Image by Tom Hole

Christopher T. Jay

Going to bed last night, I thought about if I really minded whether I woke up or not. I quickly concluded that I minded very much. In a way, that was a puzzling conclusion to come to. Thinking about my attitude to whether I would wake up or not, what seemed to make the conclusion that I very much wanted to wake up so obvious was that there are many things I wanted to do, such as write this essay: not waking up would mean that I could do none of the things I expected to enjoy. I felt that consideration very strongly indeed. But in so far as I was trying to be rational, I couldn’t shake a worry which I shall try to bring out in what follows.

Being rationally concerned with future enjoyment is not just being sensitive to what my current attitudes are. Suppose that last night I were not thinking about dying, but about my gambling habit and the bet I would place on a ‘fail-safe’ tip the next day. Contemplating the thrill of a promising flutter, I looked forward to going to the betting shop, placing the bet, watching the race and relieving the book-maker of his money. That ― my looking forward to it ― would be perfectly rational, since it is perfectly rational to look forward to something enjoyable. But what if I believed that my Gamblers Anonymous meeting in the morning would cure me of my habit? What if I believed that if I go to the meeting then the subsequent placing of a bet would leave me cold, that going to the betting shop, filling out the slip, watching the race and taking the money would stir nothing but the thought that it was silly to even risk losing money on something as un-enjoyable as betting? Surely, even though I would still think of placing the bet with excitement as I contemplate it the night before (not having been to the meeting), the possibility of my not enjoying betting when I actually get to the betting shop the next day (because I have been to the meeting first) is salient for my attitude to being stopped from placing the bet. For if I am stopped from placing the bet but I have been to the meeting then, since ex hypothesi I will be free of any desire to bet, I will be being stopped from doing something I no longer care to do and would presumably therefore have no reason to care about being stopped from doing it. And I could appreciate this even the night before, still afflicted by the enjoyment of gambling. So being rationally concerned with future enjoyment is not just being sensitive to what my current attitudes are, because I can rationally accept that it would be no bad thing if I am stopped from doing something which at the time of contemplation I nonetheless have reason to think of as enjoyable and worthwhile. The lesson here is that when deliberating about future developments, beliefs about our attitudes in the future are just as important as our current attitudes. (If this were not true, we could not make sense of the gambling case, and would have to say that I am bound to think it a bad thing if I am stopped even after going to the meeting which I’m sure will cure my enjoyment of gambling.)

In the actual case, in which my nocturnal deliberations concerned my attitude towards not waking up, it would be puzzling if the same structure of rational deliberation did not apply. But if the same structure does apply, I strictly lacked any reason to use the prospect of, e.g., writing this essay to explain why not waking up would be a problem for me. Note that I know that if I die in my sleep I don’t get to care about anything tomorrow (or ever). I quite rationally looked forward to writing an essay (and doing other things), because I quite reasonably judged that I would enjoy it. But I also knew that if I were to die in my sleep last night I would not be stopped from doing anything which I cared about today because if I were to die in my sleep last night I could not care about anything today. Compare the gambling case. In both cases there is something which, in light of current attitudes, it is rational to look forward to. But in both cases there is a ‘defeater’ of the possibility of enjoying what is looked forward to (the meeting, or the more certain final defeater), the effects of which (with respect to future enjoyment) can be fully grasped at the time of deliberation even though the defeating mechanism has not actually ‘kicked in’. In the gambling case, it looked as though the rational attitude to adopt at the time of deliberation would be this: ‘it will be good if I get to place the bet and bad not to be able to, unless I have been to the meeting in which case not being able to place the bet will not be a problem at all’. Well, if the structure of rational deliberation is the same in the death case, it looks like the rational attitude to adopt would be: ‘it will be good to get to, e.g., write the essay and bad not to be able to, unless I have died in which case not being able to, e.g., write the essay will not be a problem at all’. And if that is the rational attitude to adopt, notice that the rational attitude to adopt is one according to which if I die in my sleep tonight then not being able to, e.g., write the essay is not a problem for me.

If not getting to, e.g., write the essay is not a problem for me in the case where I don’t wake up, I cannot be adopting the rational attitude when I claim that it is because not getting to write the essay would be a problem that not waking up would be a problem. That is the puzzling thing about the reasoning I found so compelling that I wanted to bring out. It may have been compelling, but it turns out ― if my discussion has been broadly accurate ― that it might be irrational.

Christopher T. Jay is a PhD student in philosophy at U.C.L.