Becoming Someone New

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Becoming Someone New

Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change

Edited by Enoch Lambert and John Schwenkler

Addresses central philosophical debates concerning the topic of transformative experience
Includes original and ground-breaking work
Draws on many areas of philosophy, including philosophy of mind, aesthetics, value theory, and more
Combines philosophical essays with novel experimental work

Becoming Someone New

Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change

Edited by Enoch Lambert and John Schwenkler

Description

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.

Becoming Someone New

Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change

Edited by Enoch Lambert and John Schwenkler

Table of Contents

Introduction, Enoch Lambert and John Schwenkler
1. Who Will I Become?, L.A. Paul
2. Being Someone Else, Martin Glazier
3. How Personal Theories of the Self Shape Beliefs About Personal Continuity and Transformative Experience, Sarah Molouki, Stephanie Y. Cheng, Oleg Urminsky, and Daniel M. Bartels
4. Models of Transformative Decision Making, Samuel Zimmerman and Tomer Ullman
5. Transformative Experience and the Knowledge Norms for Action: Moss on Paul's Challenge to Decision Theory, Richard Pettigrew
6. What Is it Like to Have a Crappy Imagination?, Nomy Arpaly
7. What Imagination Teaches, Amy Kind
8. Transformative Activities, Agnes Callard
9. Transformative Expression, Nick Riggle
10. Learning from Moral Failure, Matthew Cashman and Fiery Cushman
11. Risking Belief, John Schwenkler
12. What Can Adaptive Preferences and Transformative Experiences Do for Each Other?, Rosa Terlazzo
13. Punishment and Transformation, Jennifer Lackey
14. Either/Or: Subjectivity, Objectivity, and Value, Katalin Balog
15. Death: The Ultimate Transformative Experience, Evan Thompson

Becoming Someone New

Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change

Edited by Enoch Lambert and John Schwenkler

Author Information

Enoch Lambert, Postdoctoral Associate, Centre for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University,John Schwenkler, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University

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.

Contributors:

Nomy Arpaly, Brown University
Katalin Balog, Rutgers University
Daniel M. Bartels, University of Chicago
Agnes Callard, University of Chicago
Matthew Cashman, MIT
Stephanie Y. Chen, London Business School
Fiery Cushman, Harvard University
Martin Glazier, University of Hamburg
Amy Kind, Claremont McKenna College
Jennifer Lackey, Northwestern University
L.A. Paul, Yale University
Sarah Molouki, University of Chicago
Richard Pettigrew, University of Bristol
Nick Riggle, University of San Diego
John Schwenkler, Florida State University
Rosa Terlazzo, Kansas State University
Tomer Ullman, Harvard University
Oleg Urminsky, University of Chicago
Samuel Zimmerman, Harvard University
Evan Thompson, University of British Columbia