Abstract

Living with chronic illness can involve fluctuating between radically different bodily states depending on whether you are experiencing flareups of illness symptoms. What you can do in these bodily states can differ drastically from one another. Sometimes, these fluctuations in abilities lead to fluctuations in your values. That is, your evaluative perspective can shift when you are experiencing flareups of the illness. This can give rise to a puzzle for planning, since it is unclear what you should plan on doing when you do not have a stable set of preferences guiding your plans. This paper argues that one way to navigate this puzzle is for the agent to adopt an overarching plan that mediates the conflict between her differing perspectives.