Transformative Experience

This essay is based on Transformative Experience that is within the field of formal epistemology. Using decision theory, phenomenology, epistemology and philosophy of mind, Paul delves in to how experiences are transformative when they change people both epistemically and personally. In this report, I’ll explain what defines a transformative experience (TE), and explore how new and novel experiences are valued highly by people. I’ll include Paul’s vampire thought experiment that shows how important life choices present a challenge to rational choice, and how the usual subjective deliberation leads people to hit an ‘epistemic wall’. Conflicting preferences between current self and possible future selves arise when people try to deliberate over which self holds priority. Crucially, with a TE, what it is like to be you changes, after gaining new beliefs, desires and a radically new point of view, so the decisions faced over a life time can become deeply problematic as people naturally wish to choose rationally. Paul considers whether the epistemic gold standard in decision making can be achieved in the realms of transformative choice. Finally, Paul’s conclusion is in choosing to embrace the revelatory nature of a transformative experience when she argues, “the best response…is to choose based on whether we want to discover who we’ll become” (Paul, 2014 : 8).

Epistemic transformation + personal transformation = Transformative experience

Epistemic transformation

An epistemically transformative experience provides you with new information you can only obtain by having the experience yourself, such as tasting a new fruit or seeing colour for the first time. This results in a change in subjective point of view (POV), and new cognitive abilities to understand life in a different way by gaining new information.

Personal transformation

A personally transformative experience changes how you experience being who you are, including a radically new POV and a shift in core personal preferences including beliefs and desires.

Transformative experience

Paul’s focus is on experiences that are both epistemically and personally transformative and she determines this as a transformative experience (TE). When reaching these “metaphorical crossroads in your path towards self realisation” (Paul, 2014 : 24), a person will learn something new, that could not have been known before having the experience. With each transformational experience, such as having a baby, or choosing a career, “you causally form what it will be like to be you in your future”. As a result, “you own your future, because it is you who made the choice to bring this future - your very own future self - into being” (Paul, 2014 : 24). TE are philosophically important because they raise a special problem for decision making made from the subjective perspective of the individual that is to do with the structure and rationality of making such transformative decisions, including how people value new experiences.

THE VALUE OF NEW EXPERIENCES

Paul states “because we value gains in cognitive abilities, understanding, and information, what it’s like to have experiences matters to us” (Paul, 2014 : 16). TE enable people to expand their epistemic space by gaining new capacities for imagination as well as representational abilities that can possibly be used to make inferences as to the value of future experiences or to entertain certain contexts. The values referred to are first person psychological values grounded in cognitive phenomenology and describe what it is like to be in a specific experiential state or what it is like to have an experience. These values include a range of mental states, emotions, beliefs and desires. As the first person experiencer with “a phenomenally centered conscious perspective” (Paul, 2017 : 10) what an experience is like is important to us, and we care deeply about making ‘the right choices’.

Paul argues, “we especially care about having experiences of different sorts” and this can drive people to seek out new experiences so that they feel they are expanding their horizons and developing themselves in new and rich ways (Paul, 2014 : 16).

People will want to make a choice rationally and authentically by thinking about what they value, what their preferences are and what the probable outcomes will be in future. But, as will be shown, with TE, this approach doesn’t work in the way people may expect or wish.

THE PROBLEM

Vampire thought experiment & the challenge to rational choice

Paul asks us to imagine having the chance to become a vampire, who would gain immortal strength, speed and power, but far less appealingly you would desire to drink blood and wish to avoid sunshine. If all of your friends had taken the decision already and provide glowing testimony that it was the best decision they made in their lives, would you do it too? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, making it a high stakes decision. This thought experiment may seem an extreme way to make the point – but Paul likens becoming a parent to becoming a vampire, with it’s soaring highs and possibly crushing lows, that is such a new experience because of the previously unknown strong attachment to the child. There is an epistemic wall, or an inaccessibility to the intrinsic nature of the experience that presents a challenge to rational choice from a first person view. The subjective value for what it's like to be you changes, along with core preferences too. Paul highlights that relying on testimony of friends in this situation is not comforting, as the friends who have become vampires already have totally new and different preferences now. So, how can one make a choice without full knowledge of who they will become once they do?

NORMATIVE DECISION THEORY

The special problem for decision-making in respect of TE, is that a radically new experience cannot be assigned a value until the agent has undergone the decision to embrace it. People cannot assign values to outcomes where they do not know the relevant values or because they will change in unknown ways. (Paul, 2014 : 41). Mentally running a cognitive simulation won’t help, as experiences that involve a kind of revelation can only be assigned a value once it has been experienced from a first personal, imaginative POV (Paul, 2014 : 97). To choose rationally, a person must “determine the approximate value of each relevant outcome..determine the weighted value of each outcome given the probability of the world being such that the relevant state would occur, and then use this information to estimate the expected value of each act, choosing the act with the highest expected value” (Paul, 2014 : 98). The rational decision maker must choose the highest value given her current preferences. But why should you be biased towards your epistemically impoverished self when you don’t know any different? In the case of TE, this model does not fit, as preferences will change, and outcomes and values are unknown.

HOW TO APPROACH TE

We can change how we take a decision, such as having an experience so we can say we have had it. We can try a new and unusual fruit such as durian and can value having had the fruit versus the value of avoiding having the fruit (having the revelation versus avoiding the revelation). This then makes it rational. However, this only works in low stakes choices. With high stakes choices such as becoming a vampire, you have no idea what you’re missing and you have no idea what you’re getting yourself in to. Paul argues that “we need to develop new decision theoretic models if we want to use normative decision theory as a guide for rational transformative choice” and this requires further research (Paul, 2014 : 196). In the end, her suggested approach is to make a decision based on whether we want to discover who we’ll become and “in concert with our best moral, legal and empirical standards”. Ultimately, her argument is that with TE, by not taking a decision people are re-affirming their current life, preferences and POV, or by taking a leap in to the unknown, they will gain a radically new POV, beliefs and desires, and it may or may not be a good outcome. Making a life altering decision is related to radical responsibility for one’s personal choices and authenticity in being true to oneself, but there isn’t time to delve deeper to these topics now. Paul thinks, “there can be value in discovering how one’s preferences and lived experience develop, simply for what experience teaches” (Paul, 2014 : 196).

CONCLUSION: REVELATION

Paul argues that it’s important you are the one to decide, since you care very much…how the outcome of this decision is going to affect your future and of those you love (Paul, 2014 : 26). So, naturally people will deliberate when faced with a quandary, but it is not truly rational to decide based on unknown values and outcomes. Considering our best moral, legal and empirical standards is a part of the subjective deliberation but doesn't convince people whether to take a choice or not. Paul highlights that mistakes may be made in the game of revelation, but due to the way we value cognitive gains and experience generally, it may well be worth it for the expansion of epistemic space and to gain worldly wisdom. So, “the game of revelation” (Paul, 2014 : 196) is one where people choose whether they want to find out who they’ll become if they choose to be a parent, a singer or a lecturer, or whether they want to affirm their current life as it is. Ultimately, this book provides an invitation to the curious to feel inspired and to think differently about life decisions, and to remind us that experience is the best teacher.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Paul, L.A., 2014, Transformative Experience, Oxford University Press, UK

Gopnik, Alison, 2015, The Atlantic, “How an 18th-century philosopher helped me solve my midlife crisis”. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/how-david-hume-helped-me-solve-my-midlife-crisis/403195/

Weisberg, Jonathan, "Formal Epistemology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/formal-epistemology/>. [Date accessed: 28 March 2020]

Paul, L.A., 2017, Preferences and Empathy for Future Selves [e-journal]  Philosophical Perspectives, 31, Philosophy of Mind, De Se doi: 10.1111/phpe.12090