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.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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.


Episoder(418)

238 | Scott Shapiro on the Technology and Philosophy of Hacking

238 | Scott Shapiro on the Technology and Philosophy of Hacking

Modern computers are somewhat more secure against being hacked - either by an inanimate virus or a human interloper - than they used to be. But as our lives are increasingly intertwined with computers...

29 Mai 20231h 27min

237 | Brooke Harrington on Offshore Wealth as a Complex System

237 | Brooke Harrington on Offshore Wealth as a Complex System

The modern world is large and interconnected, and there are a lot of systems that might be important to how it functions but about which most people are barely aware. One of these is the offshore weal...

22 Mai 20231h 18min

236 | Thomas Hertog on Quantum Cosmology and Hawking's Final Theory

236 | Thomas Hertog on Quantum Cosmology and Hawking's Final Theory

Is there a multiverse, and if so, how should we think of ourselves within it? In many modern cosmological models, the universe includes more than one realm, with possibly different laws of physics, an...

15 Mai 20231h 8min

AMA | May 2023

AMA | May 2023

Welcome to the May 2023 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...

8 Mai 20233h 8min

235 | Andy Clark on the Extended and Predictive Mind

235 | Andy Clark on the Extended and Predictive Mind

What is the mind, and what does it try to do? An overly simplified materialist view might be that the mind emerges from physical processes in the brain. But you can be a materialist and still recogniz...

1 Mai 20231h 21min

234 | Tobias Warnecke on Cellular Structure and Evolution

234 | Tobias Warnecke on Cellular Structure and Evolution

Eukaryotic cells manage to pull off a number of remarkable feats. One is packing quite a long DNA molecule, with potentially billions of base pairs, into a tiny central nucleus. A key role is played b...

24 Apr 20231h 6min

233 | Hugo Mercier on Reasoning and Skepticism

233 | Hugo Mercier on Reasoning and Skepticism

Here at the Mindscape Podcast, we are firmly pro-reason. But what does that mean, fundamentally and in practice? How did humanity come into the idea of not just doing things, but doing things for reas...

17 Apr 20231h 12min

232 | Amy Finkelstein on Adverse Selection and Hidden Information

232 | Amy Finkelstein on Adverse Selection and Hidden Information

If you knew exactly when every person was going to die, or require medical care, you could make a killing buying and selling insurance. Nobody knows these things, of course -- the future is hard to pr...

10 Apr 20231h 13min

Populært innen Vitenskap

fastlegen
tingenes-tilstand
rekommandert
rss-nysgjerrige-norge
forskningno
liberal-halvtime
sinnsyn
vett-og-vitenskap-med-gaute-einevoll
smart-forklart
fjellsportpodden
rss-rekommandert
pod-britannia
jss
villmarksliv
nevropodden
rss-overskuddsliv
rss-radium
hva-er-greia-med
kvinnehelsepodden
rss-bondevennen