Against Time Bias*

@article{Greene2015AgainstTB,
  title={Against Time Bias*},
  author={Preston Greene and Meghan Sullivan},
  journal={Ethics},
  year={2015},
  volume={125},
  pages={947 - 970}
}
Most of us display a bias toward the near: we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in our near future and painful experiences to be in our distant future. We also display a bias toward the future: we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in our future and painful experiences to be in our past. While philosophers have tended to think that near bias is a rational defect, almost no one finds future bias objectionable. In this essay, we argue that this hybrid position is untenable. We conclude that… 
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41 Citations
Background Citations
10
Methods Citations
1
Results Citations
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41 Citations

Future bias in action: does the past matter more when you can affect it?

It is found that participants exhibit significantly less future bias when asked to consider scenarios where they can affect their own past experiences, which supports the “practical irrelevance” explanation of future bias and suggests that future bias is not an inflexible preference hardwired by evolution, but results from a more general disposition to "accept the things the authors cannot change".

On Preferring that Overall, Things are Worse: Future‐Bias and Unequal Payoffs

Philosophers vigorously debate the rationality of hedonic bias toward the future : a systematic preference for pleasurable experiences to be future and painful experiences to be past. The debate over…

What Time-Travel Teaches Us about Future-Bias

Future-biased individuals systematically prefer positively valenced events to be in the future (positive future-bias) and negatively valenced events to be in the past (negative future-bias). The most…

Agency, Experience, and Future Bias

In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit (1984) observed that most people are biased towards the future at least when it comes to pain and pleasure. That is, they regard a given amount of pain as less…

Hedonic and Non-Hedonic Bias toward the Future

ABSTRACT It has widely been assumed, by philosophers, that our first-person preferences regarding pleasurable and painful experiences exhibit a bias toward the future (positive and negative hedonic…

How Much Do We Discount Past Pleasures?

Future-biased individuals systematically prefer pleasures to be in the future (positive future-bias) and pains to be in the past (negative future-bias). Empirical research shows that negative…

Robust passage phenomenology probably does not explain future-bias

People are ‘biased toward the future’: all else being equal, we typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. Several explanations have been…

Prudence and past selves

An important platitude about prudential rationality is that I should not refuse to sacrifice a smaller amount of present welfare for the sake of larger future benefits. I ought, in other words, to…

Capacity for simulation and mitigation drives hedonic and non-hedonic time biases

ABSTRACT Until recently, philosophers have supposed that people exhibit a first-person hedonic bias toward the future, but that their non-hedonic and third-person preferences are time-neutral. Recent…

Why Future-Bias Isn’t Rationally Evaluable

Future-bias is preferring some lesser future good to a greater past good because it is in the future, or preferring some greater past pain to some lesser future pain because it is in the past. Most…

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