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Big Decisions: Opting, Converting, Drifting*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2017

Edna Ullmann-Margalit
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Extract

I want to focus on some of the limits of decision theory that are of interest to the philosophical concern with practical reasoning and rational choice. These limits should also be of interest to the social-scientists' concern with Rational Choice.

Let me start with an analogy. Classical Newtonian physics holds good and valid for middle-sized objects, but not for the phenomena of the very little, micro, sub-atomic level or the very large, macro, outer-space level: different theories, concepts and laws apply there. Similarly, I suggest that we might think of the theory of decisionmaking as relating to middle-sized, ordinary decisions, and to them only. There remain the two extremes, the very ‘small’ decisions on the one hand and the very ‘big’ decisions on the other. These may pose a challenge to the ordinary decision theory and may consequently require a separate treatment.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 58 , May 2006 , pp. 157 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2006

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References

1 Ullmann-Margalit, Edna and Morgenbesser, Sidney, ‘Picking and Choosing’, Social Research Vol. 44, No. 4, (1977)Google Scholar. I should like to dedicate this essay to Sidney's memory, who passed away August 1, 2004.

2 Shakespeare, , Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1.Google Scholar

3 Although one tends to associate conversion primarily with religious conversions, the term is by no means restricted to this phenomenon. There is, first, what Starbuck terms counter-conversion, where one converts away from religion. Also, ‘[I]t may be from moral scrupulosity into freedom and license; or it may be produced by the irruption into the individual's life of some new stimulus or passion, such as love, ambition, cupidity, revenge or patriotic devotion.’ (James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Collin: The Fontana Library, 1960 (1901–1902), 181Google Scholar. See also James's case histories of some non-religious conversions, 183–185.) Pertinent too are conversions into, and away from, communism.

4 Chambers, Whittaker, Witness (Regnery Publishing, 1952)Google Scholar; Arthur Koestler's essay in The God That Failed, R. H. Crossman (ed.) (1951)Google Scholar and his three-volume autobiography, Arrow in the Blue (1952)Google Scholar, The Invisible Writing (1954)Google Scholar, and Janus: A Summing Up (1978).Google Scholar

5 Xenophon, , Memorabilia (Book II, ch. 1, 21–34)Google Scholar. The plot is based upon a lost parable of Prodicus of Ceos (a Sophist contemporary of Socrates), The Choice of Heracles. In his Memorabilia, Xenophon has Socrates relate a paraphrase of the lost parable to Arisrtippus. (J. S. Bach bases his secular Cantata BWV 213, ‘Herkules auf dem Scheidewege’, on this material.)

6 I follow here the formulation of Elster, Jon in ‘The Nature and Scope of Rational-Choice Explanation’, in The Philosophy of Donald Davidson: Perspectives on Actions and Events, Lepore, E. and McLaughlin, B. (eds.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985).Google Scholar

7 Regarding the ways people handle their big financial decisions, for example their retirement plans, see Sunstein, Cass R. and Thaler, Richard H., ‘Libertarian Paternalism Is Not An Oxymoron’Google Scholar. AEI-Brookings Joint Center Working Paper No. 03–2; U. Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 43; U. Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 185.

8 For a well-known taxonomy of decision strategies for coping under stress, time pressure, and risk see Janis, I. L. & Mann, L.: Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice and Commitment (Free Press, MacMillan, 1977)Google Scholar; it includes a decisional balance sheet.

In ‘Feeling and Thinking’ (American Psychologist, 1980, footnote 6Google Scholar), R. B. Zajonc underlines the role of affect in decision-making. He describes how, in trying to decide whether to accept a position at another universtiy, Phoebe Ellsworth said, ‘I get half way through my Irv Janis balance sheet and say: Oh, hell, it's not coming out right! Have to find a way to get some pluses over on the other side!’ (I am indebted to Thomas Schelling for this quote.) A recent report of four studies on consumer choice indicates that it is not always advantageous to engage in thorough deliberation before choosing. The scientists' new advice for anyone who is struggling to make a difficult decision is, Stop thinking about it and, when the time comes to decide, go with what feels right. See: Dijksterhuis, Ap, Bos, Maarten W., Nordgren, Loran F., van Baaren, Rick B., ‘On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect’, Science 17 (02) Vol. 311, No. 5763, 2006 1005–1007.Google Scholar

9 Consider ‘A Psychological Tip’, a poem by Piet Hein, from Grooks (Cogpenhagen: Borgens Forlag, 1982), 38Google Scholar: ‘Whenever you're called on to make up you mind / And you're hapmered by not having any, / The best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find / Is simply by spinning a penny. / No—not so that chance shall decide the affair / While you're passively standing there moping / But the moment the penny is up in the air, / You suddenly know what you're hoping.’ (I am indebted to Thomas Schelling for this quote too.)

10 I was told of a person who hesitated to have children because he did not want to become the ‘boring type’ that all his friends became after they had children. Finally, he did decide to have a child and, with time, he did adopt the boring characteristics of his parent friends—but he was happy! I suppose second order preferences are crucial to the way we are to make sense of this story. As Old Person, he did not approve of the personality he knew he would become if he has children: his preferences were not to have New Person's preferences. As New Person, however, not only did he acquire the predicted new set of preferences, he also seems to have approved of himself having them. How are we to assess the question whether he opted ‘right’? Who is asking? Who is answering, and on whose behalf?

11 The best known philosophical discussion of the connection between rationality and the idea of stability of personal identity over time is Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford University Press, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter XIV. However, he speaks of personal identity whereas I prefer to speak of personality identity.

12 For more on the small-step strategy see Ullmann-Margalit, Edna and Sunstein, Cass R., ‘Second-Order Decisions’, Ethics 110 (10 1999), 5–31Google Scholar. (Reprinted in: Sunstein, Cass R., Behavioral Law and Economics, Cambridge University Press, 2000, chapter 7, 187–298.)Google Scholar

13 Janis, I. L. & Mann, L.Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice and Commitment, 1977Google Scholar (see note 8 above), 35.

14 Marrying may be an infrequent experience in the lives of each one of us but, seen globally, it is a frequent event: most people marry, at least once. Big decisions may therefore be discussed very differently—from an institutional rather than from a personal perspective. It is possible, for example, to think of incentives and institutional designs that could encourage people to make their big decisions come out in a particualr way, for example to reinforce their decision to follow the path of Mother Theresa or to become a legal service lawyer instead of a corporate lawyer.

15 See Guyer, Paul, Kant and the Experience of Freedom (New York: Cambridge university Press, 1996 (1993)), 362–4.Google Scholar