Deliberate Decision Processes

 

To say that some decision process is deliberate is to say, negatively, that it was not merely a matter of unconscious habit or automatic stimulus-response. Put more positively, it is to say that it involved deliberating about possible actions and outcomes in order to determine which of the possibilities considered is the best. Deliberation can occur using a variety of different standards concerning what makes one possible action or outcome better than another.

In one case, I might deliberate concerning a range of possible moves for my Queen in a game of chess. There, I might make a decision based on the rules of the game concerning the Queen’s movement and my own interest in preventing my opponent from capturing my Queen to determine which of the many conceivable ways of moving that piece I consider to be the best.

In another case, I might deliberate concerning which of the cars I can currently afford to buy is the best car for me. ‘Best’ in this case might mean something like ‘most stylish’, or ‘most fuel-efficient’, or ‘safest’. It could also potentially mean something more complicated like ‘most stylish among those cars that get at least 25mpg, have driver and passenger air bags, and fewer than 75,000 miles on the odometer’.

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