Philos Stud
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01382-1
Transformative experience and the shark problem
Tim Campbell1
•
Julia Mosquera1
Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In her ground-breaking and highly influential book Transformative Experience, L.A. Paul makes two claims: (1) one cannot evaluate and compare certain experiential outcomes (e.g. being a parent and being a non-parent) unless one can grasp what
these outcomes are like; and (2) one can evaluate and compare certain intuitively horrible
outcomes (e.g. being eaten alive by sharks) as bad and worse than certain other outcomes
even if one cannot grasp what these intuitively horrible outcomes are like. We argue that
the conjunction of these two claims leads to an implausible discontinuity in the evaluability of outcomes. One implication of positing such a discontinuity is that evaluative
comparisons of outcomes will not be proportionally sensitive to variation in the underlying features of these outcomes. This puts pressure on Paul to abandon either (1) or (2).
But (1) is central to her view and (2) is very hard to deny. We call this the Shark Problem.
Keywords L.A. Paul Transformative experience Rational choice Subjective
value The shark problem Spectrum
Motherhood is more than I ever imagined. It’s more exciting and more terrifying; more rewarding and
more draining; easier to figure out yet totally confusing; it’s a daily dose of the brand new and the
mundane.
—Stephanie Thomas, Mother.
I’ve never felt fear in my life like what I felt in the jaws of that white pointer. I went straight into its mouth
front onwards.
—Eric Nerhus, Shark Attack Survivor.
Tim Campbell and Julia Mosquera have contributed equally to this work.
& Julia Mosquera
julia.mosquera@iffs.se
Tim Campbell
timothy.campbell@iffs.se
1
Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13, Box 591, 101 31 Stockholm, Sweden
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T. Campbell, J. Mosquera
1 Parenting and shark attacks
Many people at some point in their lives will have an experience that is radically
different from any that they have had before. Possible examples include the
experiences of becoming a parent, acquiring a new sensory ability, and tasting
durian for the first time. L.A. Paul calls these radically new experiences
‘transformative experiences’ (Paul 2014: 15–18).
The phenomenological content of a transformative experience is not merely
unknown but inaccessible. To illustrate this, Paul considers Frank Jackson’s famous
example of Mary The Scientist, who, while isolated in her black and white room,
has never seen the colour red. Mary cannot grasp what it is like to see red, despite
knowing all the relevant science (e.g. about wavelengths, etc.) without seeing red
herself (Paul 2014: 9–10).
According to Paul, experiential outcomes (e.g. an outcome in which one sees red;
an outcome in which one is a parent, etc.) have a kind of value, what she calls
‘subjective value’ (Paul 2014: 12), that cannot be grasped by those who are
unfamiliar with the precise phenomenology of the experiences that occur in those
outcomes. Although obscure, the notion of subjective value can be understood as
referring to a particular kind of value attaching to the precise phenomenology of an
experience, and this kind of value is not reducible to the value of the painfulness or
the pleasurableness of the experience.1
Paul’s project concerns the evaluation, comparison, and choice between different
possible outcomes with respect to subjective value (Paul 2014: 25). Hence, unless
we explicitly say otherwise, when discussing the evaluation of outcomes we will
assume that this evaluation is made with respect to subjective value, and we will
omit the locution ‘with respect to subjective value’.
Paul accepts what we call
The Prior Experience Claim: One cannot evaluate and compare different
experiential outcomes unless one can grasp what these outcomes are like,
which one can do only if one has previously experienced outcomes of that
kind. (Paul 2014: 2, 71–94)
Paul’s justification for the Prior Experience Claim is this: Generally speaking,
one is rationally required to estimate the subjective value of an outcome by
cognitively modelling that outcome and mentally projecting one’s self into it, so that
one can have some idea of what it would be like to be the subject of whatever
experiences occur in that outcome.:2
However, according to Paul, one cannot cognitively model outcomes that contain
experiences of a phenomenological type that one is unfamiliar with (Paul 2014:
109–110). In this case, as in the case of Mary, one lacks the phenomenal concepts
necessary to complete the required imaginative task. In sum, since subjective value
1
For further discussion on the notion of subjective value see Bykvist and Stefansson (2017) and Talbott
(2016).
2
See Paul 2014, Ch. 2, especially pp. 19–28.
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Transformative experience and the shark problem
attaches to the precise phenomenology of an experience, one cannot estimate the
former without grasping the latter; but grasping the latter is impossible if one has
not had experiences of its phenomenological kind.
Interestingly, however, Paul does not think that the Prior Experience Claim is
fully general. She claims that for certain outcomes that are intuitively horrible, one
can know that they are bad and worse than certain other outcomes even if one does
not know what they are like. One of Paul’s examples is an outcome in which one is
eaten alive by sharks. She says
In cases like [being eaten by] sharks, we don’t need to perform an assessment
of the outcome by cognitively modelling what it would be like, because we
know what the results would be: we know every outcome is bad, whatever it is
like (Paul 2014: 128; cf. 27).
So, in addition to the Prior Experience Claim, Paul accepts what we call
The Shark Claim: One can evaluate and compare certain intuitively horrible
outcomes (e.g. being eaten alive by sharks) as bad, and worse than certain
other outcomes even if one cannot grasp what these intuitively horrible
outcomes are like. (c.f. Paul 2014: 127; cf. 27)
Paul discusses other examples such as being hit by a bus and having your legs
amputated without anesthesia (Paul 2014: 28, 127; 2015: 802–3). According to Paul,
one does not need to cognitively model these outcomes; rather, one can simply
know that they are bad no matter what they are like (Paul 2014: 25). The theoretical
justification for recognizing these cases as exceptions to the Prior Experience Claim
is not entirely clear. However, that they are exceptions is intuitively plausible.
Nobody, we hope, would deny that one can know that an experience of being eaten
alive by sharks, for example, is bad even if one is not familiar with the precise
phenomenology of that experience.
When discussing the Prior Experience Claim, Paul has in mind only certain kinds
of experiential outcomes, those that are relevant to most of us. She explicitly sets
aside outlandish cases, such as considering whether to be eaten alive by sharks, ‘‘in
which there is no need to deliberate by cognitively modelling in order to assess the
subjective value of the relevant outcomes’’ (Paul 2014: 28).
Unfortunately, as we show in Sect. 2, restricting the application of the Prior
Experience Claim in order to accommodate the Shark Claim gives rise to a theoretical
problem. We call it the Shark Problem. In Sect. 3, we defend a key assumption
underlying the argument presented in Sect. 2. In Sect. 4, we consider and reject a solution
to the Shark Problem based on Paul’s suggestion that one can evaluate outcomes on the
basis of what she calls revelatory value (Paul 2014: 38). Section 5 is the conclusion.
2 The experiential range view
According to the Experiential Range View (ERV), there are two different kinds of
experiential outcomes. We define normal outcomes, such as being a parent, as
outcomes whose subjective values are crucial to their evaluation, and to which the
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Prior Experience Claim applies. And we define sharky outcomes, such as being
eaten alive by sharks, being hit by a bus, getting your legs amputated without
anesthesia, etc., as outcomes that can be evaluated as bad and worse than normal
outcomes, and to which the Prior Experience Claim does not apply.3
A fully developed version of ERV will include an explanation as to why the Prior
Experience Claim either does or does not apply to a particular set of outcomes. We
leave open what this explanation might be.4 For we think that on any plausible
version of ERV, a normal outcome can be gradually transformed into a sharky
outcome. To see this, imagine a spectrum of possible experiential outcomes ranging
from an outcome with a very small amount of intense pain, to an outcome with a
large amount of intense pain, such that one can move from the first outcome to the
last outcome in a finite series of steps, each involving the addition of only one more
second of intense pain. The outcomes in this spectrum (S) are depicted in Fig. 1
below:
Each outcome (O1, O2, etc.) has a duration of 30 days5 and is represented by one
of the horizontal lines distributed vertically in Fig. 1. Each notch in one of these
horizontal lines represents one second of intense pain, as well as the temporal
location of this pain within the 30-day outcome in which it occurs. The number of
notches increases as one moves downward from O1, since each outcome after O1
contains one more second of intense pain than the immediately preceding outcome.
For example, O1 might be a brief stretch of a life as a parent that includes 1 s of
intense pain; O2 might be a brief stretch of an experientially different life that
includes 2 s of intense pain, etc. We assume that the extra second of pain in each
step does not alter the temporal distribution of the other seconds of pain.6 Each of
the solid bars in O500,000 and O500,001 represents many seconds of intense pain
closely grouped together in time.
Importantly, each outcome in S is experientially different enough from the others
that a person that has had experiences in only one of these outcomes would be
unable to grasp the experiences in the other outcomes; she would be unable to know
what these other outcomes are like. Thus, while it is true that, for example, O500,000
and O500,001 are phenomenologically similar with respect to the pain they contain,
they are phenomenologically dissimilar enough that they cannot be compared by an
agent who is unfamiliar with the experiences that occur in them. The amount of pain
in O500,000 is less than of its total duration (7 days out of a total of 30). Therefore,
3
It is worth mentioning that if there are sharky outcomes, then there might also be ‘‘heavenly’’
outcomes—good experiential outcomes to which the Prior Experience Claim does not apply. One can
grasp that such outcomes are good without knowing what they are like. For more on this see Sullivan
(2018: 165–7).
4
One possible explanation is offered by Talbott (2016: 383). Talbott interprets Paul as endorsing the
view the information about normal outcomes that is available to the agent isn’t ‘‘personalized enough’’ to
enable her to make accurate evaluations of those outcomes, whereas the same is not true about sharky
outcomes.
5
This stipulation is arbitrary; the outcomes could be shorter or longer.
6
We acknowledge that the way in which the pain in the outcomes is distributed might make a difference
to the phenomenology of the outcomes (i.e., two outcomes containing 4 days of pain each, may be
phenomenologically different depending on whether the 4 days of pain are consecutive or spaced out, for
example every Monday of the month). For the sake of simplicity, we leave this complication aside.
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Fig. 1 Spectrum of experiential outcomes (S)
even though O500,000 and O500,001 contain similar amounts of the same type of
extreme pain, most of the experiences in O500,000 are radically different from most
of the experiences in O500,001, and from most of the experiences in the rest of the
outcomes in S. A crucial assumption here is that the number of possible types of
experience is sufficiently large to fill in S. We defend this assumption in Sect. 3.
For our present purposes, what is important is that while certain outcomes in S,
for example O1 and O2, contain an amount of pain that is consistent with their being
normal outcomes, other outcomes in S, such as O500,001 and each subsequent
outcome, contain enough intense pain to be sharky.
If ERV is true, then there must be a boundary between the range of normal
outcomes and the range of sharky outcomes. In our setup, this boundary is precise—
O500,001 is sharky while O500,000, containing just one fewer second of intense pain, is
normal. Later, we consider the possibility that the boundary between the normal and
the sharky is vague.
Let us assume that O1 is the status quo to which the other outcomes in S are to be
compared. Thus, we imagine that the agent who is trying to evaluate these outcomes
can grasp what O1 is like but cannot grasp what the other outcomes in S are like.
ERV entails the following two claims:
(1)
(2)
The agent cannot evaluate O500,000 and compare it to O1 because she cannot
grasp what O500,000 is like.
The agent can evaluate O500,001 as worse than O1 even though she cannot
grasp what O500,001 is like.
The conjunction of (1) and (2) entails that there are sharp discontinuities in the
evaluability of outcomes. We find this implausible. In particular, we find it
implausible that the agent’s ability to evaluate an outcome and compare it to O1
vanishes due to the absence of just one fewer second of pain. We call this objection
to ERV the discontinuity objection.7
7
For similar concerns about sharp discontinuities in value, see Chang (2002) and Temkin (2012:
Chapter 5).
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At first glance, the discontinuity here may not seem so implausible. For example,
a small physical change can make a difference to whether a certain property, such as
the property of being tall or being bald, is instantiated. But the case that we are
currently considering is not like these cases. According to ERV, in evaluating
O500,001, the agent can have some doxastic attitude about the value of this outcome
and how it compares to O1. For example, suppose the agent can know that O500,001
is bad and worse than O1. In that case, it seems she could at least have some
credence that O500,000 is also bad and worse than O1. After all, she has knowledge of
the badness of O500,001 only because in this outcome she would experience a certain
amount of intense pain, and O500,000 has only one fewer second of intense pain than
O500,001. But although the agent knows that O500,001 is bad and worse than O1,
according to ERV she is totally clueless about the value of O500,000 and how it
compares to O1. She cannot grasp the value of O500,000. This discontinuity in
evaluability is striking.
The reason for the discontinuity here is that, according to ERV, the standard of
evaluation differs depending on whether the agent is trying to evaluate O500,000 or
O500,001. In order to evaluate O500,001, the agent does not have to cognitively model
that outcome. O500,001 contains enough intense pain that the agent can evaluate it as
bad even though she cannot grasp what it is like. However, in order to evaluate
O500,000, the agent must cognitively model it. Since the agent cannot grasp what
O500,000 is like, when she attempts to cognitively model it, she ends up in a state that
is similar to the state that Mary the scientist is in when, sitting in her black and white
room, she tries to imagine what it is like to see red.8
The discontinuity objection is not the end of ERV’s problems. ERV also faces
what we will call the sensitivity objection. Consider again Fig. 1, and outcomes O1,
O500,000, and O500,001. ERV implies:
(1)
(3)
The agent cannot evaluate O500,000 and compare it to O1 because she cannot
grasp what O500,000 is like.
The agent can evaluate O500,001 as worse than O500,000 even though she cannot
grasp what either of these outcomes is like.
We find the conjunction of (1) and (3) very implausible. The difference in the
amount of intense pain between O500,001 and O500,000 is tiny compared to the
difference in intense pain between O1 and O500,000. It is implausible that while there
being a difference of 1 s of intense pain is enough for the agent to be able to
evaluate O500,001 as worse than O500,000, a difference of 499,999 s of intense pain is
insufficient for the agent to be able to evaluate O500,000 as worse than O1. Thus,
when it comes to evaluating outcomes, ERV is very sensitive to certain small
8
Richard Pettigrew (2015) defends an interpretation of transformative choice that accommodates our
intuition that if the agent can evaluate O500 001, then she can also evaluate O500 000. According to
Pettigrew, the agent’s uncertainty about the subjective values of different possible outcomes can be
understood as uncertainty about what her utility function in those outcomes will be. This kind of
uncertainty is much easier to grapple with than the kind of radical uncertainty that ERV entails, according
to which one cannot even have any credence concerning the subjective values of outcomes that one has
never experienced before.
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Transformative experience and the shark problem
differences in intense pain but completely insensitive to certain much larger
differences in intense pain. This is the sensitivity objection.
The discontinuity and sensitivity objections, although related, are importantly
different. The first objects to the claim that while the agent cannot evaluate O500,000
and compare it with O1, she can evaluate O500,001 as worse than O1. A difference of
only one second of pain determines whether an agent who is clueless about the
phenomenology of an outcome can evaluate and compare it to the status quo—there
is an implausibly sharp cut-off in the evaluability of outcomes. The second objects
to the claim that while the agent cannot evaluate O500,000 and compare it with O1,
she can evaluate O500,001 as worse than O500,000, even though the difference in pain
between the first two outcomes is much greater than the difference in pain between
the second two outcomes—the agent’s evaluation of the outcomes is not
proportionally sensitive to the variation in the amount of pain that they contain.
One may wonder whether the source of ERV’s trouble is due to a failure to
account for vagueness. It might be that the discontinuity and sensitivity objections
arise only because we have falsely assumed a precise cut-off between the range of
normal outcomes and the range of sharky outcomes. Let’s suppose instead that the
boundary between these two ranges is not precise but vague. Under this version of
ERV, while some outcomes clearly belong to the range of normal outcomes, some
other outcomes are neither determinately normal nor determinately sharky. Is
recognizing vagueness sufficient to answer the discontinuity and sensitivity
objections? To answer this question, we need to look further at the details.
Figure 2 below represents S under a version of ERV that accounts for vagueness.
Figure 2 is similar to Fig. 1. The main difference is the presence, in Fig. 2, of the
rectangular grey zone that covers O500,001, O500,002, and O500,003. This zone
represents the range in which the status of outcomes is vague or borderline—i.e.
neither determinately sharky nor determinately normal. For now, we assume that
there is a sharp demarcation between the zone of vagueness, the range of normal
outcomes, and the range of sharky outcomes. Thus, we assume that O500,000 is a
normal outcome situated just above the zone of vagueness, and O500,004 is a sharky
outcome situated just below that zone. (We question this assumption later in our
discussion).
Now, there are different ways of understanding vagueness. In the remainder of
this section, we will consider the implications of ERV under three such
understandings: Supervaluationism, Epistemicsm, and ontic vagueness. We will
argue that none of these understandings of vagueness, when combined with ERV,
alleviates the discontinuity and sensitivity problems. Let’s see this.
According to Supervaluationism, a sentence attributing some value to an
outcome is vague if and only if it comes out true on some precisifications of the
relevant evaluative predicates, but false on others.9 Applied to our spectrum S
(Fig. 2) Supervaluationism implies that on any admissible precisifications of
‘normal’ and ‘sharky,’ O1 and O500,000 are normal outcomes, and O500,004 is sharky.
But because of the imprecision in our language, this is not true of O500,001, O500,002,
9
For other discussions of the supervaluationist treatment of vagueness in value see Rabinowicz (2009)
and Broome (2004).
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T. Campbell, J. Mosquera
Fig. 2 ERV with Vagueness
Table 1 Precisifications of ‘normal’ and ‘sharky’
Normal
Sharky
P1
O1–O500,003
O500,004
P2
O1–O500,002
O500,003, O500,004
P3
O1–O500,002, O500,003
O500,002
P4
O1–O500,001
O500,002–O500,004
P5
O1– O500,000, O500,002, O1000,002
O500,001, O500,004
P6
O1–O500,000, O500,002
O500,001, O500,003, O500,004
P7
O1–O500,000, O500,003
O500,001, O500,002, O500,004
P8
O1–O500,000
O500,001–O500,004
and O500,003. For each of these outcomes, on some ways of making our language
more precise, it will be normal; on others, it will be sharky. Table 1 below illustrates
the different possible precisifications of ‘normal’ and ‘sharky’. For each precisification there is at least one outcome that can be evaluated as bad and worse than O1
and at least one other outcome that contains exactly one fewer second of intense
pain and cannot be evaluated and compared with O1. Notice that P3, P5, P6, and P7
(the bold rows in Table 1) contain multiple instances of this kind of discontinuity.
We think that these four precisifications are inadmissible, since they involve bizarre
alternating patterns in evaluability. We will therefore only focus our analysis on the
other precisifications, P1, P2, P4, and P8.
Figure 3 below shows the admissible precisifications, P1, P2, P4, and P8. For
each of these precisifications, there is a line marking the transition between the
normal and sharky outcomes.
The fact that the precisifications of the relevant predicates result in sharp
discontinuities is not surprising. This is an established consequence of
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Transformative experience and the shark problem
Fig. 3 Graphical representation of P1, P2, P4, and P8
Supervaluationism, which can be observed by applying this view to other cases of
vague predicates such as ‘tall’. But recall that the problems that arise with sharp
discontinuities in the case of the evaluative predicates ‘normal’ and ‘sharky’
concern the evaluability of outcomes. And these problems do not go away simply
because one makes ‘normal’ and ‘sharky’ more precise. Thus, even after the
predicates have been precisified, we still get the result that the standard by which
outcomes are evaluated changes depending on the presence of 1 more second of
pain. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that for predicates such as ‘tall’ there is
nothing analogous to the sensitivity objection. Recall that this objection arises
because ERV entails that the agent’s ability to make evaluative comparisons is very
sensitive to certain small differences in pain but completely insensitive to certain
much larger differences in pain. On ERV, evaluative comparisons are not
proportionally sensitive to differences in amounts of pain. But the relation ‘‘taller
than’’ is always proportionally sensitive to differences in height. Moreover,
comparisons of the heights of objects (tall and short) can be made no matter how
those heights differ. There are no cases of the following kind: Anna is 1,50 m tall,
Peter is 1,51 m tall, and Maria is 2m tall, and one can compare the heights of Peter
and Anna and determine that Peter is taller than Anna but one cannot compare the
heights of Peter and Maria and determine that Maria is taller than Peter. This
suggests that the sensitivity objection should be understood as an objection
specifically to ERV, and not to Supervaluationism per se.
Like Supervaluationism, Epistemicism cannot help ERV avoid the discontinuity
and sensitivity objections. Epistemicism construes vagueness not as linguistic
indecision but as a kind of ineliminable uncertainty. Assuming Epistemicism, there
is some number n of seconds of pain such that outcome On in our spectrum is sharky
and outcome On-1 is normal, although it is impossible to know the value of n. The
discontinuity and sensitivity objections thus remain unanswered. After all, these
objections arise because the range of sharky outcomes and the range of normal
outcomes are separated by the mere presence or absence of just one second of pain.
Epistemicism just confirms that this is the case and adds that we cannot know
exactly where the separation occurs.
Paul might claim that vagueness is not a matter of imprecision in language, or of
ineliminable uncertainty, but is rather ‘‘out there’’ in the world. This would be a
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T. Campbell, J. Mosquera
substantial theoretical commitment on Paul’s part. Very few contemporary
philosophers defend this view of vagueness.10 Moreover, it seems to us that this
view is vulnerable to the discontinuity and sensitivity objections. For example, ERV
with ontic vagueness would have the following result. Although O500,004 (a sharky
outcome) can be evaluated as bad and worse than O500,000 (a normal outcome), it is
indeterminate whether O500,003 (which has only one fewer second of intense pain
than the sharky outcome O500,004) can be evaluated as bad and worse than O1. But
this is implausible, given that the difference in pain between O1 and O500,003 is
much greater than the difference in pain between O500,000 and O500,004. The
evaluations here are not proportionally sensitive to differences in pain.
Moreover, ERV with ontic vagueness doesn’t specify what the agent should do
when at least one of the outcomes that she is evaluating is borderline. Suppose that a
standard is introduced in order to guide the agent in her evaluation of borderline
outcomes. For example, suppose the relevant standard says that when an agent is
considering two different outcomes and at least one of them is borderline, she is
rationally required to cognitively model both outcomes, just as if she were
evaluating and comparing two normal outcomes. Then there may be an implausibly
sharp demarcation between outcomes to which this standard applies and those to
which it does not apply. For example, suppose that as we have been assuming, in
our spectrum O500,000 is normal, O500,004 sharky, and O500,001—O500,003 are
borderline. Then, on the proposal that we are now considering, while an agent who
is deciding between O1 and O500,003 must cognitively model these outcomes, an
exercise that leaves her completely clueless as to how they compare, that same agent
can just know, without any cognitive modelling, that O500,004 is worse than O1, and,
moreover, that O500,004 is worse than O500,000. But this is basically what we found
objectionable about ERV without vagueness—an implausibly sharp evaluative
discontinuity and an implausibly volatile sensitivity to natural differences between
outcomes.
One might wonder whether these problems can be avoided by appealing to
higher-order vagueness. One might claim that, contrary to what we have assumed, it
is indeterminate whether O500,000 is borderline and indeterminate whether O500,004 is
borderline. One might also claim, for example, that it is indeterminate whether it is
indeterminate whether O499,999 is borderline, and indeterminate whether it is
indeterminate whether O500,005 is borderline, etc., etc.
Even if such claims are true, we doubt that they will be of much help. Let’s say
that an outcome is second-order borderline if it is indeterminate whether it is
borderline. Now suppose that the agent is considering a second-order borderline
outcome. (Assume that in this case there is no vagueness of any order higher than 2).
How should the agent evaluate this outcome? Here is one proposal. The relevant
standard of evaluation for borderline outcomes requires that the agent cognitively
model them, so for any second-order borderline outcome O, the relevant standard
requires that the agent make a second-order evaluation by cognitively modelling an
outcome in which she cognitively models O. Extrapolating to higher orders, we can
10
Notable exceptions include Van Inwagen (1990) and Tye (1990). For a more recent interpretation of
ontic vagueness, see Barnes (2010).
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Transformative experience and the shark problem
say that for any n-order borderline outcome, where n [ 1, the relevant standard
requires the agent to make an n-order evaluation by cognitively modelling an
outcome in which she uses cognitive modelling to make an (n-1)-order evaluation.
The problem with this proposal is that using cognitive modelling for higher-order
evaluations is a redundant epicycle. We are interested in cases of evaluation in
which the agent is clueless about what the outcomes are like phenomenologically.
But if an agent is clueless about what a certain outcome is like, then presumably she
is also clueless about what it is like to cognitively model that outcome. After all,
cognitively modelling an outcome involves estimating what it is like. Thus, with
respect to outcomes such that the agent is clueless about that they are like, using
cognitive modelling for higher-order evaluations would only exacerbate her
cluelessness.11
We think that the problem just considered points toward an alternative proposal:
in cases of n-order vagueness, where n [ 1, rather than go through some number of
redundant epicycles, the agent should just act exactly as she would in any case of
first-order vagueness. In other words, the standard of evaluation for cases of higherorder vagueness is just the standard of evaluation for cases of first-order vagueness.
Assuming that in cases of first-order vagueness cognitive modelling is required for
the agent’s first-order evaluation, this is also true in cases of higher-order vagueness;
in such cases, no higher-order evaluation is required.
But this proposal faces problems of its own. Suppose that in our spectrum S there
is a sharp demarcation between outcomes that are n-order borderline for some n C 1
and outcomes that are not n-order borderline for any n. Then, on the current
proposal, in S there will be a sharp demarcation between outcomes to which the
standard requiring cognitive modelling applies and outcomes to which it doesn’t.
But this is precisely what gets ERV into trouble in the first place.
Suppose instead that every outcome in S is n-order borderline for some n C 1.
Then on the current proposal, for any outcome in S, in order to evaluate that
outcome, the agent must cognitively model it. But this is incompatible with one of
ERV’s assumptions, namely that at least some outcomes in S, for example those
involving hours and hours of extreme pain are sharky—i.e. are such that one doesn’t
need to cognitively model them but can just know (or grasp) that they are bad no
matter what they are like.
At this point, one might wonder whether the problems that we have discussed can
be avoided by abandoning cognitive modelling as the standard of evaluation for
11
A further problem with the proposal may arise depending on how one understands higher-order
vagueness. For example, suppose one adopts Timothy Williamson’s view on which any sentence of the
object language has higher-order vagueness only if it has n-order vagueness for every natural number
n. (See Williamson 1999, especially pp. 136–138). Then with respect to sentences with the evaluative
predicates ‘normal’, ‘sharky’, and ‘borderline’, any case of higher-order vagueness will be a case in
which there is vagueness all the way up. On the proposal we are now considering, this means that in any
case of higher-order vagueness the agent has no way of getting started with her evaluations. For in order
to make her second-order evaluation, she must first make a third-order evaluation; and in order to make
this third-order evaluation, she must first make a fourth-order evaluation, and so on ad infinitum.
However, Williamson’s view of higher-order vagueness assumes classical logic. Thus, while the problem
of an infinite regress may arise on theories of vagueness that assume classical logic, such as
Supervaluationism and Epistemicism, it may not arise on theories that reject classical logic.
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borderline outcomes and adopting some alternative standard. Although we cannot
rule out this possibility, the onus is on those who accept both the Shark Claim and
the Prior Experience Claim to demonstrate it. However, we suspect that any
reasonable alternative to a standard that requires cognitive modelling will face
either the discontinuity and sensitivity problems or problems that are structurally
analogous to them. In Sect. 4, we show that Paul’s proposed alternative standard for
cases of transformative choice faces such problems, and we cannot think of any
other reasonable standard that avoids them.
To sum up, the Experiential Range View (ERV), which restricts the application
of the Prior Experience Claim in order to accommodate the Shark Claim, involves
an implausible discontinuity in the evaluability of outcomes. Moreover, on this
view, evaluative comparisons of outcomes are not proportionally sensitive to
variation in the underlying features of these outcomes. Finally, these problems don’t
seem to go away on the assumption that the boundary between the range of normal
outcomes and the range of sharky outcomes is vague.
3 The richness assumption
In this section we defend a crucial assumption on which our arguments in the
previous section depend, namely that the number of types of experience is
sufficiently large to fill in S. We call this The Richness Assumption. Those who
think that the variety of types of experience is too limited to fill in S reject The
Richness Assumption.
We think that one should not underestimate the enormous diversity of types of
human experience, both throughout history and at any given time. Paul mentions a
number of categories that determine the subjective experience of someone’s life,
some of which include gender, race, or affluence.12 The following is a nonexhaustive list of categories that expands on Paul’s idea: gender, ethnicity,
profession, parenthood status, personality, religion, mental health status, disability
status, sexual orientation, and addiction status. Each of these categories could also
be subdivided into a non-exhaustive list of more specific sub-categories, where the
sub-categories within any given category determine very different subjective
experiences. For example, consider the following subcategorization:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
12
Gender man, woman, trans-man, trans-woman, non-binary
Ethnicity African-American, African, Northern-European, Latin-American,
Asian-American, Southern-European
Profession lawyer, violinist, teacher, CIA operative, politician, doctor, pilot,
athlete, actor/actress, writer, philosopher, farmer, special needs teacher, bank
CEO, astronaut, gravedigger, brain surgeon, priest, professional climber, sex
worker
Parenthood Parent, non-parent
Personality Introvert, extrovert
For more on this, see Paul (2014: 8).
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Transformative experience and the shark problem
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Religion non-religious, Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Tribal
religion
Mental health depressed, non-depressed, psychopathic-depressed, psychopathic-non-depressed
Disability physical, intellectual, emotional, physical & intellectual, physical &
emotional, physical & blind, physical & deaf, non-disabled
Sexual Orientation gay, straight, bi-sexual
Addiction addicted, non-addicted
The combination of these sub-categories corresponds to a huge number
(3,225,600) of possible life-experiences (or outcomes) that, we think, differ greatly
from each other with respect to their phenomenological content. For example,
consider the following pair of lives, L1 and L2:
L1 The life of a woman who is also African-American, a lawyer, physically
disabled, and religious.
L2 The life of a man who is also Northern-European, a lawyer, non-physically
disabled, and non-religious.
It seems obvious that L1 and L2 are phenomenologically very different. For
example, other things being equal, the person who leads L1 might experience more
disadvantage, and be more of a target of discrimination than the person who leads
L2. And for someone who has lived only L1 (or L2), the experience of living L2 (or
L1) would be epistemically inaccessible, given that the precise phenomenology of
the experiences associated with these lives is very different.
Even lives that differ only in one of the sub-categories on our list could be
phenomenologically different enough that a person living one of these lives could
not grasp what it is like to live any of the others. For example, consider:
L3 The life of a woman who is also Southern-European, a lawyer, religious,
and nondisabled.
L4 The life of a woman who is also Southern-European, a lawyer, religious,
and disabled.
We think that even though L3 and L4 differ only in one sub-category, this
difference alone could make the two lives experientially different enough that
someone living L3 could not grasp what it was like to live L4 (and vice versa).
The Richness Assumption can be supported even further. The experiences that
can be constructed out of the categories listed above represent only a small fraction
of the total number of humanly possible experiential types. Lives in the (more or
less distant) future may turn out to be experientially unimaginable for us.
Technological advances are the main reason for this gap in experiential knowledge.
People in 400 B.C. probably could not imagine what it is like to fly by plane or use a
computer. Further technological advances will make possible some things that are
currently unimaginable. For example, the acquisition of new sensory abilities would
enable humans to access a whole set of new types of experiences that would
otherwise have remained unknown to us.
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T. Campbell, J. Mosquera
Finally, we think that humanly possible experiential types represent only a small
fraction of the total number of possible experiential types. For example, Paul
considers the lives of imaginary creatures such as vampires (Paul 2014). Once we
consider not only the kinds of human experiences mentioned above but all
metaphysically possible experiences, the Richness Assumption seems extremely
compelling.
To sum up, we find it plausible that human experience is diverse enough to
satisfy the Richness Assumption, and even more plausible that experience in general
(including non-human experience) is diverse enough to satisfy this assumption.
4 The shark problem and the revelation approach
We have so far focused on the fact that restricting the application of Prior
Experience Claim to accommodate the Shark Claim leads to implausible
discontinuities in the evaluability of outcomes, and that this constitutes a strong
reason to reject one of these two claims. We have referred to this as the shark
problem.
In this section, we consider whether the Revelation Approach proposed by Paul
helps avoid the shark problem. According to this approach, when the possible
outcomes of one’s decision contain experiences of a kind that one has never had
before, one can make a rational choice based on whether one wants to have a
revelation in which one discovers what it is like to have experiences of that kind.
This approach introduces a new concept, that of revelatory value. When we apply
this approach, the agent does not attempt to cognitively model the outcomes that she
must evaluate. The agent can evaluate, compare, and ultimately choose an outcome
based on its revelatory value alone.
Indeed, Paul argues that in these cases one’s decision is rational only if it is based
on one’s desire to find out (or not find out) what it would be like for her to have
these experiences:
[T]he proposed solution is that, if you are to meet the normative rational
standard in cases of transformative choice, you must choose to have or to
avoid transformative experience based largely on revelation: you decide
whether you want to discover how your life will unfold given the new type of
experience. … If you choose to undergo a transformative experience and its
outcomes, you choose the experience for the sake of discovery itself, even if
this entails a future that involves stress, suffering,or pain (Paul 2014: 120,
emphasis added).
One may argue that the Revelation Approach can also be applied to choices
between non-sharky outcomes in the spectrum S.13 The approach might say the
13
Here we use the term ‘non-sharky outcomes’ rather than ‘normal outcomes’. According to our
definition of ‘normal outcomes’, one cannot make a rational choice between such outcomes unless one
has had experiences of the kind that occur in them. But on the Revelation Approach, one can make a
rational choice between certain outcomes even if one has not had experiences of the kind that occur in
them. Therefore, such outcomes are not normal outcomes on our definition.
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Transformative experience and the shark problem
following. Each non-sharky outcome in S has a revelatory value, and one can
choose between the non-sharky outcomes in S based solely on their respective
revelatory values. However, when comparing a sharky outcome with a non-sharky
outcome one can just know that the former is bad and worse than the latter, without
having to consider their respective revelatory values.
One might think that by introducing revelatory values, one can avoid the
discontinuity and sensitivity objections. The solution would be to claim that all
outcomes in S can be directly evaluated, either on the basis of their revelatory value
or on the basis of one’s knowledge of their badness (as in the case of sharky
outcomes).
Unfortunately, this approach faces versions of the discontinuity and sensitivity
objections. Assume for now that there are no borderline outcomes in S, i.e. that for
every outcome in S it is either determinately true that this outcome is sharky, or
determinately false that it is sharky. Then there will be a sharp discontinuity
between outcomes to which one must apply the Revelation Approach and outcomes
to which one need not apply this approach. Take for example O500,000, which is not
sharky, and O500,001, which is sharky. On the current proposal, one must evaluate
O500,000 solely on the basis of its revelatory value, but one can evaluate O500,001
directly, without having to consider whether one wants to have a revelation in which
one finds out what it is like. This is bizarre. Suppose you decide that the only way to
evaluate O500,000 is to ask yourself, ‘‘Am I the kind of person who would like to
learn what O500,000 is like?’’. Next, suppose you are considering outcome O500,001,
which contains only one more second of pain than O500,000. On the current proposal,
your evaluative task is now straightforward: you need not consider whether you
would like to have a revelation where you learn what O500,001 is like. You know that
this outcome is, as Paul would say, ‘‘bad whatever it is like’’, regardless of its
revelatory value. But if O500,000 can be evaluated solely on the basis of its revelatory
value, why would the addition of one more second of pain make revelatory value
irrelevant?
To see that the approach is vulnerable to a version of the sensitivity objection,
consider the following. Neither O1 nor O500,000 is sharky. So, on the current
proposal, when comparing O1 and O500,000, which differ greatly in their respective
amounts of pain, one must apply the Revelation Approach. On the other hand, when
comparing O500,000with O500,001, a sharky outcome containing one more second of
pain, one need not consider revelatory value; instead, one just knows that O500,001 is
bad and worse than O500,000. The criterion for applying the Revelation Approach is
extremely sensitive to small differences in pain, but strangely insensitive to larger
differences in pain.
Finally, for reasons that we saw in Sect. 2, we do not think that appealing to
vagueness will help with these problems. Suppose that some outcomes in S are
borderline—it is neither determinately true that they are sharky nor determinately
false that they are sharky—and that there is no higher-order vagueness. Should the
agent follow the revelation approach when evaluating borderline outcomes, but not
when evaluating sharky outcomes? If so, then in S there will be a sharp demarcation
between outcomes to which the Revelation Approach applies and outcomes to
which it doesn’t.
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T. Campbell, J. Mosquera
Finally, for reasons that we saw in Sect. 2, we do not think that appealing to
vagueness will help with these problems. Suppose that some outcomes in S are
borderline, and that there is no higher-order vagueness. Should the agent follow the
revelation approach when evaluating these borderline outcomes? If so, then there
will be a sharp demarcation between outcomes to which the Revelation Approach
applies and outcomes to which it doesn’t.
Otherwise, if there is higher-order vagueness, we need to consider how the agent
should evaluate higher-order borderline outcomes. Is the agent rationally required to
decide whether to have a higher-order revelation, i.e. a revelation in which she finds
out what it is like to find out what some outcome is like? But this standard seems
needlessly complicated. It is also practically impossible to follow for n-order
revelations where n is very large.
On the other hand, perhaps the agent is required to evaluate higher-order
borderline outcomes exactly as she does borderline outcomes—i.e. by deciding
whether to have a first-order revelation in which she finds out what one of those
outcomes is like. But if there is a sharp demarcation in S between outcomes that are
n-order borderline for some n C 1 and outcomes that are not n-order borderline for
any n, then this will just lead to the same old problems. And if every outcome in S is
n-order borderline for some n C 1, then we get the absurd result that the Revelation
Approach applies even when the agent is considering outcomes that, intuitively, are
sharky. Presumably, the agent can know that such outcomes are bad; she doesn’t
need to consider whether to have a revelation in which she finds out what they are
like.
5 Conclusion
We have argued that restricting the Prior Experience Claim in order to
accommodate the Shark Claim leads to implausible discontinuities in the
evaluability of outcomes. This is the shark problem. We think that in the face of
the shark problem, we should reject either the Prior Experience Claim or the Shark
Claim. Our view is that the Shark Claim is significantly more plausible than the
Prior Experience Claim. We all know that being eaten alive by sharks is bad even if
we don’t know what that is like.
Acknowledgements We are grateful to the participants in the PPE seminar of the Institute for Futures
Studies (IFFS), Stockholm, April 2017; the 2017 Stockholm June Workshop in Philosophy, Stockholm
University; and the 2018 conference New Perspectives on Transformative Experience, University of
Gothenburg, for their helpful comments on this paper. Special thanks L.A. Paul, Vuko Andric, Paul
Bowman, Krister Bykvist, Erik Carlson, and Luke Elson for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this
paper. In addition, we would like to thank Nomy Arpaly, Gustaf Arrhenius, Johan Brännmark, Lisa
Furberg, Anna-Sofia Maurin, Alain Pe-Curto, H. Orri Stefansson, and Irina Vartanova for her very
helpful assistance with the diagrams in this paper.
Funding Funding was provided by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (SE) (Grant No. M170372:1).
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