Transformative Experience and Testimony

Dr Yuri Cath (La Trobe University)

Can I know what it is like to deliver a stand-up comedy routine, give birth to a child, or go to war, without having had those experiences myself? Is it possible to gain this ‘what it is like’-knowledge by reading stories or talking with the experienced? Philosophers typically hold a pessimistic attitude towards this possibility on the grounds that one can know what it is like to have an experience only if one has had an experience of that same type oneself (see e.g. Lewis 1998 and Paul 2014). And endorsements of this pessimistic attitude can be found in novels, films, and pop music. But, I shall argue, a puzzle now arises because there are also countless examples of everyday practices and judgments that testify to our holding an optimistic attitude towards this same possibility. I explore how this puzzle can be illuminated and potentially dissolved by appealing to recent work on the form, meaning, and use of ‘knowledge-wh’ ascriptions (i.e. ascriptions of knowledge where the complement of ‘knows’ is an embedded question) as well as work on the nature of empathy and imagination. In closing I show how these ideas can also help us to better evaluate Laurie Paul’s (2014) prominent arguments for the conclusion that we cannot rationally decide whether to have a transformative experience (like becoming a parent for the first time) on the basis of our expectations of what it would be like to have that experience.