The View From Nowhen: Temporal Asymmetry and the Person/Self Split

Dr Patrick Stokes (Deakin University )

Since at least Lucretius, philosophers have noted with bemusement that we are terrified of non-existence after our death but are unperturbed by the period of non-existence before each of us was born. For Lucretius, the apparently irrationality of this bias implies we should be equally indifferent towards the time after our death. Two major replies have been offered to Lucretius: Nagel’s initial quasi-Kripkean claim that earlier birth would be identity-destroying whereas later death would not, and Parfit’s diagnosis of our egocentric temporally asymmetric attitudes which explain (if not justify) our intuitions in the Lucretian case. Christopher Belshaw and Frederick Kaufmann have defended the first kind of response, arguing that while we could have been born earlier, we would not have been ourselves in the thick psychological sense involved in our egocentric concern about death. Kaufmann explicitly differentiates between a metaphysical thin self and a psychological thick self. However, I argue that this bifurcation draws the line in the wrong place. Instead we should think of the thin self not as a metaphysical essence, but as a phenomenally-given locus of consciousness. But the specific temporal features of that locus of consciousness – its irreducibly present-tense character – brings temporal asymmetry back into play. I conclude by outlining some of the implications of this for our understanding of temporal asymmetry: instead of a clash between an irrational bias towards the future and a concern for whole-life welfare, we have an interplay and negotiation caused by a present-tense self having to adopt the implicitly atemporal interests of a diachronic person.

Patrick Stokes is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University. His work focuses on issues of personal identity, subjectivity, and moral psychology. His recent publications include The Naked Self: Kierkegaard and Personal Identity (Oxford, 2015, forthcoming) and Narrative, Identity, and the Kierkegaardian Self (ed. John Lippitt and Patrick Stokes, Edinburgh, 2015).