In this article, I defend the thesis that selfishness and altruism can be intrapersonal . In doing so, I argue that the notions of intrapersonal altruism and selfishness usefully pick out behavioural patterns and have predictive value. I also argue that my thesis helps enrich our understanding of the prudential, and can subsume some interesting work in economic and psychological theory.

Typical justifications of prudence are based on the fact that we are temporally extended agents who remain numerically identical over time. After showing that prudential considerations should instead be based on our identity at a particular time, I outline a normative context for prudential reasons, based on a present commitment to temporal neutrality. I then consider how contingency in the content of a present commitment to temporal neutrality provides a flexible context that can help to resolve current debates about whether (...) agents are required to maximize value, maximin value, minimax loss or are required to conform to any of a host of other options on how to adjudicate various types of conflict between present and future values. (shrink)

Developing themes in the work of Thomas Hill, I argue that servility is an underappreciated but pervasive reason for moral transgression. Recognizing servility as a basic cause of immorality obliges us to reconsider questions about the rationality of morality. Traditional answers to the problem of the immoralist, which tend to be stated in terms of enlightened self-interest, fail to properly engage the problems posed by 'servile immorality.' In response to these problems, I develop a Humean version of a traditionally Kantian (...) strategy for substantiating the rationality of morality: (i.e.) agents' conceptions of themselves commit them to accepting morality's authority. Servile behavior implies cognitive dissonance, which can restructure or dissolve those particular desires, beliefs, and projects that constitute agents' most highly valued contingent conceptions of themselves. I conclude that agents have reason to abstain from servility even on a parsimonious Humean account of practical reasons. (shrink)