Tính hợp lý và trung lập tạm thời có thể tự hỏi làm thế nào tôi có thể chỉ trích những thành kiến như thời gian nhận thức không hợp lý khi tôi phải từ bỏ khả năng một bài phê bình của sự phi lý của thái độ nhận thức cho mở rộng vượt ra ngoài một bài phê bình của sự phi lý của các cơ sở nhận thức của họ. | 196 Rationality and Temporal Neutrality It might be wondered how I can censure such temporal biases as cognitively irrational when I have disowned the possibility of a critique of the irrationality of para-cognitive attitudes that extends beyond a critique of the irrationality of their cognitive bases. For there is in fact and so it is not irrational to think that there is some difference between two events which happen at numerically distinct times and it is at least conceivable that for some subjects this difference suffices to make a difference in respect of their attitudes to the events. This must be conceded but it could still be true that given how we actually seem to be it is very improbable that we would respond differently to purely temporal differences. The reason for this may well have to do with these differences being purely relational and not ones of quality . Although such recognitions of mere differences in timing by themselves conceivably could be the bases of temporal partiality I shall maintain that this is in fact not so with respect to our partiality. If such differences in timing by themselves were the root of our temporal partiality we should expect this partiality to rear its head not only when one considers one s own life but to an equal extent when one considers the lives of others for these are no less subject to time. But as will transpire this is not so. Compare in the foregoing chapter we noted that the P-bias is a bias not towards the present but towards what each of us perceives of it. The ground for this partiality lies in a mechanism that is at work primarily when each of us views our own existence unravel through time. I hope to make it credible that this mechanism is inimical to rational deliberation. This is why I shall condemn our temporal biases as being cognitively irrational. It follows that if we are rationalists we shall be rationally required to be temporally neutral but that will not be so if we are prudentialists or .
