Time and Morality

Abstract:: Time is morally relevant. This chapter considers three temporal features that could be assigned moral significance when one assesses actions, activities, character-traits, and events: life periods, temporal order, and tense. It seems plausible to assign significance to life periods when one assesses character traits - innocence is a virtue for children but not for adults, for example. It is also clear that the temporal order between events can have moral significance when one assesses the overall value of the sequence of events. When it comes to tense-partiality it is clear that people often show a psychological bias towards the future. But, it is very doubtful that this bias can be upgraded to an acceptable tense-partial moral theory. First, such a theory will have many counterintuitive implications. Second, it will be difficult to consistently act on such a theory in dynamic choice situations. © 2013 John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.

Keywords:: Morality

Tense-partial theory

Time

Temporal order

Life periods
Pubs id:: pubs:194968
UUID:: uuid:2dceeb07-4b1c-44c9-8d25-fe95ca9e842d
Local pid:: pubs:194968
Source identifiers:: 194968
Deposit date:: 2013-11-16
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_2dceeb074b1c44c98d25fe95ca9e842d

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