Union College President’s Commission on the Status of Women & the Department of Philosophy

Transformative Changes
L.A. Paul
Yale University

Abstract: Certain types of life experiences can be transformative. By transforming you, they change you, and in the process, they restructure the nature and meaning of your life. I’ll discuss the nature of transformative experience and decision making and show how exploring its epistemic structure can help us to understand special and distinctive issues that arise when these kinds of life events form and change us. I’ll then relate this to informed consent, advance directives, and disability.