Rational Choice Theory- i.e. the prediction that people seek to maximize their own expected utility- is a positive, not a normative theory. Some stupid philosophers have got it into their head that it says 'people should be selfish.' It doesn't. Being unselfish yields higher utility for good people. Moreover, you may gain most utility by seeking to maximizing your dedication to a particular cause or set of people. If this is known, and you always weigh up relevant costs and benefits and apply the relevant calculus- then RCT can predict your actions well enough.
A novel mistake some philosophers are making is to think expected utility is unknowable because nobody knows what it feels like to do something in the future because they are not living in the future. This is foolish. Expectations are always about things which haven't happened. If outcomes match expectations there is an equilibrium. Otherwise people will do things differently and this fact will become widely known.
L.A Paul, making both these mistakes, writes-
It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child.
To choose a thing involves wanting that thing. Wanting a thing involves visualizing what having it would entail. It is on this basis that 'expected utility' is formulated. That's Rational choice theory for you.
I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational.
Rational Choice is irrational. But it isn't really. Why? The thing is a tautology. Utility is subjective. Your utility is what you think is good for you.
If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational.
Because rationality requires you to choose to remain childless on the basis of the utility you expect to gain from that being in that state.
This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision,
Many do so for irrational reasons- e.g. the desire to do what is pleasing to God.
and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices
No. The general questions which are raised are 'deontic'- i.e. relate to duty or some other criteria which overrides expected utility based consequentialism.
Paul thinks she is departing from Rational Choice theory by appealing to what she calls
a normative decision theory,
which is just approximating the Rational choice outcome as best you can. But this is still consequentialist. It isn't normative.
can capture norms for ordinary successful reasoning.
No. A normative theory requires the successful discrimination of what norm is applicable. No calculus or approximation 'captures' a norm. In some religions, the purpose of marriage is progeny. The norm is- get married and have babies and raise them in the Faith. However, if the 'Muth Rational' solution- i.e. the one predicted by the right economic theory- is 'get married and have 1.4 kids'- then you will have a Statistical distribution around that figure. But this is a statistical regularity, not a norm. One could say there is a 'representative agent' or 'ideal type' with a particular habitus. This sort of thing is of interest to Advertisers. Now there may be 'norms' which are ascribed to the ideal type, with 1.4 kids- e.g. driving a particular type of car, voting in a particular way, etc. But this isn't a normative theory. It may be a 'mimetic' theory or a 'Social Constructivist' theory or a theory about why the Master Race of shape shifting Lizards has set the fertility level at a particular level so as to meet its brain-wave harvesting target for the Galactic Overlord.
If we can glean approximate values for our outcomes and apply the right decision theoretic rules, we can conform to the ordinary standard for rational decision-making.
In other words, Muth Rationality prevails. There is a statistical distribution around the fertility value predicted by the correct economic theory. Since there is a stochastic component in child birth, it's what we would expect.
Decisions made by ordinary people can be rational if they
use reason to make them and are not coerced in any way. But, it is reasonable to want to fulfil God's plan. What gives you utility is up to you. Still, suppose the Pope says 'try for two kids, not more' and Catholics heed him, then we would say that it was the Pope's reason which dictated their decision. That's fine. You can delegate your decision making to your priest or your Doctor or whoever you like.
conform to the realistic standards set by a normative decision theory, where such standards make allowances for a certain amount of approximation, ignorance, uncertainty, and mistaken beliefs.
There is a stochastic element to fertility. You may intend to have one baby but end up with quintuplets.
A normative decision theory
'the study of how to make the best decisions, given a set of goals and values'. This may involve no rationality whatsoever. If your goal is to do what the Pope tells you, because what you value is getting into the Heaven to which the Pope has the keys of St. Peter, then you need to be cultivating not rationality but an attitude of pious devotion.
describes the range and combination of rules and standards that agents must meet for their decisions to be rational, normatively speaking.
No. This is is a rational decision theory. Saying Muth rationality is the norm I aspire to is silly because the 'correct economic theory' is positive, not normative. Similarly, Physicists don't say that the the Sun and the moon observe norms rather than that their observed trajectory is consistent with certain mathematical equations which represent particular theories of gravity.
Paul's mistake is to assume a ‘realist’ interpretation of decision theory according to which the utility of outcomes corresponds to a real psychological quantity, such as the individual’s strength of preference for outcomes or her perception of how good each outcome is.
This is a classic 'intensional fallacy'. It posits an immediate identity between a subject's knowledge of an object with the object itself. In this case, an expectation about utility in a possible state of the world is turned into that same utility which, by some magic, is gained immediately. It would be great if you could tell your son you are buying him a brand new sports car for his birthday and then not buy it because he has already gained all the pleasure he would have had if you bought it. Sadly, there is great disutility in having your expectations raised only for them to be dashed to the ground. That's why rational choice theory assumes no utility is gained or lost during the decision making process. Rationality is dispassionate. That's why, when I decide to cross the road having evaluate the chance that I might be run over by a bus which suddenly accelerates because the driver has has had a stroke, I don't soil my pants. Paul may be differently constituted. But then she teaches Philosophy at Yale where fudging your pants is a career move.
It thus provides a normative model that real agents can conform to so that their decisions are rational by our lights.
Which is why many real life families have 1.4 kids.
In this paper, I will assume that we want to meet the standard for normative rationality when we make the decision of whether or not to have a child.
Why stop there? Why not assume that what we really really want is to eat our own shit? This enables us to develop a powerful critique of Big Food and its role in propping up Neo-Liberalism through the ages.
In any non-ideal case, complicating features may be present. For example, sometimes outcomes have equal expected values. Then no unique act is the rational one to choose.
Toss a coin. That's rational.
Sometimes expected values are metaphysically indeterminate.
No. There are expected values and there is Knightian Uncertainty regarding states of the world not currently envisaged. Both arise out of the physics of this world.
Then it is metaphysically indeterminate which act is the rational one to choose. Or perhaps we cannot adequately partition the space of possible outcomes. Etc. For simplicity, I assume
No Knightian Uncertainty. So this is a Arrow-Debreu world. Sadly, this means the Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem applies. General equilibrium is 'anything goes'. Muth Rationality can't be 'normative'.
Consider the decision to have a kid in a particular place at a particular place. This will be influenced by how many other people are having kids because of non-convexities and externalities. Because of 'Tiebout sorting'- i.e. entry and exit from different localities based on different mixes of tax/public good provision- one may say 'norms' or 'habitus' differs. The dormitory suburb is where you go to start a family. Depending on the suburb, the norm may be 1.4 or 2.2 kids. On the other hand, the Projects are fine if you start popping out babies at the age of 12 and are aiming for a baker's dozen. Is this what Paul is getting at?
No. She thinks that some values or norms are 'rationally acceptable' and others are not. She gives the example of a lunatic with crazy beliefs who kills people. The problem here is that a diagnosis of lunacy is based on a specific science. A person may be mad though he has no crazy beliefs. Equally, a person may have beliefs everybody else thinks are crazy- e.g. Copernicus- and yet be more, not less rational, than average. Paul writes 'As Weirich (2004, 21) points out, “an agent who maximizes utility may fall seriously short of other standards of rational action.
No. Either the agent maximizes utility- in which case he fulfils the standard of rational choice theory- or the agent says 'because of Knightian uncertainty, I will go for regret minimization'- which is also fine- or the guy decides that 'utility' for him is normative or deontic- and that too is fine. Finally, there are decisions made by people whose mental functioning is impaired or whose access to relevant public signals or data is sub-optimal. Here, there is a potential Pareto improvement and mechanisms have evolved to bring them about. Philosophy may at one time have had some credibility in promoting such outcomes. Then, it turned to shit and became adversely selective of imbecility.
For instance, an agent’s utility assignment may be mistaken.
No. Their ex ante and ex poste utility don't match. But, they do get at the Muth Rational solution albeit only stochastically. You can't make a mistake when there isn't enough information to make the right decision. If I say 13 + 5 equals 19, I have made a mistake. If you ask me what is 13 plus that other number which I thought of a moment ago but which I can't now remember then I can take a guess. I could be wrong, but I can't have made a mathematical mistake.
Then, he may act irrationally even though he maximizes utility.”
No. Maximizing utility is the only criteria for rational choice theory. True, stupid shitheads can say the dude who is absolutely killing, is totes irrational or a loser or probably suffers from premature ejaculation.
He can allow that an agent may rationally make a merely approximately correct utility assignment and thus act approximately rationally.
That is fully rational once you factor in the cost and benefit of additional information acquisition or computation.
The point is that the madman’s original utility assignments are not rationally acceptable.
No. It is rationally acceptable to accept them so as to predict his behaviour. That's why in TV shows about crazy serial killers, you have 'profilers' who work out what gets the lunatic's rocks off which enables them to predict where he will strike next.
The decision is the choice between whether to have a child or whether to remain childless. The outcomes of either act are its effects...
No the outcome of the decision to have a child is either having a child, suffering a miscarriage, changing your mind and aborting the foetus or being told by a Doctor that you have a medical problem which makes it impossible for you to have biological progeny.
When choosing between For or Against, you compare the overall expected values of the outcomes of each act.
You may do. You may not. In Economics, some outcomes are 'complements' or in 'joint supply' with something else which is the focus of the decision problem. Thus, there may be no decision to have a child because the thing is part and parcel of marrying a particular person or choosing to be of a particular Faith.
Since we are concerned here with ordinary decision-making, we use a normative model to guide our choice, allowing for approximation and estimation in place of perfect precision.
That is not a 'normative model'. It is stupid shit cooked up by a person who knows shit about Econ or Decision Theory or how the world works.
To choose rationally, given our normative model, you determine the approximate value of each relevant outcome, you determine the approximate probability of each of these outcomes actually obtaining, and then use this information to estimate the expected value of each act.
Some particular person may do so. Most don't. Sex and babies are often complements or in joint supply with something else- viz. choice of spouse or, in the case of women who get sperm from a sperm bank with a view to raising a child on their own, a choice of life-style or life-goals. One reason why we don't use the same type of calculus when deciding to have a baby as we do when deciding what sort of boiler to install is because the relevant costs and benefits vary widely. This is because you are unlikely to move house because of the type of boiler you have. You are likely to move house because of the number and type of kids you have. In some locations having babies is as cheap as chips. In others, it is extremely fucking expensive. But, we look with a glad eye on people who move for the sake of the kids. This means, such people gain self-esteem. I may not like foreigners moving into my street. But if I see they have kids, I realize they want them to attend the excellent schools we have here. But, if parents care so much about their kids schooling, those kids are likely to do well. That's an 'external benefit' I receive outside the market. As for the snooty childless couple next door who are constantly remodelling their kitchen, they can go fuck themselves. Well, they already have done so with no gain for the wider community.
After estimating the expected value of each act, you choose the act that brings about the outcome with the highest estimated expected value. In the case where you have a child, the relevant outcomes are phenomenal outcomes concerning what it is like for you to have your child, including what it is like to have the beliefs, desires, emotions and dispositions that result, directly and indirectly, from having your own child.
Such may be the case for a person who has recourse to a sperm bank. It is nothing like the 'phenomenal outcome' of getting married and having a kid- if God is gracious- or adopting one- if the relevant Agency is gracious- or just making do with a puppy. What is important is that your home is full of love- be it ne'er so humble.
Thus, the relevant values are determined by what it is like for you to have your child, including what it is like to have the beliefs, desires, emotions and dispositions that result, directly and indirectly, from having your own child. (I will sometimes call these values “phenomenal values”: they are values of being in mental states with a phenomenal “what it’s like” character.)
The problem here is that 'phenomenal values' are multiply realizable. Human beings have immense plasticity in this respect. Thus, it is cheaper and better to work directly on the 'phenomenal state' rather than get in a baby in the hope that it triggers the desired state in you.
In the case where you remain childless, the relevant outcomes are phenomenal outcomes
which you can easily change by making them coincide with what they would have been. The Hindu religion is particularly good at catering to this- probably because of higher psychic cost of childlessness for historical reasons.
involving what it is like for you to experience the effects of remaining childless, and thus the relevant values depend on what it is like for you to experience childlessness.
Everybody already has experience of childlessness. This is because puberty is delayed in our species.
In other words, the value of your act, given the way the choice is made, depends largely on the phenomenal character of the mental states that result from it.
Not if phenomenal states are multiply realizable. Our species is very good at creating simulacra for this purpose. I have never personally witnessed anything supernatural or truly horrifying. But I've vicariously experienced relevant phenomenal states thanks to TV.
This is neither surprising nor unusual from a commonsensical point of view. Of course, having a child or not having a child will have value with respect to plenty of other things, such as the local demographic and the environment.
One can change where one lives and how much impact one has on the environment.
However, the primary focus here is on an agent who is trying to decide, largely independently of these external or impersonal factors, whether she wants to have a child of her own.
One big factor is whether she will get to keep the child unless, obviously, she plans to sell it.
In this case, the value of what it is like for the agent plays the central role,
Paul is assuming there is zero 'time preference'. This is unlikely. Moreover, if we evolved by natural selection, it is likely that our reproductive behaviour, though plastic to some degree, would make one outcome more likely for the vast majority quite independently of 'phenomenal' factors. After all, hormones are noumenal.
if not the only role, in the decision to procreate.
Because girls never get preggers without meaning to.
That said, the value of the choice is also affected if we assess the wider scope of the value of the act,
we have no means of doing so. On the other hand, in certain specific cases- e.g. where there is a considerable hereditary entitlement or eugenic considerations are at play- smart people may indeed engage in quite complex evaluations. Thus, at a time when it was important for political and religious reasons that Henry VIII have a legitimate male heir, some of the smartest people in his kingdom concerned themselves with gynaecological matters.
since even in cases with a wider purview, the value of what it is like for the agent to have her own child must be evaluated in order to determine the overall expected value of her choice. For instance, you might choose to have a child because you desire to have some of your DNA transmitted to future generations.
Donate eggs or sperm.
But the value of satisfying this desire must be weighed against other outcomes. If, say, the value of what it was like for you to have your own child was sufficiently positive or sufficiently negative, it could swamp the value of satisfying your desire to leave a genetic imprint.
Paul assumes these are independent of each other. Chances are people who would be good parents, would also enjoy being good parents and, moreover, if they aren't too closely related, it would be eusocial for them to make babies together. Some may feel they know, by instinct, what 'type' they belong to though, sadly, they may be wrong. Equally, what look like 'bad' eugenic outcomes may actually be very good ones. Only the unknown future fitness landscape can decide.
It is likely that we have evolved to have good enough simulacra or just simple intuitions about what types of experiences or modes of life we would enjoy. Experience tells us that most boys who really want to be soldiers and who do get to be soldiers are happy enough as soldiers. The same is true about girls who want to become mothers. There are people who know they are gay even if they were brought up in a milieu where the very existence of homosexuality was denied by word and deed.
Paul affirms otherwise regarding
an interesting fact about “what it’s like” knowledge, such as knowledge of what it’s like to see red.
such knowledge is not itself what it's like to see red nor indeed is seeing red or anything else we can speak of.
The interesting fact is that this sort of knowledge, that is, knowing what it’s like, can (practically speaking) only be had via experience.
No. It can't even be had by experience. There may be some right way of seeing red which I've never experienced. I'm like the woman who has had plenty of sex but never had an orgasm. Clearly, there's something about what its like to have sex which she does not know whereas a virgin with a vibrator has a very clear idea about it.
Frank Jackson developed a famous thought experiment to make this point.
Sadly, the actual point it made was that he was as stupid as shit.
His example features black-and-white Mary, a brilliant neuroscientist, who is locked in a colorless cell from birth.
In which case, she would never have developed the ability to see colours which most human infants start to gain from about the age of two months.
Mary has never experienced color. Now, she knows all the facts in a complete physics (and other sciences), including all the causal and relational facts and functional roles consequent on knowing these facts, and including all the scientific facts about light, the human eye’s response to light with wavelengths between 600 and 800 nanometers and any relevant neuroscience. Yet, when she has her first experience of red, she learns something new: she learns what it is like to see red.
Nope. She already knows that the fact that she was locked in a colourless cell at birth meant that she couldn't develop the ability to see colour.
Mary is confined to a black-and-white room, is educated through black-and-white books and through lectures relayed on black-and-white television. In this way she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. . . . It seems, however, that Mary does not know all there is to know. For when she is let out of the black-and-white room or given a color television, she will learn what it is like to see something red. . . .” (Jackson 1986, 291)
No she won't. What's more, because she is a scientist, she will know the thing is impossible for her.
The lesson for us is simply that, before she leaves her cell, black-and-white Mary is in an impoverished epistemic position.
No. She knows that the cruel confinement inflicted on her has deprived her of colour vision. So what? She could become an authority on what happens for humans from various different societies when they see red.
Until she actually has the experience of seeing red, she cannot know what it is like to see red.
I don't know what it is like to see red though I see it all the time. Thinking about what it feels like to look at red while looking at red doesn't seem to help. The plain fact is 'what it feels like to look at empty' is not merely subjective, it may be anything or everything.
A person who is choosing whether to become a parent, before she has a child, is in an epistemic situation just like that of black-and-white Mary before she leaves her cell.
Fuck off! No human has ever been in the position of Mary. Every human ever born had a Mum who, at one time, didn't have the experience of being a Mum. But then all of us have had the experience of not having been to school, of never having had a job, and of not having had sex or become a parent. Yet, because there is so much evidence that most people can go to school, have a job, have sex and become a parent, we assume that unless there is something wrong with us, that we can do so too. Moreover, we can ask others, who share traits with us, about how they have managed to achieve these things.
... having a child is epistemically transformative.
Nope. It is possible for a woman to not know she is pregnant and to deliver a baby without understanding what is happening. For some women, motherhood is 'transformative'. For others, it isn't. For most educated women in advanced societies, there are training programs for all aspects of becoming a mother. Some swear by it. Others say it was a waste of time. Instinct was superior to instruction.
Now, having a child is not just a radically new epistemic experience, it is, for many people, a life-changing experience.
As is having sex, drugs or discovering rock & roll. Losing a limb or winning the lottery can be life-changing experiences. But unlike parenthood, they happen to few of us. That is why our species takes parenthood as a matter of course. Moreover, we have 'rites of passage' for such events. True, for reasons investigated by medical science, things may go awry. But it appears post partum depression is treatable with medication and counselling. Apparently, Lottery companies employ professional psychologists and financial planners to help jackpot winners to adjust to their new wealth. My point is that philosophers, because of their stupidity and ignorance and incapacity to reason, can add no value here.
As a result, no matter which option (i.e. have or not have a baby) you choose, your decision is not even an approximation of a normatively rational act.
Rationality is not normative. It is positive. A rational act is one based on all available information and involves either calculation, delegation or advisement. All choices are potentially life changing and involve expectations about, as opposed to knowledge of, outcomes. This stupid lady thinks it is impossible to rationally choose anything because you don't currently know what getting it will make you feel. Teaching philosophy has rotted her brain.
Arguably, ordinary rationality does not even permit making either choice.
Arguably, this woman has shit for brains. If you can't rationally choose to have a child, you also can't rationally choose to have an ice cream. True, you may have had ice cream in the past, but how do you know what eating one in the future will feel like. But that is why rationality is concerned with 'expectations'. Your own past experience can be the basis of expectations but so can the experiences of others.
Generalizing this, you cannot use our ordinary, phenomenal-based, normative decision procedure to rationally make one of the biggest decisions of your life.
Only if you also can't use it to make the smallest decisions in your life. The fact is, for big decisions, you have to be more, not less, careful. The safer bet is to do what the vast majority of people are doing. This is the Condorcet Jury theorem.
You cannot use this procedure to rationally choose to have a child, nor to rationally choose to remain childless.
Surrogates who get paid to have a baby for someone else are making a rational choice. In the case of married people, we may hope that some 'deontic' or 'normative' factor is decisive. Mum & Dad lurved each other. Lurve causes babies to happen.
Distinguishing between evidential and causal probability does not help: it is not rational to choose either option whether we understand your decision as one based on evidence or as one based on a judgment about the causal efficacy of the act.I am starting from what I take to be our predominant cultural paradigm of how to consider the question of whether to have or not to have a child. According to that paradigm, we are to approach this decision as a personal matter where what is at stake is our own expected happiness and a sort of personal self-realization.
I think the decision as to whether to have a baby should take the child's welfare into account. However, this may not be the dominant paradigm on the campus where this lady teaches.
And so we find a conflict between the ordinary way we are supposed to make the decision to have a child and the fact that having one’s own child is an epistemically transformative experience.
Going to college is 'epistemically transformative'. If we can make a rational choice in this regard, then we can make a rational choice regarding parenthood.
This conflict is interesting precisely because the decision to have a child may also be personally transformative.
Like going to College or, in my case, having a boob job.
When a decision involves an outcome that is epistemically transformative for the decision-maker, she cannot rationally assign a value to the outcome until she has experienced the outcome.
Which is why it is irrational to go to College. But it is also irrational to go to the bathroom. How do you know the outcome till you have experienced the outcome? True, you can have rational expectations in this regard but, Paul, for some reason, says you can't use them. Why? Is it because she has a vagina? I suppose so. Having a vagina makes you stoooooopid. That's what they teach you at Yale- right?
When that outcome may also be personally transformative for the decision-maker, the conflict matters—for she needs to make a big decision, a possibly self-transformative decision, and she cannot conform to ordinary or “folk” norms for rational decision-making when doing so.
Yes she can. We say the preference 'revealed' by the fact that such and such subset of women currently have babies while some other subset does not is that, by the Condorcet Jury theorem, women in the former subset maximize expected utility by doing so while those in the latter do not. What causes this partition of the set of women? It may be that the former subset features women whose partners are high earners while the latter subset features women without partners or with shiftless, work-shy, or incompetent partners. On the other hand, it may be that Corporate policies or laws relating to maternity leave are a factor. Countries like South Korea and Japan need to copy France so as to restore fertility rates. Indeed, even China has to do so. Rational Choice theory can help in this regard. Paul's stupidity just adds noise to signal.
Perhaps you think that you can know what it’s like to have a child, even though you’ve never had one, because you can read or listen to the testimony of what it was like for others.
This is good enough to have an expected utility. Indeed, even if you had ten children you don't know what having the eleventh will be like. But your expectations in this regard are likely to be correct. More generally you don't know what will happen when you go to the toilet. Paul may think this means you can't make a rational choice to go to the toilet rather than shit yourself. However, having rational expectations in this regard are sufficient to avert this outcome. Even Paul does not routinely fudge her pants.
You are wrong.
Paul is stoooopid.
If you want to know what some new and different experience is like, you can
ask somebody who has had it. If everybody who had it recently dropped dead, that may be a good reason to avoid it.
learn it by going out and really having that experience. You can’t learn it by being told about the experience, however thorough your lessons might be. . . . You may have tasted Vegemite, that famous Australian substance; and I never have. So you may know what it’s like to taste Vegemite. I don’t, and unless I taste Vegemite (what, and spoil a good example!) I never will. (Lewis 1990, 292)
I haven't had Vegemite, but I have had Marmite. I know what it tastes like well enough. Lewis started off bright but his brains turned to shit because nobody can stay in Philosophy without becoming as stupid as Paul.
Babies are important. Advanced countries are likely to do more and more to increase incentives for Mothers. My guess is that female babies born today in affluent countries will have far less problems with painful periods while child-birth itself will become less and less hazardous or painful. We understand why evolution imposed a disproportion burden on the females of our species. But that burden can be greatly lightened. Sadly, Philosophy- because it is now the province of the terminally stupid- can play no role in this.
Paul concludes her paper thus-
Contrary to popular opinion and common sense, contrary to what your parents might tell you, and contrary to the picturesque ideal romanticized by many a chick-lit novel, popular parenting guide, life coach website, and fashion magazine, you cannot rationally choose to have a child based on what you think it will be like to have a child.
You can only make rational choices on the basis of expectations- i.e. what you think it will be like to gain a particular outcome.
And, contrary to what those who are committed exclusively to their careers, or who dislike being around the children of other people, or who value their lazy weekends might believe, you cannot rationally choose to remain childless based on what you think it would have been like to have a child.
Yes you can. You expect your childless life to be much like it already is. You are likely to be right. You may fear that you will regret this later on. If so, you can ask older childless people. They may say 'I started to regret being childless the moment I retired. Suddenly, I felt lonely and without purpose. That's when I took up Zen meditation. Now, I am free of regret and remorse and nostalgia for my time as a successful Business Executive.' This is informative. The child-less person can be proactive in defending against future feelings of regret. A separate approach is 'regret minimization'. This may involve investing a little in a 'hedge' now. In practice this might mean spending time with an infant niece or nephew or 'adopting' a baby in some Third World country or something of that sort.
You can change the method of choosing so as to make it rational by making your choice based on something other than your phenomenal preferences.
Expectations. That's what rational choice is based on.
And indeed, in the past, non-subjective facts and circumstances played a much larger role in the causal process leading up to parenthood.
This is still true for many women. Sub-populations with low fertility may suffer demographic replacement.
Before contraceptive devices were widely available, you didn’t choose to have a child based on what you thought it would be like. Often, you just ended up having a child. And to the extent you actively tried to choose to have children, often it was because you needed an heir, or needed more hands to work the farm, or whatever. But this is not the approach we ordinarily take now.
In some sub-populations. But they may be replaced.
If you dispense with your phenomenal preferences, you reject a central tenet of the ordinary, twenty-first century way of thinking about the choice.
No. You have preferences, you have expectations, and you have a budget constraint.
How could common sense have gotten things so wrong?
It hasn't. Paul has gotten things wrong because she doesn't get that expectations are not the same thing as outcomes.
I suspect that the popular conception of how to decide to have a child stems from a contemporary ideal of personal psychological development through choice.
Which also applies to what clothes you buy or what diet you adopt.
That is, a modern conception of self-realization involves the notion that one achieves a kind of maximal self-fulfillment through making reflective, rational choices about the sort of person one wants to be.
Which is why you should make good choices in College. Don't study Philosophy. It will make you stupid.
(The rhetoric of the debate over abortion and medical advances in contraceptive technology have probably also contributed to the framing of the decision to have a child as a personal choice.)
Whether you have unprotected sex is a personal choice- or ought to be.
While the notions of personal fulfillment and selfrealization through reflective choice might be apt for whether one chooses to grow one’s own vegetables, what music one listens to or whether one does yoga, it is not apt for the choice to have a child.
Why? This is what Paul fails to explain. The plain fact is that, for most women, having or not having a baby is much less 'epistemically transformative' and life changing, than studying something worthwhile at Uni and getting a job doing something important.
Some will conclude from my argument that we should base the decision to have a child on the values we assign to nonphenomenal outcomes or that moral considerations need to play a larger role.
All sensible people will conclude that Paul is as stupid as shit. The fact is we need to improve incentives for smart women in affluent countries to have babies- if that is what they want to do.
These conclusions might be warranted. My view is not that it is right or wrong to have children, nor that you should not be happy with your choice, whatever choice you make. My view is simply that you need to be honest with yourself about the basis for this choice.
People with vaginas need Paul to tell them to be honest with themselves.
For example, when surprising results surface about the negative satisfaction that many parents get from having children, telling yourself that you knew you would not be among that class of parents, and that’s why you chose to have a child, is simply a rationalization—in the wrong sense—of your act.
It may be. It may not. What matters is whether you have correctly identified the trait the 'unhappy parents' have and can be sure you don't have that trait or have a workaround for it. Thus if you find 'unhappy parents' have poor housing and low income, you may first ensure you have good housing and high income before starting a family.
Likewise, telling yourself that you knew you wouldn’t be happier as a parent, and that’s why you chose not to have a child, is simply an act of self-deception.
Only if you are saying this to yourself while dressing up your cat in a sailor's suit.
You can be happy that you have a child, or happy that you are childless, without wrapping that happiness in a cloak of false rationalization.
You can be happier yet by telling Paul she has shit for brains.
My argument also has consequences for those who want to be able to physically conceive, carry and give birth to a child, but are unable to do so. If you want to have a child because you think having a child will maximize the values of your personal phenomenological preferences,
gibberish. Preferences are 'revealed' by behaviour. They aren't 'phenomenological'. What is maximised is 'expected value'. Paul doesn't understand either Econ or her own subject. But that's par for the course for her generation of academics.
and as a result of your inability to have a child (and thus your inability to satisfy these preferences) you experience deep sadness, depression, or other negative emotions, my argument implies that your response is not rational.
In which case it would also be irrational to feel sad because you were unable to prevent your Mummy from dying or your arm being cut off in an industrial accident.
This is disturbing and some might find it offensive, but it is true.
It is false. It is rational to feel sad when you discover you can't have kids.
Such a response is not rational. That does not mean your response is wrong, or blameworthy, or subjectively unreasonable.
In which case, it is rational.
All of this raises larger issues, for the sort of subjective information that experience brings is central to many of our most important personal decisions.
For important decisions, we rely on the testimony of the more experienced.
Any epistemically transformative experience that changes the self enough to generate a deep phenomenological transformation creates significant trouble for the hope that we could use our ordinary subjective perspective to make rational decisions about major life events.
But your choice of College major, occupation and spouse are more transformative than having a baby. Yet all these decisions are made rationally. If you are motivated by money, you choose the College major, the job and the spouse likely to maximize your total lifetime income and wealth. If you are stupid but want tenure teaching imbeciles, you do Philosophy. Sadly, if you have a vagina, this also involves talking utter shite about sex or having babies.
I think an experience which transforms you is one that fundamentally alters the trajectory of your life. If surviving a terrorist attack, like 9/11, causes you to give up Investment Banking and retrain as a bereavement counsellor, we would say you had a transformative experience. But if you are a virgin who felt 'transformed' by your honeymoon night, we would say that your experience was important to you. It was a 'rite of passage'. But it didn't change you in any fundamental way.
It is true that, when I was in my thirties, I went to the sort of shitty dinner party where people would claim that discovering Sushi or getting a dial up modem was a 'transformative experience'. But it wasn't true. We had merely adopted a particular fashion and decided to stick with it. But, we hadn't really been transformed.
L.A Paul takes a different view-
Transformative experiences, as I define them, affect you in two deeply related ways. First, they are epistemically transformative: they transform what you know or understand.
This may have been true of Saul on the road to Damascus. But wasn't true of his bar mitzvah, though, no doubt, that experience was highly significant to him. What transformed Saul into St. Paul was his feeling that the Divine had intervened directly in his life.
They do this because they are experiences that are new to you––that is, they are experiences of a new kind, or experiences of a sort that you’ve never had before, and you have to have this kind of experience yourself in order to know what it’s like.
I've had these experiences. But none were transformative. What has 'epistemically transformed' me is education and research. A smart guy who has been awarded a prestigious prize displays modesty when he says 'meeting such and such dude or reading such and such book was transformative for me. It put me on the path that has bagged me the Nobel'. We like this because we think 'if only I'd met that dude or read that particular book, it would be me getting the Nobel.'
By having it, the experience teaches you something you could not have learned without having that kind of experience.
Stuff which is taught is stuff which you don't have to experience to gain knowledge about. A history lesson about the Holocaust does not involve your actually being packed onto a cattle truck. True, one may say 'Experience is the best teacher' but that is merely a manner of speaking. What is being referred to is a sort of Pavlovian reflex or 'reinforcement'.
When the experience teaches you what that kind of experience is like, and gives you new abilities to imagine, recognize, and imaginatively model possible states involving that kind of experience.
Gaining an ability of an epistemic kind is not itself an epistemic transformation. Suppose I gain the ability to hear the thoughts of others but never come in contact with people whose thoughts were interesting to me in any way. Then my knowledge base hasn't changed at all. There was a transformation in 'capabilities set' but none in my knowledge base.
True, when you are 16, you may believe that people who have had sex see and understand things beyond your ken. But you soon realize your mistake.
Second, such experiences are personally transformative: they transform your preferences.
Growing up does that. Puberty changes everybody no matter how diverse their experiences. After puberty all gain new found capabilities to have a particular type of experience. Some exercise it and this may change their preferences. Others may not.
They do this by changing or replacing a core preference,
the preference to breathe air, and eat and drink to keep yourself alive?
through changing something deep and fundamental about your values.
If the experience was unexpected, it may have been transformative. But if it wasn't, it was similar to a 'rite of passage'
Thus defined, transformative experiences are experiences that change you in both of these ways: they are both epistemically and personally transformative.
e.g. suffering serious brain damage during a criminal assault
Leaving home for college can be a transformative experience.
It is a rite of passage. You are growing up. What is transforming you is biological processes which would occur no matter what experiences you had. Also being transformed into a college graduate by going to college isn't really very wondrous or amazing. What's next? Getting excited about the experience of being a person who needs to shit really bad and turning, by some miracle, into a guy who just had a big bowel motion?
Imagine the moment of departure. Your bags are packed. You’ve said goodbye to your friends. Your family is waiting at the door. It’s time to leave. It’s time to start this new part of your life, and you couldn’t be more excited. The promise of the open future, of having a world of ideas spread out at your feet,
Which is what happens when you go to the library or use Wikipedia.
the freedom of having control over your own schedule and your own choices,
You would have even more control if you didn't go to College and started freelancing.
the thrill of meeting new people
which you can do at anywhere
and exploring new possibilities: you will stretch your mind in unexpected directions
not if you are taught by this cretin
as you enter a new and exciting stage of your life. And a part of you knows that, once you go, you can never come back. Even if you come back, the place will be different. The people will be different. Most importantly, you’ll be different.
Because you will be older. Essentially, what is being described is a rite of passage. I can recall being really excited about my tenth birthday party. After that, I was all about the pressies.
You can return to the place and the people you once knew, but it won’t be the same.
Nor will you. You will be a boring prig.
In this sense, leaving now is leaving forever, because you will never be the same.
But this is also true about staying. You will be different because you will be a little older. So will everybody. Thus, because of the arrow of time, everything is a transformative experience.
Moving to a new place with new challenges, and a new kind of life, confronts you with all the possibility, excitement, and risk that a transformative change can offer.
So does not moving.
As you prepare to take this momentous, life-changing step, you know that a new life is before you, a life that’s very different from the life you’ve lived up to now.
You were a boring twat at School. You became an even more boring twat at College. If you chose to remain there to teach you became a yet more boring twat.
What will it be like? Who will you meet? What will you do? How will you change? Who will you become?
Batman? That would be cool.
This sense of the open future captures the way the experience will be epistemically transformative: the experience will change you psychologically, but until you are actually there, having the experiences of college life, you can’t really know what it will be like.
Nor will you know what it is like to be seventeen till you stop being sixteen.
You might know or be told that you are in for these kinds of changes ahead of time, but actually living it teaches you something you couldn’t know ahead of time, and in the process, it changes who you are.
Okay, okay. We get it. If only Paul hadn't suffered some 'transformative experience'- i.e. horrendous epistemic self-abuse- at Collidge she wouldn't now come across like Dory, the forgetful fish in 'Finding Nemo' who keeps finding everything amazing.
Post Script
In a paper titled 'Neophobia' (the fear of new experiences) John Collins responds to L.A Paul's silly paper which I have dealt with above.
NEOPHOBIA L. A. Paul argues that epistemically transformative choice poses a special problem for standard theories of decision: when values of outcomes cannot be known in advance, deliberation cannot even get started.
Epistemically transformative choices are made by Scientists in laboratories. Experiments change the knowledge base by refuting some theories and strengthening others. This is covered under 'discovery'. It is rational to devote a portion of resources for this purpose. There is a well developed calculus for deciding how to allocate resources for this purpose. The relevant algorithms are similar to those used in 'machine learning'.
Neither Paul nor Collins are talking about this. They are merely gassing on about the fact that Expectations are different from outcomes. Whatever choice we make- e.g. to eat chocolate ice-cream for desert- it is based on expectations. Deliberation about the choice can get started easily enough if there is either testimony available from those who previously made it or else a good structural causal model of the likely result. There was a time when it was not known whether nuclear fission would set off a chain reaction which would destroy the entire planet. But as the underlying SCM improved, scientists could have confidence to go ahead with the Manhattan project.
Even where 'maximal uncertainty' obtains- e.g. regarding what happens after we die- there can be plenty of deliberation. Indeed, a theory about the after-life may help us all have better lives here and now. There is no scandal for any type of theory of rationality or decision making here.
A standard response to this is to represent ignorance of the nature of an experience as uncertainty about its utility.
That is foolish. Ignorance of a thing entails ignorance of its utility, not uncertainty. What do we do when faced with ignorance? The answer is we formulate hypotheses and look for empirical evidence while formulating applicable Structural Causal Models.
Assign subjective probabilities over the range of possible utilities it may have, and an expected utility for the outcome can be figured despite the agent’s ignorance of its nature.
Fuck off! Where there is ignorance, you consult smart people- guys with expert knowledge or guys with a deeper, more fundamental, theory. Any cretin at the horse races can 'assign subjective probabilities.
But this response to Paul’s challenge seems inadequate. Decision theory should leave conceptual room for rational neophobia.
No. Neophobia is a medical problem like agoraphobia. There are treatments for it.
A decision theory like Isaac Levi’s,
is useless in this context. Why? Our degrees of belief don't matter when it comes to anything important. We consult an expert who may have to consult a bigger expert. Depending on the importance of the decision and the current state of knowledge, it is likely that the utility from 'discovery' is greater than that of the agent. Thus, my Doctor tells me there is a one percent chance that a particular procedure will save my life and a 99 percent chance that it will shorten my life by six months. I say 'fuck! What would you do in my position?' The Doctor says 'I'd take the procedure. That way the data set expands and so Humanity as a whole can make better decisions. In other words, my disutility increases Humanity's aggregate utility no matter what the outcome is. That's how 'discovery' works.
which allows for indeterminacy in utility, might accomodate the phenomenon.
The problem is that it 'accommodates' all sorts of stupid shit but does not counsel anything sensible. Fuck Isaac Levi and the horse he rode in on. Read Judaea Pearl.
Levi’s discussion of indeterminate utility has focused on examples of risk aversion like the Allais problem
This is not a problem, it is an opportunity for arbitrage. Essentially, because of 'transferable utility' (i.e. money), market makers can turn what is indeterminate into what is determinate enough for practical purposes.
Suppose Levi discovered he had trouble reading things. Would he say 'oh no! Texts have become indeterminate to me. I must use a family of non-affine equivalent valuation functions to guess what the text is.' ? Perhaps. But if he mentioned the problem he was working on to his granny she'd say 'go to the optician and get a pair of reading glasses you fucking cretin.'
and on situations in which there are conflicts of value.
Which is the problem markets solve. It is a different matter that there are market failures. Still, that's the solution to the underlying problem.
Cases of unknowable value arising in transformative choice problems might be handled similarly.
By cretins. Values are things people put on things whether they are 'knowable' or not. Plenty of people dedicate their lives to a Deity who is not humanly knowable. It may be that the ultimate truths of Mathematics and Physics are unknowable. That doesn't mean what STEM subject mavens do isn't very valuable indeed.
Philosophy, on the other hand, is a SHIT subject. Don't study it. Don't teach it. Laugh at it by all means.
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