Time, Rationality and at least three kinds of Reason

Sammanfattning: All too often we find ourselves choosing a lesser good instead of a greater good, due to the mere fact that the lesser good is closer in the future, and all too often we find ourselves preferring that greater suffering has happened in the past rather than us having to experience small suffering in the future. Philosophers call this phenomena time biases, the first bias is called the bias towards the near and the second one is called the bias towards the future. It is also the case that we have ideals which make us act in spite of us knowing that these actions will frustrate future desires. This thesis will examine whether it can be rational to have these biases and ideals or if we should be temporally neutral. So that we will be able to examine these temporal biases and ideals in a meaningful way the thesis will start of by making explicit what I mean with “rationality” and then analyze if the temporal biases and ideals can withhold the standards which are set by rationality and temporal neutrality. My examination of rationality will focus on Ingmar Person’s subjectivistic and internalistic view on rationality and there I reach the conclusion that Persson’s view is superior to Brandt’s classic view on rationality because Brandt’s view on rationality is too intersubjective which implies counter-intuitive consequences, some of which Persson manages to stay away from. Further into the thesis I examine the temporal biases and realize that they are not temporal biases at all but rather depend on our (in)ability to properly represent different states of affairs. My examination of ideals leads to the conclusion that they only appear to be temporally biased but in fact withhold the standards set both by rationality and by temporal neutrality.