Being Wrong About Personal Transformation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21603200 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Adrian Kind (0000-0001-5798-8513, Department of Psychiatry Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin Berlin Germany, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 281-296 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0966-8373 • E-ISSN: 1468-0378 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ejop.70024 |
| OpenAlex | W4413791914 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 9 |
Transformative experiences are thought to change us in different ways. Some transform us epistemically by providing genuinely new, previously unimaginable experiences, while others bring about personal transformation by altering our values. Recent debates on transformative experiences have explored the challenges these experiences pose for decision theory and medical ethics, prompting efforts to better understand their nature. An important but largely unexplored epistemic question concerns how we come to know that an experience has had a transformative impact. In this paper, I examine this issue, focusing on the epistemologically more complex case of personal transformation. I argue that while epistemic transformation is transparent—making first‐person judgments about it highly reliable—first‐person judgments regarding personal transformation are more complex, inferential, and prone to error. To explore these complexities, I introduce the phenomenon of Transformative Dazzle—situations in which the inherent error‐proneness of inferences about personal transformation leads to mistaken self‐attributions of personal transformation. I further elaborate on how such errors may be identified, both in everyday life and in empirical research on transformative experiences
Attribution · Epistemology · Pedagogy · Self · Sociology · Transformative learning · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social Psychology
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |