L.A. Paul, a Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Yale, delves into the complexities of transformative experiences that alter personal identity. She discusses life-changing decisions like parenthood and their unpredictable impacts on our preferences. Paul challenges the rational decision-making models we rely on when faced with such choices, emphasizing the emotional factors involved. The conversation also touches on how shifts in identity affect our beliefs and the challenges of understanding our future selves, alongside the importance of empathy in navigating life’s transitions.
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Transformative Decisions
Transformative experiences change who you are, making it hard to make related decisions.
Your post-transformation preferences might not align with your current ones, rendering advice irrelevant.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Vampire Example
Laurie Paul uses the thought experiment of becoming a vampire to illustrate transformative experience.
The example highlights the difficulty of understanding such a change without experiencing it firsthand.
insights INSIGHT
Degrees of Transformation
Transformative experiences range in intensity and impact.
Laurie Paul focuses on radical transformations that induce profound epistemic and personal shifts.
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In 'Transformative Experience', L.A. Paul argues that certain life choices, such as deciding to become a parent, converting to a religion, or medically altering one's physical and mental capacities, are transformative experiences that cannot be assessed in advance. These experiences change the person in both epistemic and personal ways, making it impossible to make fully informed decisions based on current preferences and values. Paul uses classic philosophical examples and recent work in decision theory, cognitive science, and the philosophy of mind to develop a rigorous account of how we should understand and approach such transformative decisions.
It’s hard to make decisions that will change your life. It’s even harder to make a decision if you know that the outcome could change who you are. Our preferences are determined by who we are, and they might be quite different after a decision is made — and there’s no rational way of taking that into account. Philosopher L.A. Paul has been investigating these transformative experiences — from getting married, to having a child, to going to graduate school — with an eye to deciding how to live in the face of such choices. Of course we can ask people who have made such a choice what they think, but that doesn’t tell us whether the choice is a good one from the standpoint of our current selves, those who haven’t taken the plunge. We talk about what this philosophical conundrum means for real-world decisions, attitudes towards religious faith, and the tricky issue of what it means to be authentic to yourself when your “self” keeps changing over time.
L.A. (Laurie) Paul received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. She is currently professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Yale University. She has worked extensively on causation, the philosophy of time, mereology, and transformative experience. She has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the Australian National University. Among her books are the monograph Transformative Experience; she is currently working on a popular-level book on this theme.
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