Modal Prospection

Abstract

Drawing together the metaphysics of counterfactuals with empirical work on intuitive judgments, this chapter discusses the nature of counterfactual reasoning about self-involving possibilities. It argues that when a person reasons about her self-involving possibilities, especially far-fetched possibilities, this reasoning may be supported by an underlying “self simulator,” a kind of mental engine with an approximate understanding of who she is, which enables her to learn about her preferences and make intuitive judgments and predictions about her self-involving possibilities. On this view, through observing or simulating their own choices, people understand themselves through a process similar to that by which they understand other people. In this way, they learn about their own beliefs and desires. The argument is informed by empirical data from surveys where lay people and philosophers decided what action they would take in vignettes involving a potentially transformative decision.

How We Know What Not To Think

“…Once the relevant part of the partition is selected (e.g., the part corresponding to what 'might be'), traditional approaches often induce orderings of the possibilities within the relevant part of the partition (e.g., from most to least probable). The relevant dimension of ordering will depend on the task at hand [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. It could involve ordering possibilities according to their probability, morality, accessibility, etc.…”

Letting rationalizations out of the box

“…People take pleasure in answering such thought experiments (McCoy et al 2019) because information gained in this way is rewarding, in the same way that any information gain or uncertainty reduction may be rewarding in and of itself (Auer et al 2002). This dynamic of answering from inaccessible modules and updating a theory of those modules can also explain how people can surprise themselves in such thought experiments (McCoy et al 2019), to the degree that there is a misalignment between the two.…”

How the evaluability bias shapes transformative decisions

“…Reuter and Messerli (2018) attack the presupposition that people care about subjective value. McCoy et al (2019) take the opposite tack, and find that most people think they can discover something about their preferences by thinking through transformative scenarios. Molouki et al (2020) look at how a person's intuitive theory of the self is influenced by beliefs about personally transformative experience.…”