The Experience Project

Request for Proposals: The Philosophy of Transformative Experience

Award Announcement
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Notre Dame, with
generous support from The John Templeton Foundation, invite proposals on
transformative experience for The Philosophy of Transformative Experience funding
initiative. Our aim is to encourage research from both new and established scholars
working on philosophical projects related to transformative experience and its
applications. We anticipate proposals from philosophers working in decision theory,
epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, ethics, applied ethics,
metaethics, and moral psychology, but welcome applicants from other areas including the
philosophy of social science, the philosophy of science, and metaphysics.
Interdisciplinary teams that include members from other areas, especially psychology,
sociology, or theology, are also welcome to apply, and interdisciplinary projects that have
investigators from more than one discipline are invited to submit funding inquiries to all
relevant project requests for proposals under the Transformative Experience wing of the
project.

Award Description
Philosophy Director: L. A. Paul, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The Experience Project, Principal Investigators: L. A. Paul, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, and Michael Rea and Samuel Newlands, University of Notre Dame
This $450,000 RFP is intended to support work in philosophy and related areas on the
nature and varieties of transformative experience. During the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017
academic years, we will offer up to three non-residential fellowships per year over the
course of two years to philosophers. Full proposal requests for Philosophy only would
range between $40,000 and $100,000 for projects not to exceed one year in duration, and
Interdisciplinary projects submitted under multiple Experience Project RFPs may request
an amount equal to the sum of the maximum award amount for each RFP individually
(and may exceed one year in duration). Any two year proposals submitted jointly to
multiple Experience Project RFPs must be submitted in the first funding cycle and submit
a Letter of Intent in accordance with the application process in the Psychology and
Sociology RFPs (Letters of Intent due October 1, 2014). We expect to make
approximately 6 awards.

Background
Contemporary philosophy devotes much attention to traditional epistemological and
decision-theoretic questions involving belief, justification, evidence, objective chance,
subjective and practical rationality, and reasons for action. However, less attention has
been paid to the way in which states with distinctive cognitive phenomenological
characters, those involving what its like to have certain lived experiences, raise special
questions for the way agents understand, predict, choose, believe, and act. Many of these
special questions arise because of the nature of what its like knowledgesuch
knowledge can require the knower to have certain kinds of experience before the knower
can grasp the content or subjective value in question. For example, if Sandy has never
seen color before, she cannot know what it is like to see red until she actually has the
experience of seeing red. Prior to having the experience of seeing red, what its like to see
red is epistemically inaccessible to Sandy: previous experience is not projectable in a way
that will give her knowledge about what it is like to see red. Thus, her first experience of
seeing red is epistemically transformative.
For acts whose outcomes involve states with cognitive phenomenological contents or
values that are epistemically inaccessible to an individual, there is a problem both for the
individuals ability to predict his or her future subjective values and to predict his or her
future beliefs and preferences. When the value to an individual of an outcome consists
primarily in what that outcome will be like for her, and an ineliminable way for her to
assess that value involves introspection, then she will be unable to determine the expected
value of the act that can lead to that outcome. For example, before she has experienced
color, Sandy will not be able to determine whether she would prefer painting her office
red or painting it blue.
Additionally, when experience is supposed to provide evidence for some claim, the
individual who hasnt had the experience may be at a loss to pronounce on the truth of
the claim. For example, a wine connoisseur may have experiences constituting evidence
for aesthetic claims about wine that non-connoisseurs could not evaluate. Similarly, some
religious believers say that their religious experiences are themselves evidence for Gods
existence, but since one has to believe in order to have the experiences, those who are not
believers are unable to evaluate these claims. And some experiences transform ones
approach to decisions: for example, they affect ones preferences about the experience
and its effects, how one approaches risk-taking, how much evidence one needs to settle
on a decision, or which principles one uses to guide ones choices.
The epistemic inaccessibility of such what its like knowledge, when seen in the
context of decisions that involve important life choices, raises new questions about how
to approach decision-making. Questions arise about how to model choices for individuals
where ones decision involves a choice between outcomes whose values and evidentiary
status depend upon epistemically inaccessible phenomenal content. Such choices may
involve major life decisions such as deciding to have a child, career decisions such as
choosing between becoming an artist or a hedge fund manager, and intensely personal
decisions such as choosing to become a monk or a nun, or choosing to believe in God or
to reject such belief.

The Concept of Transformative Experience

The primary notion of transformative experience is epistemic: a transformative
experience is an experience that provides knowledge that is epistemically inaccessible to
the knower until he or she has that experience. As one might put it, the content of the
proposition describing the experience is graspable only by having the experience itself.
The paradigmatic cases of such experience involve cognitive phenomenological states,
such as the state of knowing what its like to see color or the state of knowing what its
like to hear music, the state of knowing what its like to believe in God or the state of
knowing what its like to have a child. A secondary notion of a transformative
experience, a personally transformative experience, involves an experience that
transforms the self, the subjective preferences, or the epistemic states of a knower in
some deep and perhaps even unpredictable way: while the two notions are related, this
secondary notion must be carefully distinguished from the primary notion. These two
notions, when taken together, constitute the general notion of transformative experience.
Transformative experiences raise distinctive philosophical questions about individual
decision-making, because a transformative experience that is both epistemically and
personally transformative can change, in a way that is epistemically inaccessible before
the experience, ones preferences concerning the acts that can lead to the new outcomes.
Transformative choices, then, ask you to make a decision where you must manage
different selves at different times, with different sets of preferences. Which set of
preferences should you be most concerned with? Your preferences now, or your
preferences after the experience? And since the self you may become is epistemically
inaccessible to you before you choose to become that self, is it better to discover a new
self, or is it better to keep the status quo?

Key Questions
We will give special attention to projects that attempt to articulate and develop the
concept of the primary notion of transformative experience or the philosophical
implications of transformative experiences that are both epistemically and personally
transformative across all the domains mentioned above. We are especially interested in
the importance of understanding and evaluating transformative experience involved in
big decisions and major life events, whether from a theoretical, practical, cognitive
phenomenological, epistemic, or moral perspective. We expect proposals to acknowledge
existing research in relevant areas and to suggest how they will advance this research.
Accordingly, we call for proposals addressing the following Key Questions concerning
the way that issues involving transformative experience can connect to philosophical
discussions.
1. How might transformative experiences affect deliberation, action, preference
change, and assessments of well-being (both short and long term)?
2. How should an individual view the values and beliefs she will have after a
transformative experience, from her current point of view? If she knows that they
differ in significant ways, which values and beliefs should she use in her current

decision-making?
3. Do transformative experiences ever provide evidence that one cannot get through
other means? If so, what is the status of this evidence?
4. How is transformative experience relevant to philosophical questions about
epistemic modality, persistence of the self, and phenomenal content and
description?
5. Can standard decision-theoretic models accommodate transformative experience?
If so, how? If not, can they be modified to do so?
6. What interaction is there between transformative experience and issues in
developmental, cognitive, and social psychology, in sociology, or in theology?
7. How are religious transformative experiences different from other sorts of
transformative experiences? What does it mean to call a transformative
experience a religious one?
8. How is the connection between religious transformative experience and religious
belief similar to the connection between ordinary experience and ordinary
belief? How is it different?
9. How are individual epistemically transformative experiences similar to
communal epistemically transformative experiences, such as scientific
revolutions or religious reformations? Can what we know about communal
transformative experiences be fruitfully applied to individual transformative
experiences?
10. Can existing philosophical theories of experience be fruitfully applied to
epistemically transformative experiences?
11. Do transformative experiences have propositional contents? Does their
phenomenal character fix their propositional content? Does their propositional
content fix their phenomenal character?
12. How do transformative experiences affect our assessments of the success or
failure of our attempts to achieve our goals?
13. What is the relationship between epistemic transformative experience and
personally transformative experience?

Application Instructions
We will offer up to six awards over a two-year period (academic years 2015-2016 and
2016-2017). For year one, full proposals are due by January 15, 2015, with award
decisions issued by March 15, 2015, for research to begin between July 1, 2015 and
September 1, 2015. For year two, full proposals are due by January 15, 2016, with
award decisions issued by March 15, 2016, for research to begin between July 1, 2016
and September 1, 2016. Any two year proposals submitted jointly to multiple Experience
Project RFPs must be submitted in the first funding cycle and submit a Letter of Intent
in accordance with the application process in the Psychology and Sociology RFPs
(Letters of Intent due October 1, 2014).
Applicants are required to submit:

1. A cover letter of no more than 1 page with the title, amount requested,
duration of the project (not to exceed one year), and team members (if
applicable).
2. A complete curriculum vitae.
3. A brief abstract of the proposed work of no more than 150 words.
4. A statement indicating that the applicant is submitting a proposal to the
Philosophy of Transformative Experience portion of the Experience Project.
The applicant should indicate whether s/he is submitting a proposal to any
other programs that are part of the Experience Project.
5. A narrative description of the work to be conducted, not to exceed 5,000
words (excluding references). The description should explain the central
questions of the project, the background and significance of the questions,
the way in which the project addresses the goals and at least one of the Key
Questions of this RFP, a summary of the main idea or argument, and plans
for the dissemination of research outputs.
6. A project summary of up to 500 words that explains the project and its
significance to non-academics for publicity purposes.
7. A timeline for the proposed work.
8. A detailed budget with accompanying narrative explaining line items,
totaling between $40,000 and $100,000 in direct + indirect costs. Overhead
is limited to 15%, and funds cannot be used for major equipment purchases.
Examples of acceptable use of funds include sabbaticals, course buyouts,
conference related travel, and research materials. As noted above, proposals
submitted to multiple Experience Project RFPs may request a maximum
award equal to the sum of the maximum awards of each individual RFP
included.
9. Written approval of the department chair and university-signing officials.
Full proposals should be submitted by e-mail attachment as a single PDF to:
(admin@the-experience-project.org). The words philosophy of transformative
experience should appear in the subject line. The required documents should be
compiled in a single file in the order listed above. An acknowledgment email will be
sent within seven days of receiving your full proposal. If you do not receive
acknowledgment, please write again to: (admin@the-experience-project.org) and to:
(jseachris@nd.edu), or call (574) 631-5377.
All questions about the application process should be sent to: (admin@the-experienceproject.org).
Review and Selection Process
Proposals will be reviewed by the Project Directors, in consultation with a panel of
external expert referees. If a proposal involves content or methods that require further
expertise, additional ad hoc reviewers may be sought.

Selection criteria will include: (1) significance of the proposed work, including both
theoretical and practical benefits, (2) novelty and creativity of the ideas and methods, (3)
appropriateness and promise of the proposed methods, (4) qualifications of the researcher
or research team, (5) potential for interdisciplinary insight and contributions, and (6)
relevance of the proposed work to the RFP goals.
Projects that are primarily historical in focus will not be funded.
Grant Eligibility and Requirements
Applicants must have a Ph.D. and be in or contracted to a faculty position at an
accredited college or university before the full proposal deadline (for year one: January
15, 2015, for year two: January 15, 2016).
All applications must be submitted in English and all payments will be made in US
dollars.
Successful applicants must commit to the following:
1. Submit final progress and expenditure reports. The final progress report
should not exceed 2 pages, and should detail the outcomes of the funded
project. Reports must be submitted at the conclusion of the project.
2. Attend the two UNC-ND collaborative workshops (Fall 2015 and Fall 2016)
and present at the second workshop (expenses covered).
3. Make every effort to attend the Opportunity Workshops that are convened
by Michael Rea or Laurie Paul on the topic of religious experience. (Dates
will be discussed within the first couple of months of the fellowship year.)
4. Notify the project at: (admin@the-experience-project.org) of all conference
presentations, papers, and books that arise from the funded research,
including presentations and publications occurring after the conclusion of
the grant.
5. Follow stipulations of grant award as communicated by Templeton either to
the University of Notre Dame or the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, or to the recipients directly, and as determined by Notre Dame and the
University of North Carolina.
Direct all questions to:
(admin@the-experience-project.org)
or
Center for Philosophy of Religion
223 Malloy Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556