Transformative Choice
A Transformative Choice is a consequential choice that may result in a transformative experience (which provides new knowledge or understanding that can only be gained by undergoing that experience, and also changes the core preferences, values, and desires of the person who undergoes it).
References
2023
- chat
- Q: Summarize the first half of ().
- A: The article discusses the ethical questions surrounding individuals who may try to prevent others from making transformative choices in their lives. Transformative choices refer to decisions that may result in a transformative experience, which can be defined as an experience that provides new knowledge or understanding that can only be gained by undergoing that experience, and also changes the core preferences, values, and desires of the person who undergoes it. The article argues that while there has been much discussion surrounding first-personal rational choice and agency in relation to transformative experiences, there has been little exploration of the ethical questions surrounding our behavior towards others who face such choices. The article aims to explore the conditions under which it may be morally permissible to interfere in another's decision to undergo a transformative experience and argues for a moral right to revelatory autonomy in relation to these choices.
2023
- chat
- Q: Provide several examples of "transformative choice".
- A: Examples of "transformative choice" could include:
- Deciding to go to university and pursue higher education
- Choosing to start a new career or change careers
- Making the decision to become a parent
- Opting to go to war or serve in the military
- Choosing to take a university course or read moving literature
- Deciding to move away from one's hometown or village to pursue other opportunities
- Choosing to quit a high-paying city job to become a school teacher
- Deciding to undergo a transformative experience such as a spiritual journey or transformative therapy.
2022
- (Akhlaghi, 2022) ⇒ Farbod Akhlaghi. (2022). “Transformative Experience and the Right to Revelatory Autonomy.” In: Analysis:1-10. DOI:0.1093/analys/anac084
- ABSTRACT: Sometimes it is not us but those to whom we stand in special relations that face transformative choices: our friends, family, or beloved. A focus upon first-personal rational choice and agency has left crucial ethical questions regarding what we owe to those who face transformative choices largely unexplored. In this paper, I ask: under what conditions, if any, is it morally permissible to interfere with to try to prevent another from making a transformative choice? Some seemingly plausible answers to this question fail precisely because they concern transformative experiences. I argue that we have a distinctive moral right to revelatory autonomy grounded in the value of autonomous self-making. If this right is outweighed then, I argue, interfering to prevent another making a transformative choice is permissible. This conditional answer lays the groundwork for a promising ethics of transformative experience.
- QUOTE: ... Transformative experiences differ in valence: they can be positively or negatively transformative (Carel and Kidd 2020: 207–9). Positive epistemically transformative experiences increase our knowledge or understanding, and negative ones decrease them; positive personally transformative experiences change who we are for the better, morally or prudentially, and negative ones change us for the worse.
Perhaps, then, we may permissibly interfere with another’s transformative choice just when that experience will be a negative epistemically or personally transformative experience. For example, if Adam’s becoming a parent were to make him worse off epistemically or personally, then Charlie may permissibly try to dissuade Adam from doing this.
The problem, however, is that this view ignores that there are paradigmatic cases of transformative experiences where we do not know or we have no good reason to believe that they will be positive or negative until after they have happened.3 Becoming a parent, for example, is a positive personally transformative experience for some but not others (like those who learn they are emotionally incapable of good parenting). ...
- ... Answering The Question, I suggest, requires recognizing that the above views face their objections precisely because they concern transformative experiences. ...
- I suggest that it is highly plausible that we have:
- (Revelatory Autonomy) The moral right to autonomously decide to discover how one’s life will go and who one will become by making a transformative choice.6
- ... It is the value of autonomously self-making that grounds the right to revelatory autonomy.7
Such a right generates this correlative duty:
- (Revelatory Non-Interference) The moral duty not to interfere in the autonomous self-making of others, through their choosing to undergo transformative experiences to discover who they will become. ...