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Transformative Choices and the Specter of Regret

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2021

DANA HOWARD
DANA HOWARD*
Affiliation:
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY howard.1146@osu.edu
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Abstract

When people are making certain medical decisions—especially potentially transformative ones—the specter of regret may color their choices. In this essay, I ask whether predicting that we will regret a decision in the future serve any justificatory role in our present decision making. And if so, what role? While there are many pitfalls to such reasoning, I ultimately conclude that considering future retrospective emotions like regret in our decision making can be both rational and authentic. Rather than indicating that one is about to make a mistake or that there is some underlying value that one already cares about but is overlooking, the prediction that one will regret a decision in the future makes one confront how her present values and priorities may change as a result of her choice in ways she cannot at present anticipate.

Keywords

moral psychologypractical reasontransformative experiencesmedical ethicsregret
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 2022 , pp. 72 - 91
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Creative Commons
This is a work of the US Government and is not subject to copyright protection within the United States. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association.
Copyright
Copyright © NIH Clinical Center, 2021

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Footnotes

Thanks to Elizabeth Barnes, R. Lanier Anderson, Justin D'Arms, L.A. Paul, David Plunkett, Benjamin McKean, Emma Saunders-Hastings, Larisa Svirsky, Rebecca Stangl, Rosa Terlazzo, and Alex Voorhoeve for guiding comments and discussion on this essay. Thank you also to the participants at Stanford University Center for Ethics in Society Junior Scholars Workshop, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Working Group, Dartmouth College Workshop, and members of the University of Virginia Philosophy Department and Bioethics Program.

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