Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change - Hardcover

by Enoch Lambert (Author), John Schwenkler (Editor)

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.

Author Biography

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.