I think you make a nice point. Since the goals of our future selves tend to be similar to our own, we should care about our future selves ability to accomplish their (and by extension our own) goals. However, I see two potential problems with this argument.
1) A large part of our investment into the future is concerned with general well being rather than with abstract goals. For instance, the fate of most intellectual endeavors (publishing a book, making a scientific discovery etc) is usually determined long before the age 65. Still most educated people try to save money for a comfortable retirement.
2) If the life is transient it seems hard to motivate any goals which are not immediately related to our present well being. Naturally our present well being depends on our ability to believe in existence of such goals. However, fooling oneself into believing something false seems like a classic example of “irrationality”.
1) Isn’t general well-being a precondition for many of our other goals, and one that we know we will value in and of itself about as highly in retirement as we do now? The aspect of ourselves that is concerned with general well-being is probably one of the most invariant, so I can be sure with very high probability that all of my future selves will value it highly. Perhaps I’m not understanding your point here, but it seems to me that though I will be different in 30 years, I will still (justifiably) perceive myself as the same person, so I should care now about what I will experience then. There are also lots of very important present goals (like better understanding the human mind, the universe, mathematics, etc.) that I am nearly certain I will consider very important in 30 years. Saving money for retirement will help me continue to pursue those goals as well as appreciate and enjoy the results of the goals I’ll have pursued and achieved in the intervening years.
2) I don’t see how life being transient—by which I assume you mean that mind/self is transient—implies not caring about future well being. I perceive my future self as being the same person as I am now, so I pursue goals that I anticipate my future self will have as well as those I presently have (although many are the same).
I think I am justified in conceiving of my future self as being “me” and thus in having a special interest in that future self. Every mind is unique by virtue of the genes and the physical environment that created the initial substrate and the sum total of experience that has changed the mind to this point. The chance of a mind equivalent to “me in 30 years” naturally existing without being based on my genes and my life experience thus far is so close to zero as to be practically impossible. “I” trace out a path in mind-space over time, but that path is unique to me; in a sense, “I” just am that path, the entire path. There is a part of mind that creates a representation of itself, and there is a part that gives special value to itself; these are both operative across all points of the path (all self models), even if they distinguish points on the path that “have happened” from those “happening now” and those that “haven’t happened yet” differently and reason about them differently. They’re still all “me”, and I care about them all.
I think you make a nice point. Since the goals of our future selves tend to be similar to our own, we should care about our future selves ability to accomplish their (and by extension our own) goals. However, I see two potential problems with this argument.
1) A large part of our investment into the future is concerned with general well being rather than with abstract goals. For instance, the fate of most intellectual endeavors (publishing a book, making a scientific discovery etc) is usually determined long before the age 65. Still most educated people try to save money for a comfortable retirement.
2) If the life is transient it seems hard to motivate any goals which are not immediately related to our present well being. Naturally our present well being depends on our ability to believe in existence of such goals. However, fooling oneself into believing something false seems like a classic example of “irrationality”.
1) Isn’t general well-being a precondition for many of our other goals, and one that we know we will value in and of itself about as highly in retirement as we do now? The aspect of ourselves that is concerned with general well-being is probably one of the most invariant, so I can be sure with very high probability that all of my future selves will value it highly. Perhaps I’m not understanding your point here, but it seems to me that though I will be different in 30 years, I will still (justifiably) perceive myself as the same person, so I should care now about what I will experience then. There are also lots of very important present goals (like better understanding the human mind, the universe, mathematics, etc.) that I am nearly certain I will consider very important in 30 years. Saving money for retirement will help me continue to pursue those goals as well as appreciate and enjoy the results of the goals I’ll have pursued and achieved in the intervening years.
2) I don’t see how life being transient—by which I assume you mean that mind/self is transient—implies not caring about future well being. I perceive my future self as being the same person as I am now, so I pursue goals that I anticipate my future self will have as well as those I presently have (although many are the same).
I think I am justified in conceiving of my future self as being “me” and thus in having a special interest in that future self. Every mind is unique by virtue of the genes and the physical environment that created the initial substrate and the sum total of experience that has changed the mind to this point. The chance of a mind equivalent to “me in 30 years” naturally existing without being based on my genes and my life experience thus far is so close to zero as to be practically impossible. “I” trace out a path in mind-space over time, but that path is unique to me; in a sense, “I” just am that path, the entire path. There is a part of mind that creates a representation of itself, and there is a part that gives special value to itself; these are both operative across all points of the path (all self models), even if they distinguish points on the path that “have happened” from those “happening now” and those that “haven’t happened yet” differently and reason about them differently. They’re still all “me”, and I care about them all.