Transformative Choices

This paper proposes a way to understand transformative choices, choices that change ‘who you are.’ First, it distinguishes two broad models of transformative choice: 1) ‘event-based’ transformative choices in which some event—perhaps an experience—downstream from a choice transforms you, and 2) ‘choice-based’ transformative choices in which the choice itself—and not something downstream from the choice—transforms you. Transformative choices are of interest primarily because they purport to pose a challenge to standard approaches to rational choice. An examination of the event-based transformative choices of L. A. Paul and Edna Ullman-Margalit, however, suggests that event-based transformative choices don’t raise any difficulties for standard approaches to rational choice. An account of choice-based transformative choices—and what it is to be transformed—is then proposed. Transformative choices so understood not only capture paradigmatic cases of transformative choice but also point the way to a different way of thinking about rational choice and agency. An angel walks into a fractious philosophy department meeting and says to the Chair: “I’ll give you one of three gifts you choose: Wisdom, Truth, or Ten Million Dollars.” The Chair chooses Wisdom. She is transformed! But all she does is sit there, staring down at the table. One of her colleagues whispers to her, “Say something!” The Chair replies, “I should have taken the money.”1 Some choices are transformative; they change who we are. But what is transformative choice? What is transformation and what gets transformed in a transformative choice? How does transformation take place? And if transformative choices are rational, how can they be rational? 1 Adapted from Carthcart and Klein 2007, 79. Res Philosophica, Vol. 92, No. 2, April 2015, pp. 237–282 http://dx.doi.org/10.11612/resphil.2015.92.2.14 c © 2015 Ruth Chang • c © 2015 Res Philosophica