We have many reasons for acting. We have moral reasons to respect other people’s autonomy. We also have reasons stemming from our desires. For instance, we have reasons to make tea if we desire tea. There is some controversy, however, about whether we have reasons to promote our future well-being in ways that come apart from moral and desire-based reasons. Can we have reason to stop smoking or to go to the gym, even if we have no desire to do so? Intuitively, it seems we can. These are what philosophers call prudential reasons.
However, some philosophers doubt whether prudential reasons independent of our desires are any different from the moral reasons we have to care about and promote the well-being of others. Julia Markovits, for example, argues that just as we have reasons to show a certain sort of respect to others, we have reasons to show the same sort of respect to our future selves. Similarly, Alex Worsnip claims that the reasons we have to not let our future well-being fall below a certain level are akin to the reasons we have to not let other people’s well-being fall below a certain level. Finally, Daniel Muñoz and Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt have defended the view that the rights we have against being harmed by ourselves are no different from those we have against being harmed by anyone else.
In a paper I’ll be presenting at the Eastern APA called “Prudential Reasons to be Paternalistic,” I raise a challenge for such views concerning the particular ways we sometimes relate to our future selves. We oftentimes treat our future self not as some distinct autonomous person, but as an object to be managed and manipulated. For example, we may avoid having sugary snacks in our house because we know our future self will overindulge. Similarly, we might sign ourselves up for a gym class that is extremely difficult to unenroll from, even though we have no desire to go to such a gym class now and know that our future self will similarly have no such desire. We treat our future selves with the same sort of paternalism we’d show to an unruly child. Such paternalism would seem morally objectionable, however, if directed at other normal adults. If this is right, then prudential reasons are importantly different from the reasons we have to promote the well-being of others. While these reasons may not be necessarily stronger than the reasons we have to promote other people’s well-being, there are fewer limitations on what prudential reasons can require of us. In other words, we can have prudential reasons to be paternalistic in many ordinary cases of promoting our own future well-being, but only rarely can we have moral reasons to be paternalistic towards others.
To motivate this further, consider the following more detailed version of the tedious gym class case I mentioned above. Suppose your doctor tells you that if you don’t get more cardio exercise, there will be serious, but not life-threatening health consequences. Now suppose you have a joint bank account with your long-term partner and imagine two possible scenarios. In scenario 1, after hearing the news from your doctor and talking to your partner, you sign yourself up for a tedious gym class and pay for it with money from your joint bank account. The class begins in six weeks and is extremely difficult to unenroll from. In scenario 2, after you tell your partner about the news from your doctor, your partner signs you up for the same gym class starting tomorrow with money from your joint bank account without consulting you.
To argue that prudential reasons independent of desires are no different from moral reasons to promote the well-being of others, we would have to come to the same verdict about both scenario 1 and scenario 2. If prudential reasons aren’t distinct from moral reasons, your partner would have as much reason as you to not let your well-being drop below a certain level. We’d have to say that your own actions in scenario 1 and your partner’s actions in scenario 2 are both objectionable or they’re both unobjectionable. However, intuitively, it seems your actions in scenario 1 are perfectly fine, while your partner’s actions in scenario 2 are objectionably paternalistic. Prudential reasons being distinct from moral reasons can explain this. There are fewer constraints on what your own prudential reasons can require of you than on what your partner’s moral reasons can require of them.
Skeptics of prudential reasons could push back, though. They may argue that your partner really doesn’t do anything wrong by signing you up for the gym class. Perhaps your partner doesn’t consult you because they know you would stubbornly refuse to do what’s best for yourself. However, not consulting you at all amounts to not really respecting you as a fully autonomous agent. Your partner is treating you instead as an object for them to manage. In some cases, this may be morally required if the health consequences were life-threatening or if you have children with your partner who would be negatively affected by your declining health; however, ordinarily, treating others this way would be objectionably paternalistic. On the other hand, in the case of your future self, consulting your future self isn’t an option, and it seems ordinarily we have no qualms about treating our future self as an object to be managed.
Prudential reasons skeptics may suggest instead that we should have qualms about treating our future self as an object to be managed. Just because we frequently treat our future selves this way doesn’t make it right. However, if we were required to respect the autonomy of our future selves, our ability to act autonomously would be severely limited. Scaffolding the environment and situation that our future self interacts with is an important tool for ensuring we don’t succumb to our baser impulses like eating three bags of candy. Limiting the autonomy of our future self can paradoxically be a way of helping our future self act more autonomously.
Finally, skeptics of prudential reasons may claim that there are certain features in scenario 1 that are noticeably absent in scenario 2. For instance, perhaps your future self implicitly consents to the paternalistic treatment of being signed up for the gym class in a way you do not when your partner signs you up. However, while this is plausible when we act on ourselves over short time scales, it becomes less convincing when we think about acting on ourselves over longer ones. For example, the late great moral philosopher Derek Parfit imagined a case where a Russian noble anticipated a conservative turn in his future self, in which he would change his mind about his current plan to give away his future inherited property to his serfs. To circumvent that possibility, he writes a document to automatically ensure that this will happen, which can only be overridden by his wife. It would be perverse to say that his future conservative self has consented to this. Similarly, if the gym class is far enough into your future, it becomes less and less plausible to say that your future self implicitly consented. In the absence of further counterarguments, we should accept that prudential reasons are distinct from moral reasons. The prudential reasons we have to be paternalistic to our future self far outstrip the moral reasons we have to be paternalistic to others.
Graham Curtiss-Rowlands
Graham Curtiss-Rowlands is a graduate student in the philosophy PhD program at Washington University in St. Louis. He is interested in epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and especially intersections between the three. More specifically, he’s interested in topics like normative deference; trust and rationality; the epistemic dimensions of democracy; how we aspire to have different values from the ones we currently have; and the role of our environment and relationships in projects of moral and self-improvement
