This was really interesting, as I came in with no idea of how y’all approach this topic in the modern day. The perspectives (rather than temporally different selves) stuff is cool! If you’re willing to offer spoilers, how does your upcoming book differ from Schofield’s takes, in broad strokes?
(I actually have a bunch of questions on this topic, but they are still very much in the process of formulating themselves….)
Very broadly, I think you have the same duties to self as to anyone else, but you normally waive them just by making free and informed decisions, which are like giving consent to yourself!
Great review. Very different tone, but ultimately I think we're worried about the same problem. (If you can't release yourself from duties to yourself in the future, you're way too morally restricted.)
But I think I have some responses to your more general worries about duties to self. You might be interested in this paper:
Different tone indeed :). FWIW I think the idea of a duty to self makes perfect sense if we assume (correctly) a kind of dualism: that we're each two selves (say, a conscious self and an unconscious one).
Regarding your paper, normally I can get the gist from the abstract but yours tripped me up. You wrote: "When, if ever, do we wrong ourselves? The Self-Other Symmetric answer is: when we do to ourselves what would wrong a consenting other." Do you mean that we wrong ourselves when (and only when?) we treat ourselves in a way such that no one could consent? Like, I'd wrong you, say, by stabbing you even if you were a "consenting other." Similarly, I wrong myself by stabbing myself even if, in some sense, my future self consents.
JPhil made us write an abstract for "Wronging Oneself" and vetoed the one I wanted, which was just one sentence: "It's like wronging a consenting other."
To explain the paper, I need the notion of a "minimal pair" of possible cases: one case where you do some action X to yourself, and another where you do X to someone else. (So, for example, you have to hold equal whether the patient consents, how much the patient is harmed, etc. -- and of course the action X has to be something that you can do to others and oneself alike.)
Now here are the two views:
Self-Other Symmetry: for any minimal pair, either both cases are wrongings, or neither is a wronging.
Self-Other Asymmetry: for some minimal pair, one of its cases is wronging while the other isn't.
My paper defends Symmetry against a bunch of counterexamples. The most important move is to explain that Symmetry *doesn't* imply that every way of wronging somebody else is also a way of wronging oneself. On the contrary, we can accept Symmetry while also accepting:
Asymmetry of Possibilities: it's possible to wrong others by doing things that you can't do yourself (or vice versa).
So, for example, you can wrong others through deception, coercion, theft, etc. even though it's not possible to do these things (in all the same ways) to oneself. The Asymmetry of Possibilities implies the absence of minimal pairs. The Self-Other Symmetry only says that *when a minimal pair exists*, there can't be a moral difference between the two cases.
I don't say much about wronging future selves, because I think it's essentially the same as wronging future others, once all else is held equal.
Ah, okay. That makes sense. Too bad JPHIL vetoed your original abstract -- it was perfect! From your description your paper strikes me as an application of a deep (and correct) metaphysical principle: that a mere difference is no difference at all. In your case: the mere difference between self and other, morally speaking, is no difference at all.
Pleasantly surprised by the fact that you’re Mount Eerie fan!
Majorly. Phil rules.
This was really interesting, as I came in with no idea of how y’all approach this topic in the modern day. The perspectives (rather than temporally different selves) stuff is cool! If you’re willing to offer spoilers, how does your upcoming book differ from Schofield’s takes, in broad strokes?
(I actually have a bunch of questions on this topic, but they are still very much in the process of formulating themselves….)
Very broadly, I think you have the same duties to self as to anyone else, but you normally waive them just by making free and informed decisions, which are like giving consent to yourself!
You might enjoy my review of his book: https://brill.com/view/journals/jmp/22/1-2/article-p246_016.xml
We had, uh, slightly different takes :)
Great review. Very different tone, but ultimately I think we're worried about the same problem. (If you can't release yourself from duties to yourself in the future, you're way too morally restricted.)
But I think I have some responses to your more general worries about duties to self. You might be interested in this paper:
https://philarchive.org/rec/MUOWO
Different tone indeed :). FWIW I think the idea of a duty to self makes perfect sense if we assume (correctly) a kind of dualism: that we're each two selves (say, a conscious self and an unconscious one).
Regarding your paper, normally I can get the gist from the abstract but yours tripped me up. You wrote: "When, if ever, do we wrong ourselves? The Self-Other Symmetric answer is: when we do to ourselves what would wrong a consenting other." Do you mean that we wrong ourselves when (and only when?) we treat ourselves in a way such that no one could consent? Like, I'd wrong you, say, by stabbing you even if you were a "consenting other." Similarly, I wrong myself by stabbing myself even if, in some sense, my future self consents.
JPhil made us write an abstract for "Wronging Oneself" and vetoed the one I wanted, which was just one sentence: "It's like wronging a consenting other."
To explain the paper, I need the notion of a "minimal pair" of possible cases: one case where you do some action X to yourself, and another where you do X to someone else. (So, for example, you have to hold equal whether the patient consents, how much the patient is harmed, etc. -- and of course the action X has to be something that you can do to others and oneself alike.)
Now here are the two views:
Self-Other Symmetry: for any minimal pair, either both cases are wrongings, or neither is a wronging.
Self-Other Asymmetry: for some minimal pair, one of its cases is wronging while the other isn't.
My paper defends Symmetry against a bunch of counterexamples. The most important move is to explain that Symmetry *doesn't* imply that every way of wronging somebody else is also a way of wronging oneself. On the contrary, we can accept Symmetry while also accepting:
Asymmetry of Possibilities: it's possible to wrong others by doing things that you can't do yourself (or vice versa).
So, for example, you can wrong others through deception, coercion, theft, etc. even though it's not possible to do these things (in all the same ways) to oneself. The Asymmetry of Possibilities implies the absence of minimal pairs. The Self-Other Symmetry only says that *when a minimal pair exists*, there can't be a moral difference between the two cases.
I don't say much about wronging future selves, because I think it's essentially the same as wronging future others, once all else is held equal.
Ah, okay. That makes sense. Too bad JPHIL vetoed your original abstract -- it was perfect! From your description your paper strikes me as an application of a deep (and correct) metaphysical principle: that a mere difference is no difference at all. In your case: the mere difference between self and other, morally speaking, is no difference at all.