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Are We One Self or Multiple Selves?: Implications for Law and Public Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2009

Richard A. Posner
Richard A. Posner
Affiliation:
U.S. Court of Appeals and University of Chicago Law School
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Extract

Some people hate themselves. But if I say, “I hate myself,” who is this “I” that stands apart from “myself”? And notice how in the expression “I am not myself today,” the “I” and “myself” change places. Now it is “myself” who is the authentic, the authoritative, the judgmental “I,” and it is “I” who is the self that is judged and found wanting. Some people talk to themselves; when they do, who is speaking and who is listening?

Type
Articles
Information
Legal Theory , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 23 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

1. Gass, William H., The Hovering LifeGoogle Scholar (reviewing Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities), New York Review of Books, 01 11, 1996, p. 56.Google Scholar

2. Plutarch, , Fall of the Roman Republic 298Google Scholar (Warner, Rex trans. 1972Google Scholar) (emphasis added), quoted in Khalil, Elias L., Buridan's Ass, Risk, Uncertainty, and Self-Competition: A Theory of Entrepreneurship 1 (Ohio State University (Mansfield), Dept. of Economics, unpublished, 1996).Google Scholar

3. Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons, pt. 3 (1987 reprint).Google Scholar

4. See Williams, Bernard, Persons, Character and Morality, in The Identities of Persons 197Google Scholar (Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg ed., 1976Google Scholar), reprinted in Williams, , Moral Luck 1 (1981).Google Scholar

5. Multiple-selves analysis is not original with me. See Parfit, , supra note 3, at 302–06Google Scholar, and other references in Posner, , Aging and Old Age, supra, at 84 n. 34.Google Scholar The characters in Albee, Edward's play Three Tall Women: A Play in Two Acts (1995)Google Scholar are three selves—one aged 26, one aged 52, and one aged 92—of the same person.

6. My distinction between the future-oriented and the current self is very similar to the distinction between planner and doer in Thaler, Richard H. and Shefrin, H.M., An Economic Theory of Self-Control, 89 J. Pol. Econ. 392 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The difference is that Thaler and Shefrin side with the planner (future-oriented self), whom they regard as the rational actor—like the rider relative to the horse. I do not assign priority among the different selves.

It might be questioned whether all cases of weakness of will involve a conflict between present and future selves, in which the victory of the present self is the proof of weakness of will. Might it not be weak willed to refuse a risky, exciting job for a dull one that promised a financially secure future? But I think that in such a case we would say, rather, that the person was excessively risk aversive—in a sense, too future-regarding.

7. Emphasized in Schelling, Thomas C., Self-Command in Practice, in Policy, and in a Theory of Rational Choice, 74 Am. Econ. Rev. Papers & Proc. 1 (05 1984).Google Scholar Schelling's article is the best introduction I know to the economic version of multiple-selves analysis, the version I am trying to elaborate in this paper.

8. The theme of Williams's important essay, supra note 4.

9. This aspect of multiple-selves analysis was pioneered by Wlliam James and Erving Goffman. For a recent example of this analysis, see Donahue, Eileen M. et al. , The Divided Self: Concurrent and Longitudinal Effects of Psychological Adjustment and Social Roles on Self-Concept Differentiation, 6A J. Personality & Soc Psychol. 834 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for general discussion, see Hollis, Martin, Models of Man: Philosophical Thoughts on Social Action, ch. 5 (1977).Google Scholar An application to literature is the distinction between the actual and the implied author of a work of literature, where the latter is the impression of the author that the actual author would like readers to form from the work. See, for an influential discussion, Booth, Wayne C., The Rhetoric of Fiction 71–76, 86 (2d ed. 1983).Google Scholar

10. See, e.g., Martz, Louis L.. The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the seventeenth Century.pt. 1 (1951).Google Scholar

11. See Jonsen, Albert R. and Toulmin, Stephen, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, ch. 9 (1988).Google Scholar

12. Another approach, this one closer to the multiple-selves approach, distinguishes between a person's “preferences” and his “metapreferences” (see, e.g., Hirschman, Albert O., Against Parsimony: Three Easy Ways of Complicating Some Categories of Economic Discourse, 1 Econ & Phil. 7, 8–9 [1985])CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with the former corresponding to the preferences of what I am calling the present-oriented self and the latter to the preferences of what I am calling the future-oriented self.

13. See, e.g., Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice 293 (1971).Google Scholar

14. The implicit discount rates used by people are often much higher. See, e.g., Thaler, and Shefrin, , supraGoogle Scholar note 6. This strengthens my point.

15. Cf. McMahan, Jeff, The Metaphysics of Brain Death, 9 Bioethics 91, 110 (1995).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

16. See, e.g., Friedman, David, What Is “Fair Compensation” for Death or Injury? 2 Intl. Rev. L. & Econ. 81 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rubin, Paul H. and Calfee, John E., Consequences of Damage Awards for Hedonic and Other Nonpecuniary Losses, 5 J. Forensic Econ. 249, 251 (1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Posner, , Aging and Old Age, supra at 84–85.Google Scholar A similar point is made independently in Croley, Steven P. and Hanson, Jon D., The Nonpecuniary Costs of Accidents: Pain-and Suffering Damages in Tort Law, 108 Harv. L. Rev. 1787, 1822–1827 (1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Rawls, , supra, at 295.Google Scholar

19. Not all; recall my example of the suicide engineered by the future-oriented self to spare the future self from suffering. Yet this could be viewed as a case in which the future self imposes a cost on the present self, without paying compensation.

20. Dworkin, , Will Clinton's Plan be Fair? New York Review of Books, 01 13, 1994, p. 20.Google Scholar For a similar argument, see Brock, Dan W., Life and Death: Philosophical Essays in Biomedical Ethics 358–60 (1993).Google Scholar