Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This paper develops an account of existential choices and their role in practical reasoning. In contrast to other views that attempt to make sense of existential choices as a type of rational choice, the proposed account takes them to be choices among the normative outlooks that determine the reasons we have, and as such are nonrational. According to the argument in the paper, existential choices bring to light a feature of all choices, that they are made against the backdrop of (...) a normative outlook, which grounds the rationality of the choice but is not itself rationally determined. (shrink)

In “What you can’t expect when you’re expecting,” I argue that, if you don’t know what it’s like to be a parent, you cannot make this decision rationally—at least, not if your decision is based on what you think it would be like for you to become a parent. My argument hinges on the idea that becoming a parent is a transformative experience. This unique type of experience often transforms people in a deep and personal sense, and in the process, (...) changes their preferences. In section 1, I will explain transformative experience in terms of radical first-personal epistemic and self change. In section 2, I’ll explain the notion of subjective value that I use to develop the decision problem. In section 3, I will discuss the way we ordinarily combine our introspective assessments with testimony and evidence. In section 4, I will discuss the problems for rational decision-making. In section 5, I will explore the problem of first-personally transformed future selves. In section 6, I will engage with the main themes and arguments and ideas of the authors of the papers contributed to this volume. (shrink)

: In this essay, I argue that Kierkegaard endorses a “grace model” of ethical transformation – that radical normative change is not a function of agent-choice, rational or otherwise. After showing how grace functions in Kierkegaard’s account of religious transformation, I go on to argue that he offers a parallel account in the case of ethical conversion, the latter drawing from a description of transformation detailed in Kierkegaard’s Repetition. There we find an example of ethical transformation that challenges received interpretations (...) of the mechanics of Kierkegaard’s aesthetic-to-ethical transition. In the same way that God’s love is said to transform the heart of the Christian, Kierkegaard thinks that certain ethical encounters transform the desires and commitments of the aesthete. (shrink)

In Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant claims that all human beings are originally and radically evil: they choose to adopt a ‘supreme maxim’ that gives preference to sensibility over the moral law. Because Kant thinks that all agents have a duty to develop good character, part of his task in the Religion is to explain how moral conversion is possible. Four years after Kant publishes the Religion, J. G. Fichte takes up the issue of conversion in slightly (...) different terms: he is interested in how people he characterizes as ‘dogmatists’ become ‘idealist’. Against recent interpreters, I argue that Fichte characterizes the choice to convert from dogmatism to idealism as one that is grounded in a non-rational choice. Along the way, I consider Daniel Breazeale and Allen Wood’s recent arguments to the contrary, alternative accounts of what it might mean for a conversion to count as ‘rational’, and how well my conclusion harmonizes with Fichte’s views on education. (shrink)

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. (shrink)