I would like to add a couple of further considerations to Douglas Burnham's response. I there is too much inconsistency between what a person professes to believe and what that person does, we have reason to doubt that she really believes what she says she does. If a friend claims to believe that killing animals is seriously wrong, yet continues to eat meat with no qualms whatsoever, I will doubt the sincerity of her belief; I will suspect that her professed 'belief' is merely a popular thing to say in certain contexts, or that it is merely an expression of the repulsion that she feels when she imagines certain scenes. Likewise, if a person professes to be an atheist but regularly and earnestly worships god, I will doubt his claim to be an atheist. If there is too much inconsistency between your beliefs one day and your beliefs the next, or your beliefs in one context and your beliefs in another, people will have a hard time relating to you as a single person and you will have a hard time...

Procrastination sometimes occurs because our immediate, short-term desires prevail over our calculations concerning longer-term costs and benefits. This does not make us into what Frankfurt calls "wantons", since we are still capable of reflective reasoning and we are still capable of being guided by such reasons. It just means that we sometimes suffer from a 'weakness of will'. (Explaining weakness of the will would require a much longer discussion.) Procrastination is sometimes quite reasonable, though. First, because the farther we project into the future, the lower the probability of the anticipated costs and benefits. Doing a chore now, while I am alert and happy might be less onerous than doing it later, when I am tired and crabby; but the farther I project into the future, the more doubts I should have about whether I will be tired and crabby when I do the chore, whether the chore will still be annoying, and whether it will even need doing. The current pleasure of doing something...

Your question concerns the nature of our rights and obligations with respect to our future selves. My answer shall simply assume, as I think you do, that the angel's prediction is utterly reliable, that there won't be other ways to access Kenny G music in the future, that the pleasure of my future self is not immoral, and that stocking up on Kenny G records is not a huge inconvenience to your present self. The rationality of your decision then depends on two things: (1) how much you care about your future self, and (2) how much you care that your future self be like your present self. (1) Some people care a lot about their future selves and try to plan accordingly -- making sacrifices in the present in order to secure the happiness of future selves, and taking pleasure in the mere contemplation of a future self's happiness. Others care much less -- investing little in the happiness of future selves, and finding little pleasure in the contemplation of a future self's happiness. This contrast is...

I agree with your observation that (at least for the most part) beliefs will make us happy on account of their content, not on accout of how they are formed -- rationally versus irrationally. And unlike Alexander George, I think that this observation presents a significant challenge to Peter Smith's claim that irrational beliefs are not likely to lead to actions that get us what we want -- since actions that result from false but happy-making beliefs may often create more happiness than actions that result from true but sad-making beliefs. A simple, and common, example is the case where a seriously ill person's false and irrational belief that they are now out of danger actually helps them to recover. Another common example is that of the person whose overconfidence actually improves their likelihood of success.

It is rational to reject a purported explanation for a number of reasons: 1. Because a better explanation is available. (This is what you don't have in the case of strange happenings in your friend's house.) 2. Because the explanation relies on assumptions that are sufficiently doubtful for independent reasons. (The ghost explanation, for example, assumes that individual people can continue to act in the world even after their bodies disintegrate. Since we have independent reasons for believing that an individual's memories, desires, and plans all depend on the existence of appropriate brain states, we have good reason to doubt this assumption.) 3. Because it is too general, or too vague, to account for the specifics of the situation. (Explaining sounds in the night by reference to a ghost's movements, for example, doesn't say enough about why these particular sounds would be made by this particular ghost, at this particular time.) 4. Because there is a long history of similar...