The People We Could Have Become: Alternative Selves, Biographical Counterfactuals, Identity, and Regret

When we imagine how our lives might have unfolded after a different choice, we often alter the events while leaving the person who imagines them largely unchanged. Yet choices can change not only our circumstances but also the conditions under which later choices are made, including the commitments and standards through which a life is evaluated. This paper examines the inferences we may draw from present regret about an unrealized life. Its central claim is that present regret does not, by itself, establish either that the person formed by the alternative history would have endorsed that life or that it would have been better for them. The argument distinguishes psychological, biographical, and evaluative continuity, treating the last as a possible basis for attributing judgments rather than a criterion of numerical identity or a necessary condition of agreement. It also identifies a methodological risk: counterfactual imagination may silently select the branch that preserves the present self or best satisfies present ideals, then present that construction as a determinate account of who we would have become. Informed, defeasible reconstruction remains possible, but it lacks correction by the alternative subject’s testimony and conduct. The paper offers neither a theory of personal identity nor a general account of well-being. It clarifies the limits of speaking for an alternative self from the standpoint of the life actually lived.