Of course one may owe debts to various people, especially one’s parents for their role in creating you, but those debts are eventually repaid, or lapse when they die. The past parts of myself are informative, not normative, for whatever decisions my present part makes. Why does Austin-27 want to fulfil commitments made by Austin-17 that Austin-27 no longer believes in?
The past provides examples (positive and negative) to learn from, Chesterton fences to examine before changing, ideas to consider, and situations it has placed us in, but imposes no obligations.
Your finger is on the scales with the example of the conservationist. That person’s desires are an applause light, while those of their descendants are a boo light. Switch the two sets of desires and the example is no longer persuasive, if it ever was.
I feel like the Timeless Decision Theory arguments are pretty straightforward here. Past people are more likely to have been taking my preferences into account, if they expected me to honor their preferences. Seems like there is lots of opportunity for trade here, and I sure am likely to make different decisions if I expect future generations to have an outlook like the one you describe.
I am not sure what the magnitude of this effect on my decisions should be, but I feel like it seems very unlikely for the outcome of this to be “nothing”.
I can imagine that if I had been religious and deconverted, or been an atheist and converted, then once in a while I might spend a day re-inhabiting that previous worldview, perhaps deliberately undertaking some religious observance, or refraining from one respectively. It would be a way of staying in touch with that earlier part of myself, rather than cutting it away as if it had never happened. But I would be doing this for myself, not out of any sort of obligation to a part of myself. I can’t live there any more, but it may be worth visiting from time to time.
So would you bite the bullet on the example in the first three paragraphs? And you don’t have any moral obligations toward fulfilling the last wish of, say, your parents, after they are dead? This seems counterintuitive.
Yet I admit it seems also counterintuitive to me to respect the wishes of your past self if your present self changed their mind. It is almost as if you have more obligations toward the past wishes of now dead people (like your parents) than toward the wishes of your past selves.
I’m not the OP, but I bite that bullet all day long. My parents’ last wishes are only relevant in two ways that I can see:
Their values are congruent with my own. If my parents last wishes are morally repugnant to me I certainly feel no obligation to help execute those wishes. Thankfully, in real life my parents values and wishes are fairly congruent with my own, so their request is likely to be something I could evaluate as worthy on its own terms; no obligation needed.
I wish to uphold a norm of last wishes being fulfilled. This has to meet a minimum threshold of congruence on point 1) above, but if I expect to have important last wishes that I will be unable to fulfill in my lifetime, I may want to promote this norm of paying it forward. Except I’m not convinced doing so is actually very effective; surely it’s better for me to work towards my own goals rather than work towards others in the hope it upholds a norm that will get my goals carried out later. Or, if my goals are beyond my own ability to execute then surely I should be working to get those goals accepted by more people on their own terms, rather than as an obligation to me.
Your #2 motivation goes pretty far, so this is actually a much bigger exception to your bullet-bite than you might think. The idea of “respecting the will of past generations to boost the chances that future generations will respect your will” goes far beyond sentimental deathbed wishes and touches big parts of how cultural & financial influence is maintained beyond death. See my comment here.
So would you bite the bullet on the example in the first three paragraphs?
Yes, as I said in my last paragraph. Would you bite the other end of the bullet if the “conservationist” had been the ardent fan of cuteness and the descendants cared more for the environment as a whole?
And you don’t have any moral obligations toward fulfilling the last wish of, say, your parents, after they are dead?
That would depend very much on what the last wishes were. If a parent’s dying wish were that their offspring grow up to be an accountant, would you think that imposed any obligation? Especially if they are already establishing themselves as a professional musician?
My parents are dead, btw. Their estates were disposed of according to their wills, by custom and law, and that was that. Cremated, no graves to visit. There were no informally expressed last wishes. I was not especially close to them anyway.
Wishes about cuteness and accountants: I admit that fulfilling some dead person’s wish can conflict with your own wishes. But this this seems to be just an instance of the usual moral problem of weighing conflicting preferences of different people. As a rough approximation: If the desire of the descendant that X should not be the case is lower than the desire of the deceased that X should be the case, it seems plausible that X should be realized by the descendant.
For illustration: Imagine yesterday some person A, who is not in town, wants you to do them a favor and mow the lawn of their old neighbor. You agree, because you like A and A did you a favor in the past as well. If you don’t do it, person A will never find out, but you respect their wish and fulfill it.
Now assume A unexpectedly dies tomorrow. Would this change anything versus A living another 40 years? Why would it be relevant that A is alive while you mow the lawn? As I said, you know that A wouldn’t find out either way. In neither case does A learn whether you have cut the lawn, in both cases you are just fulfilling their wish.
I’d suggest that if the obligation doesn’t involve an inheritance, you at most have the obligation if you’d have had that obligation if the person had still been alive. You have no obligation to obey a demand from your parents that you be an accountant even when they’re still alive.
I think there’s a crucial difference between Chesterton’s fence and this situation: in the former, Chesterton is in a position of power over the would-be reformer (“I certainly won’t let you clear it away”). Your past self, on the other hand, is powerless to stop you, so the dialogue would be more like
Past you – I don’t see any reason to clear away my dear fence; please honor me by keeping it.
Present you – If you don’t see the use of clearing your fence away, I certainly won’t let you keep it. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see why I’m looking forward to getting rid of it, I may allow you to keep it. That is, if only you could still do anything at all, because you don’t exist anymore. (Laughs at past you) Screw you! (Eagerly tears the fence down at once).
That detail of Chesterton’s fable has never struck me as salient, but mere stylistic detail. The reason to not gleefully tear down the fence is that there may be a good reason for its existence that I am unaware of, not that anyone is actually standing in my way.
Your finger is on the scales with the example of the conservationist. That person’s desires are an applause light, while those of their descendants are a boo light. Switch the two sets of desires and the example is no longer persuasive, if it ever was.
First: I picked this example partly because “cuteness optimization” does seem weird and contrary and unsympathetic. I imagine that to people in the past, our present lack of concern for our literal neighbors, or views on gay marriage, seem just as unsympathetic.
Second: “cuteness” might not be the exact correct framing, but “species extinction to maximize utilons” has a surprising amount of backing to it. In some sense, the story of industrial progress has been one of inadvertent species extinction, and I’m partial to the idea that this was in fact the right path because of the massive number of humans it has made happier (rather than slowing down industrial growth in service to sustainability). Or another example: see this piece arguing that we should desire the extinction of all carnivorous species, due to the massive amount of wild animal suffering imposed by predation.
My short answer is: nothing.
Of course one may owe debts to various people, especially one’s parents for their role in creating you, but those debts are eventually repaid, or lapse when they die. The past parts of myself are informative, not normative, for whatever decisions my present part makes. Why does Austin-27 want to fulfil commitments made by Austin-17 that Austin-27 no longer believes in?
The past provides examples (positive and negative) to learn from, Chesterton fences to examine before changing, ideas to consider, and situations it has placed us in, but imposes no obligations.
Your finger is on the scales with the example of the conservationist. That person’s desires are an applause light, while those of their descendants are a boo light. Switch the two sets of desires and the example is no longer persuasive, if it ever was.
I feel like the Timeless Decision Theory arguments are pretty straightforward here. Past people are more likely to have been taking my preferences into account, if they expected me to honor their preferences. Seems like there is lots of opportunity for trade here, and I sure am likely to make different decisions if I expect future generations to have an outlook like the one you describe.
I am not sure what the magnitude of this effect on my decisions should be, but I feel like it seems very unlikely for the outcome of this to be “nothing”.
″...to honor their preferences”?
Yes, the TDT aspect is clear, but it seems to me easy for informal talk of TDT to slip into reference class tennis.
Oops, sorry. Typo fixed.
I can imagine that if I had been religious and deconverted, or been an atheist and converted, then once in a while I might spend a day re-inhabiting that previous worldview, perhaps deliberately undertaking some religious observance, or refraining from one respectively. It would be a way of staying in touch with that earlier part of myself, rather than cutting it away as if it had never happened. But I would be doing this for myself, not out of any sort of obligation to a part of myself. I can’t live there any more, but it may be worth visiting from time to time.
So would you bite the bullet on the example in the first three paragraphs? And you don’t have any moral obligations toward fulfilling the last wish of, say, your parents, after they are dead? This seems counterintuitive.
Yet I admit it seems also counterintuitive to me to respect the wishes of your past self if your present self changed their mind. It is almost as if you have more obligations toward the past wishes of now dead people (like your parents) than toward the wishes of your past selves.
I’m not the OP, but I bite that bullet all day long. My parents’ last wishes are only relevant in two ways that I can see:
Their values are congruent with my own. If my parents last wishes are morally repugnant to me I certainly feel no obligation to help execute those wishes. Thankfully, in real life my parents values and wishes are fairly congruent with my own, so their request is likely to be something I could evaluate as worthy on its own terms; no obligation needed.
I wish to uphold a norm of last wishes being fulfilled. This has to meet a minimum threshold of congruence on point 1) above, but if I expect to have important last wishes that I will be unable to fulfill in my lifetime, I may want to promote this norm of paying it forward. Except I’m not convinced doing so is actually very effective; surely it’s better for me to work towards my own goals rather than work towards others in the hope it upholds a norm that will get my goals carried out later. Or, if my goals are beyond my own ability to execute then surely I should be working to get those goals accepted by more people on their own terms, rather than as an obligation to me.
Your #2 motivation goes pretty far, so this is actually a much bigger exception to your bullet-bite than you might think. The idea of “respecting the will of past generations to boost the chances that future generations will respect your will” goes far beyond sentimental deathbed wishes and touches big parts of how cultural & financial influence is maintained beyond death. See my comment here.
Yes, as I said in my last paragraph. Would you bite the other end of the bullet if the “conservationist” had been the ardent fan of cuteness and the descendants cared more for the environment as a whole?
That would depend very much on what the last wishes were. If a parent’s dying wish were that their offspring grow up to be an accountant, would you think that imposed any obligation? Especially if they are already establishing themselves as a professional musician?
My parents are dead, btw. Their estates were disposed of according to their wills, by custom and law, and that was that. Cremated, no graves to visit. There were no informally expressed last wishes. I was not especially close to them anyway.
The dead are gone. The living continue.
Wishes about cuteness and accountants: I admit that fulfilling some dead person’s wish can conflict with your own wishes. But this this seems to be just an instance of the usual moral problem of weighing conflicting preferences of different people. As a rough approximation: If the desire of the descendant that X should not be the case is lower than the desire of the deceased that X should be the case, it seems plausible that X should be realized by the descendant.
For illustration: Imagine yesterday some person A, who is not in town, wants you to do them a favor and mow the lawn of their old neighbor. You agree, because you like A and A did you a favor in the past as well. If you don’t do it, person A will never find out, but you respect their wish and fulfill it.
Now assume A unexpectedly dies tomorrow. Would this change anything versus A living another 40 years? Why would it be relevant that A is alive while you mow the lawn? As I said, you know that A wouldn’t find out either way. In neither case does A learn whether you have cut the lawn, in both cases you are just fulfilling their wish.
I’d suggest that if the obligation doesn’t involve an inheritance, you at most have the obligation if you’d have had that obligation if the person had still been alive. You have no obligation to obey a demand from your parents that you be an accountant even when they’re still alive.
I think there’s a crucial difference between Chesterton’s fence and this situation: in the former, Chesterton is in a position of power over the would-be reformer (“I certainly won’t let you clear it away”). Your past self, on the other hand, is powerless to stop you, so the dialogue would be more like
Past you – I don’t see any reason to clear away my dear fence; please honor me by keeping it.
Present you – If you don’t see the use of clearing your fence away, I certainly won’t let you keep it. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see why I’m looking forward to getting rid of it, I may allow you to keep it. That is, if only you could still do anything at all, because you don’t exist anymore. (Laughs at past you) Screw you! (Eagerly tears the fence down at once).
That detail of Chesterton’s fable has never struck me as salient, but mere stylistic detail. The reason to not gleefully tear down the fence is that there may be a good reason for its existence that I am unaware of, not that anyone is actually standing in my way.
First: I picked this example partly because “cuteness optimization” does seem weird and contrary and unsympathetic. I imagine that to people in the past, our present lack of concern for our literal neighbors, or views on gay marriage, seem just as unsympathetic.
Second: “cuteness” might not be the exact correct framing, but “species extinction to maximize utilons” has a surprising amount of backing to it. In some sense, the story of industrial progress has been one of inadvertent species extinction, and I’m partial to the idea that this was in fact the right path because of the massive number of humans it has made happier (rather than slowing down industrial growth in service to sustainability). Or another example: see this piece arguing that we should desire the extinction of all carnivorous species, due to the massive amount of wild animal suffering imposed by predation.