Suppose you're offered an opportunity to experience something that is unlike anything you have ever encountered, but that's all you know--aside from the fact that the experience is physically safe and morally acceptable. How do you decide whether to take up the offer? Several philosophers have recently argued that we are in similar situations for more of our decisions than we usually recognize. Are they right? What resources can we draw on to create such situations? Are they enough to satisfy our aims of making the best decisions we can, especially in high stakes situations?
This volume brings together philosophers and psychologists to investigate the phenomenon of transformative change and a host of fascinating questions it prompts. Taking their departure from seminal work on transformative choice and experience by L. A. Paul and Edna Ullmann-Margalit, the authors pursue fundamental questions concerning the nature of rationality, the limits of the imagination, and the metaphysics of the self. They also strike out into new areas, including value theory, aesthetics, moral and political philosophy. Several chapters present the results of experimental investigation into the psychology of transformation, self-concept, and moral learning.
Enoch Lambert and John Schwenkler: Introduction 1: L.A. Paul: Who Will I Become? 2: Martin Glazier: Being Someone Else 3: Sarah Molouki, Stephanie Y. Cheng, Oleg Urminsky, and Daniel M. Bartels: How Personal Theories of the Self Shape Beliefs About Personal Continuity and Transformative Experience 4: Samuel Zimmerman and Tomer Ullman: Models of Transformative Decision Making 5: Richard Pettigrew: Transformative Experience and the Knowledge Norms for Action: Moss on Paul's Challenge to Decision Theory 6: Nomy Arpaly: What Is it Like to Have a Crappy Imagination? 7: Amy Kind: What Imagination Teaches 8: Agnes Callard: Transformative Activities 9: Nick Riggle: Transformative Expression 10: Matthew Cashman and Fiery Cushman: Learning from Moral Failure 11: John Schwenkler: Risking Belief 12: Rosa Terlazzo: What Can Adaptive Preferences and Transformative Experiences Do for Each Other? 13: Jennifer Lackey: Punishment and Transformation 14: Katalin Balog: Either/Or: Subjectivity, Objectivity, and Value 15: Evan Thompson: Death: The Ultimate Transformative Experience
Enoch Lambert is Postdoctoral Associate in the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He has a PhD in philosophy from Harvard University, and he works on issues in philosophy of mind and biology. John Schwenkler is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of Anscombe's Intention: A Guide (OUP, 2019). His research interests are in the philosophy of mind and action.