Normative Decision Theory Case Study

Laurie paul believes that one cannot make a rational decision to start a family on the basis of what you think it would be like to have your own child because fact is one or a couple in consideration of the question has not done it before. In fact i think the real question one or a couple should be asking themselves is what is the chain reaction of either having a child or remaining childless. At that point their choice is decided which option is best fit for there current situation and future as possible new parents. Laurie feels that the way people go about making their decision follows the cultural norms of our society, where couples are encouraged to think carefully and clearly about what they want before deciding they want to start

Laurie states there is a more realistic version of a decision- theoretic approach which calls a normative decision theory (pg3). A normative decision theory can capture norms for ordinary successful reasoning. This totally makes sense that we should “glean approximate values for our outcomes and apply the right decision theoretic rule, we can conform to the ordinary standard for rational decision-making”(pg 3). This way of decision making makes it very clear and realistic to the outcomes of having a child and being childless. Versus just thinking about what it would be like to have your own

While Mary is a neuroscientist who knows all the facts in a complete physic about light, the human eye’s response to light with a wavelength between 600 and 800 nanometers and any relevant neuroscience (pg6). However, besides the color black and white she has never seen any other color before her first experience to see the color red. The reason laurie uses this experiment is to convey that Mary is strictly in a “epistemically impoverished position”. Laurie wants to make a point that if you do not know something is going to be like, you can 't know how it 's going to make you feel. Now I disagree partly in Mary’s case because she knows everything there is to know about the human eye and how it reacts and function. On the other hand, Mary made a choice to face an epistemically transformative experience and does not know and cannot know the value of the relevant phenomenal outcomes of her choice (pg 7). Laurie also goes into more detail about being epistemically transformative which is inaccessible to the knowers without the experience. The decision is difficult to make to have children because there 's no knowledge of the experience as to being positive to have a child or a negative. Epistemically transformation has a nesry tone to it for either decisions a person or couple makes. Laurie states that personal transformation changes what is like to be you. Having a child could cause a person