There’s No Time Like the Present

Abstract

Abstract This chapter investigates the connection between temporal attitudes (attitudes characterized by a concern (or lack thereof) about future and past events), beliefs about temporal ontology (beliefs about the existence of future and past events), and temporal preferences (preferences regarding where in time events are located). Our aim is to probe the connection between these preferences, attitudes, and beliefs, in order to better evaluate the normative status of these preferences. We investigate the hypothesis that there is a three-way association between (a) being present-biased (that is, preferring that positive events are located in the present, and negative events are located in the non-present), (b) believing that past and future events do not exist, and (c) tending to have present-focused rather than non-present-focused temporal attitudes. Our findings have important consequences for, first, explaining why we exhibit these preferences and, second, for their normative evaluation.