When, if ever, do we wrong ourselves? The Self-Other Symmetric answer is: when we do to ourselves what would wrong a consenting other. The standard objection, which has gone unchallenged for decades, is that Symmetry seems to imply that we wrong ourselves in too many cases—where rights are unwaivable, or “self-consent” is lacking. I argue that Symmetry not only survives these would-be counterexamples; it explains and unifies them. The key to Symmetry is not, as critics have supposed, the bizarre claim that we must literally give ourselves consent if we are to avoid wronging ourselves. Instead, it is that we authorize ourselves simply by making decisions, just as we can authorize others by making decisions jointly.

中文翻译：

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 委屈自己


如果有的话，我们什么时候会错误地对待自己呢？自他对称的答案是：当我们对自己做一些事情时，就会冒犯其他同意的人。几十年来一直没有受到质疑的标准反对意见是，对称性似乎意味着我们在太多情况下都错了——在权利不可放弃或缺乏“自我同意”的情况下。我认为，对称性不仅能在这些可能的反例中幸存下来，而且还能在这些反例中幸存下来。它解释并统一了它们。对称性的关键并不像批评家所认为的那样，是一种奇怪的主张，即如果我们想避免委屈自己，就必须真正给予自己同意。相反，我们只是通过做决定来授权自己，就像我们可以通过共同做决定来授权他人一样。