It seems to me there is an equivocation over the terms “present” and “future” in your “legitimate complaints” about the grapes. (I think we need to assume the endurantist picture of the self to allow for a binding contract.) We can highlight this by indexing the times. Suppose you borrow the grapes from me at time t and agree to pay them back at time t+1. Now, our agreed reason (at t) for the number of grapes being higher for the repayment is indeed because of a present-future relation: from t, “grapes at t+1” count as “future grapes”, and so by time-discounting logic there should be more of them. When we reach t+1, they are still “grapes at t+1”, and so you still owe me as many as we originally agreed. It’s of course true that now, you’d rather not, and you are no longer discounting “grapes at t+1” from your vantage point at t+1 (they now count as “present grapes”). But you’ve already made the agreement, which was not about what you experience as present and future grapes, but about time-indexed grapes.

To express this in your more metaphysical way, yes, consumption as something you do can only be done in the present. But consumption as something you evaluate can be done from different vantage points. So you can think about your future consumption, and make agreements based on it.

I’m not sure the symmetry point makes sense if we keep in mind we’re making the agreement at a particular point in time.

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    Senthuran Bhuvanendr

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    Absorbing. Scribbling. Waiting. Also tutoring in economics/maths, and interested in ethics, complexity, democracy, and political economy.