IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/utilit/v18y2006i03p264-283_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prudence for Changing Selves

Author

Listed:
  • BYKVIST, KRISTER

Abstract

What is the prudentially right thing to do in situations in which our actions will shape our preferences? Suppose, for instance, that you are considering getting married, and that you know that if you get married, you will prefer being unmarried, and that if you stay unmarried, you will prefer being married. This is the problem I will deal with in this article. I will begin by explaining why preferences matter to prudence. I will then go on to discuss a couple of unsuccessful theories and see what we can learn from their mistakes. One of the most important lessons is that how you would have felt about a life had you never led it is irrelevant to the question of what you prudentially ought to do. My theory takes this into account. What counts is how you feel about a life when you are actually leading it.

Suggested Citation

  • Bykvist, Krister, 2006. "Prudence for Changing Selves," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(3), pages 264-283, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:utilit:v:18:y:2006:i:03:p:264-283_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0953820806002032/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Krister Bykvist, 2010. "Happiness in a Flux? The Instability Problem," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 11(5), pages 553-565, October.
    2. Bales, Adam & Cohen, Daniel & Handfield, Toby, 2013. "Decision theory for agents with incomplete preferences," MPRA Paper 49954, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:utilit:v:18:y:2006:i:03:p:264-283_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/uti .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.