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Epistemology Current Themes Seminar: Richard Pettigrew (Bristol) “Paul meets Buchak: how transformative experiences raise problems for risk-sensitive rational choice”
4th May 2023 @ 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
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Abstract: In Transformative Experience, L. A. Paul issues traditional decision theory with a challenge: when some of the options you might choose might lead you to have a transformative experience, whether epistemic or personal, decision theory cannot represent your choice and cannot govern how you should make it. In Choosing for Changing Selves, I argued that expected utility theory can meet that challenge. But now I think expected utility theory isn’t the correct theory of rational choice—rather, it’s something close to risk-weighted expected utility theory, which is spelled out and defended by Lara Buchak in Risk and Rationality. Since that theory is more permissive than expected utility theory, you might expect that the solutions to Paul’s puzzles that I proposed on behalf of the latter will carry over. But, as I will argue in this talk, the opposite is true. The possibility of transformative experiences poses substantial problems for those of us who wish to incorporate risk into rational choice.
