Sche View From Everywhere
The View from everywhere: temporal self-experience and the Good life
“I agree with Velleman that our experience is inherently multi-perspectival but argue that there are more than two relevant perspectives and reject the claim that these perspectives have independent interests.” (Schechtman, 2022, p. 1) (pdf)
There are two ways of trying to measure well-being. On the first, the well-being of a life is measured by an accumulation of all of the moments of that life. One way to understand this is by looking, for instance, at consecutive moments of a person’s life, and determining how, when the person looks back, they feel.
On the other, we look at individual moments of a person’s life. Each moment cannot be compared to another. Momentary experiences can outweigh the total sum.
“Expanding his metaphor of narrative, I describe the way in which these perspectives continuously influence and affect one another, and suggest that living well can be understood in terms of skillful management of the perspectives that make up this complex form of temporal self-experience.” (Schechtman, 2022, p. 1) (pdf)
Schechtman argues instead, there are two perspectives of measurement. What the person aims to do with the measurement, will determine which perspective they ought to consider in measuring a life.
It is thought that our experience of ourselves in time plays a crucial role in living a good life
the two approaches supporting this view are opposed regarding how to live well, but they share two important assumptions
David Velleman denies the second of these assumptions, that life can be measured in momentary experiences.
However, I reject his claim that the two assumptions are independent and question the implication that there are only two relevant temporal perspectives within a life
Section 1: Two Perspectives
Whole-life approach
Two forms
prudential reasoning and the capacity of humans to step back from the pulls of the moment to consider the consequences of following these impulses for the overall well-being of their lives as wholes (foregoing smaller pleasures for larger ones later, defer satisfaction of immediate desire to obtain greater satisfaction overall)
forces us to think about
what we want for our lives overall
make complex plans, projects, commitments, and interpersonal relationships that give human lives depth and meaning
argues that activities and relationships we value most, those which give life its richness, require time
to conceive of their possibility, we must understand ourselves as persisting beings, and coordinate our actions over a temporally extended span
Live-for-Today Approach
focuses on the way in which identification with temporally extended perspective can be stifling and constrictive
focusing on past and future undermines our ability to be present in our lives (the present)
slaves to our plans and projects losing perspective on whether we still believe in them
Section 2: Velleman’s Narrative
Challenges the idea that human temporal perspective is binary
and the claim of strong independence among our temporal perspectives found in his arguments
Section 3: Alternative view of human temporal self-experience
complex
multi-dimensional