85 | L.A. Paul on Transformative Experiences and Your Future Selves

85 | L.A. Paul on Transformative Experiences and Your Future Selves

It's hard to make decisions that will change your life. It's even harder to make a decision if you know that the outcome could change who you are. Our preferences are determined by who we are, and they might be quite different after a decision is made — and there's no rational way of taking that into account. Philosopher L.A. Paul has been investigating these transformative experiences — from getting married, to having a child, to going to graduate school — with an eye to deciding how to live in the face of such choices. Of course we can ask people who have made such a choice what they think, but that doesn't tell us whether the choice is a good one from the standpoint of our current selves, those who haven't taken the plunge. We talk about what this philosophical conundrum means for real-world decisions, attitudes towards religious faith, and the tricky issue of what it means to be authentic to yourself when your "self" keeps changing over time.

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L.A. (Laurie) Paul received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. She is currently professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Yale University. She has worked extensively on causation, the philosophy of time, mereology, and transformative experience. She has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the Australian National University. Among her books are the monograph Transformative Experience; she is currently working on a popular-level book on this theme.


Jaksot(415)

314 | Karen Lloyd on the Deep Underground Biosphere

314 | Karen Lloyd on the Deep Underground Biosphere

There are living creatures dwelling deep below the surface of the Earth, as deep as we are able to drill. These hearty microorganisms are related to more familiar life forms on land and under water, b...

12 Touko 20251h 9min

313 | Eric Topol on the Changing Face of Medicine and Aging

313 | Eric Topol on the Changing Face of Medicine and Aging

Medical science is advancing at an astonishing rate. Today we talk with leading expert Eric Topol about two aspects of this story. First, the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, especially in ...

5 Touko 20251h 12min

AMA | May 2025

AMA | May 2025

Welcome to the May 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreon...

28 Huhti 20253h 38min

312 | Thomas Levenson on the Mutual History of Humans and Germs

312 | Thomas Levenson on the Mutual History of Humans and Germs

The germ theory of disease is a crowning achievement of science, up there with modern physics, continental drift, and evolution via natural selection. (Even if there will always be cranky skeptics.) B...

21 Huhti 20251h 31min

311 | Annaka Harris on Whether Consciousness is Fundamental

311 | Annaka Harris on Whether Consciousness is Fundamental

Questions about consciousness range from the precise and empirical -- what neurons fire when I have some particular experience -- to the deeply profound -- does consciousness emerge from matter, or do...

14 Huhti 20251h 10min

AMA | April 2025

AMA | April 2025

Welcome to the April 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patre...

7 Huhti 20253h 30min

310 | Marc Kamionkowski on Dark Energy and Cosmic Anomalies

310 | Marc Kamionkowski on Dark Energy and Cosmic Anomalies

Cosmologists were, let us be honest, pretty stunned in 1998 when observations revealed that the universe is accelerating. There was an obvious plausible explanation, the cosmological constant proposed...

31 Maalis 20251h 26min

309 | Christof Koch on Consciousness and Integrated Information

309 | Christof Koch on Consciousness and Integrated Information

Consciousness is easier to possess than to define. One thing we can do is to look into the brain and see what lights up when conscious awareness is taking place. A complete understanding of this would...

24 Maalis 20251h 20min

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