A rational route to transformative decisions

Abstract

According to Paul (Transformative experience, 1st edn, Oxford University Press, 2014), transformative experiences pose a challenge to decision theory since their value cannot be anticipated. Building on Pettigrew’s (in: Lambert, Schwenkler (eds) Becoming someone new: essays on transformative experience, choice, and change, Oxford University Press, pp 100–121, 2020) redescription, this paper presents a new approach to how and when transformative decisions can nevertheless be made rationally. Thanks to fundamental higher-order facts that apply to any kind of experience, an agent always at least knows the general shape of the utility space. This in combination with the knowledge about the non-transformative alternative in the choice set can enable rational decision-making despite the presence of a transformative experience. For example, this paper’s approach provides novel arguments for why gender transition (cf. McKinnon in Res Philosophica 92(2):419–440, 2015) or staying childfree (cf. Barnes in Philos Phenomenol Res 91(3):775–786, 2015) can be rational.

Rational transformative decision-making

“…And even if she knew that the general utility space is tilted towards the negative (cf. Villiger, 2021 ), she would not know to what extent (e.g. the neutral point could be 0.6 or 0.7).…”

“…While there is no clear answer to this question (and no similar discussion in other accounts of rational transformative decision-making, cf. Barnes, 2015;Chang, 2015;Dougherty et al, 2015;Pettigrew, 2015Pettigrew, , 2016Pettigrew, , 2020Sharadin, 2015;Villiger, 2021), I make the following suggestion. The required credence should depend on how strong the agent's association between desired transformative outcomes and positive subjective value is: the weaker this association, the higher the required credence must be.…”

“… 2 The differentiation between subjective and non-subjective values (sometimes also called phenomenal and non-phenomenal values or experiential and non-experiential values) has been introduced by Paul ( 2014 ) and constitutes a fundamental and well-accepted aspect in the debate on transformative experiences (cf. Barnes, 2015 ; Bykvist & Stefánsson, 2017 ; Chang, 2015 ; Kauppinen, 2015 ; Reuter & Messerli, 2018 ; Sharadin, 2015 ; Talbott, 2016 ; Villiger, 2021 ). While this differentiation and its implications can of course be criticised, the goal of the present paper is to make a contribution within the debate on transformative experiences.…”

“…Consequently, any overall good experience has greater than zero subjective value, and any overall bad experience has less than zero subjective value (cf. Villiger, 2021 ).…”

“…We can set the following anchor to define positive, neutral and negative subjective values: the subjective value of zero is associated with experiences that, overall, are neither positive nor negative and thus can be described as being neutral. Consequently, any overall good experience has greater than zero subjective value, and any overall bad experience has less than zero subjective value (cf Villiger, 2021)…”