<研究論文(原著論文)>私たちは過去よりも未来を重視しているのか？

Abstract

Our lives are temporally asymmetrical. Derek Part once presented cases in which we have a future-bias, a bias that we want pain to be in the past and pleasure to be in the future. Although his cases intuitively seem to show that future-bias is rational, lately some philosophers attack this traditional view. They first demonstrate that in some cases future-biased behaviours would be irrational and then from these cases conclude that such behaviors are irrational in general, including even Parfit's cases. Next, they explain why we would behave with future-bias in Parfit's cases but not in the clearly irrational cases that they present. We don't focus on the rationality of future-bias but on the explanations they give for why our attitudes show future-bias only in Parfit's cases. In their discussion, it is assumed that we have a general disposition to discount the value of past experience. We argue against this in our paper. Philosophers refer to empirical evidence that shows we have some kind of future-bias. Nevertheless, this evidence does not show that we have future-bias when we directly compare future experiences with past ones but only that future experiences are more highly valued in trans-personal studies. This paves the way to thinking that Parfit's cases are unique and that we generally don't discount the value of past experience. After pointing out why the existing accounts of our reactions fail, we present a hypothesis about why we prefer pain to be in the past in Parfit's cases and not in others. This paper illuminates the fact that “future-bias" is indeed not a single phenomenon and that further examination is required.