Transformative experience and the shark problem
Abstract
In her ground-breaking and highly influential book Transformative Experience, L.A. Paul makes two claims: (1) one cannot evaluate and compare certain experiential outcomes (e.g. being a parent and being a non-parent) unless one can grasp what these outcomes are like; and (2) one can evaluate and compare certain intuitively horrible outcomes (e.g. being eaten alive by sharks) as bad and worse than certain other outcomes even if one cannot grasp what these intuitively horrible outcomes are like. We argue that the conjunction of these two claims leads to an implausible discontinuity in the evaluability of outcomes. One implication of positing such a discontinuity is that evaluative comparisons of outcomes will not be proportionally sensitive to variation in the underlying features of these outcomes. This puts pressure on Paul to abandon either (1) or (2). But (1) is central to her view and (2) is very hard to deny. We call this the Shark Problem.
Keywords
L.A. Paul Transformative experience Rational choice Subjective value The shark problem SpectrumNotes
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the participants in the PPE seminar of the Institute for Futures Studies (IFFS), Stockholm, April 2017; the 2017 Stockholm June Workshop in Philosophy, Stockholm University; and the 2018 conference New Perspectives on Transformative Experience, University of Gothenburg, for their helpful comments on this paper. Special thanks L.A. Paul, Vuko Andric, Paul Bowman, Krister Bykvist, Erik Carlson, and Luke Elson for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. In addition, we would like to thank Nomy Arpaly, Gustaf Arrhenius, Johan Brännmark, Lisa Furberg, Anna-Sofia Maurin, Alain Pe-Curto, H. Orri Stefansson, and Irina Vartanova for her very helpful assistance with the diagrams in this paper.
Funding
Funding was provided by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (SE) (Grant No. M170372:1).
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