting, the combined arguments of growth and diminishing marginal utility offer the strongest arguments for discounting in the intrapersonal context. However, there is no prima facie reason to assume that this argument should apply equally to health and monetary values. To be sure, selecting an approach towards discounting health is a complex matter. However, the life-ordeath implications of any approach require that the discussion not be downplayed to merely a technical matter for economists to settle.

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Section: Pure Time Preferencementioning

confidence: 99%

Discounting, Preferences, and Paternalism in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Tinghög

2011

Health Care Anal

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“…40 Taylor would add-and against the background of one's normative sources, cf Taylor (1989) and Korsgaard (1989). 41 Cf Velleman (2001), Korsgaard (1989) and Schechtman (1996). 42 This is what Korsgaard (1989) refers to as the 'coherence' criterion.…”

Section: Identity Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…41 Cf Velleman (2001), Korsgaard (1989) and Schechtman (1996). 42 This is what Korsgaard (1989) refers to as the 'coherence' criterion. 43 Velleman (2001, p. 53).…”

Section: Identity Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical versus moral identities in identity management

Manders-Huits

2010

Ethics Inf Technol

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Over the past decade Identity Management has become a central theme in information technology, policy, and administration in the public and private sectors. In these contexts the term 'Identity Management' is used primarily to refer to ways and methods of dealing with registration and authorization issues regarding persons in organizational and service-oriented domains. Especially due to the growing range of choices and options for, and the enhanced autonomy and rights of, employees, citizens, and customers, there is a growing demand for systems that enable the regulation of rights, duties, responsibilities, entitlements and access of innumerable people simultaneously. 'Identity Management' or 'Identity Management Systems' have become important headings under which such systems are designed and implemented. But there is another meaning of the term 'identity management', which is clearly related and which has gained currency. This second construal refers to the need to manage our moral identities and our identity related information. This paper explores the relation between the management of our (moral) identities and 'Identity Management' as conceptualized in IT discourse.

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“…While psychological literature focuses on decision-making (Suddendorf and Corballis 2007;Kwan et al 2012), in philosophy, these debates about narrative understanding and mental time travel centre on the idea of agency (Velleman 2007;Kennett 2010, 2017;Kennett and Matthews 2008). The idea that agency is the capacity to act for reasons, and the idea of an agent as a creature able to plan and act on plans, are often associated (Bratman 2000;Korsgaard 1989), but need not be seen as synonymous.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Awareness of our selves as selves, in such theories that focus on the reflective self, enables us to have reasons for action. This is because we have reasons for action when we do what would make sense in light of who we are (Bratman 2000;Korsgaard 1989;Velleman 1992Velleman , 2007. In some theories, our self-understanding is pivotal to having reasons for actions when it helps us decide upon, and act on, long-term plans (Bratman 2000;Gerrans and Kennett 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Storytelling agents: why narrative rather than mental time travel is fundamental

Hardt

2017

Phenom Cogn Sci

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I propose that we can explain the contribution of mental time travel to agency through understanding it as a specific instance of our more general capacity for narrative understanding. Narrative understanding involves the experience of a pre-reflective and embodied sense of self, which co-emerges with our emotional involvement with a sequence of events (Velleman 2003). Narrative understanding of a sequence of events also requires a 'recombinable system', that is, the ability to combine parts to make myriad sequences. Mental time travel shares these two characteristics: it involves an embodied sense of self and the ability to create novel scenarios. What is unique about mental time travel is that it is a story explicitly about our selves, and it involves metarepresentation. Agency is enabled by narrative understanding when we are able to put our current situation into a larger narrative context, whereby some possible actions, but not others, make sense. However, new features of agency are enabled when we understand stories that are explicitly about our selves: we gain the ability to plan and act on plans.

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Personal identity and the unity of agency: A Kantian response to Parfit

Cited by 64 publications

References 0 publications

Discounting, Preferences, and Paternalism in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Discounting, Preferences, and Paternalism in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Practical versus moral identities in identity management

Storytelling agents: why narrative rather than mental time travel is fundamental

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