Some decisions cannot be understood from the side of the person who has not yet made them. 

Paul distinguishes experiences that are merely new from those that are genuinely transformative. Becoming a parent, undergoing a profound sensory change, choosing a radically different life, even her now-famous philosophical vampire thought experiment: these are cases in which the future cannot simply be modelled from the preferences of the present self. You may lack the experiential knowledge required to know what the outcome will feel like, while the experience itself may change the preferences by which you would judge it.

It is a truly interesting look at the meeting points between philosophy of mind, epistemology and decision theory, but the stakes are wonderfully ordinary. Many of the choices that are responsible for making us who we are, must be made by someone who does not yet know what it will be like to become that person. Paul’s argument has become influential well beyond philosophy precisely because it attacks one of modern rationality’s favourite assumptions — that enough information will eventually make the future calculable.

Edition / condition: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016. First paperback edition; originally published in hardcover in 2014. Paperback. Very light shelf wear; clean and bright throughout, binding firm. Near fine condition.