December 12, 2017, by apycalo
Decisions, Decisions: Can We Really Decide?
Today I was in a lecture exploring Laurie Paul’s ideas on making decisions.1 She argues that sometimes we can’t use our rationality to decide things (seems weird… but bear with me).
If you think that you rationally decided to get your new kitten, or to go travelling… Think again.
Intrigued? Here are the top 3 points from her paper:
1. How we decide
photo credit: https://medium.com/@srachel_m/celebrating-while-sick-fc2cf09b7716
We make decisions by thinking about what effects our choices might have and how good/bad these will be. Then, we choose the choice with the nicest outcome. (So far, so simple).
So if you’re thinking of going to a party, you could like the idea of being a sloth on the sofa. Yet, you could love the idea of seeing your friends. Going to the party would be the rational choice.
2. Making decisions badly…
photo credit: https://imgflip.com/i/rra65
Sometimes (let’s be honest), we make bad decisions. We could know that we’d enjoy seeing everyone, yet choose to stay in bed in a Netflix vortex. This would be an irrational choice.
3. Sometimes we can’t decide?!
photo credit: http://metro.co.uk/2015/02/21/this-man-who-hates-food-eats-a-kilo-of-marmite-a-month-to-survive-5072763/
But Paul argues that sometimes we can’t make decisions this way. Imagine you’re deciding whether to try Marmite for the first time. Before tasting Marmite, you just can’t know what Marmite is like or if you’ll like it. So you can’t weigh up the options of eating/not eating it. It’s a non-rational choice.
But after trying Marmite, you can know. The experience is epistemically transformative – it reveals this magical knowledge. You now know how eating Marmite has affected you and whether you love/hate it (or feel rebelliously indifferent towards it).
So Paul leaves us with a pesky puzzle. Without rationality, how do we decide to try wild new foods or experience new cultures? Should we just flip a coin?
Leave your thoughts in the comments.
1Paul, L. 2015. ‘What you can’t expect when you’re expecting’, Res Philosophica, 92: 2, https://www.pdcnet.org/C1257AEE006039C4/file/684CD3100CDB3DEDC1257EE5005D6AF4/$FILE/resphilosophica_2015_0092_0002_0003_0024.pdf
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