Decision: The Human Predicament

Abstract

If choice is originative, it can be effective, it can give a thrust to the course of things intended to secure its ends. In order to secure its ends, choice must apply a knowledge of what will be the consequence of what. But the sequel of an action chosen by one man will be shaped by circumstance, and its circumstances will include the actions chosen now and actions to be chosen in time to come by other men. If, therefore, choice is effective, it is unpredictable and thus defeats, in some degree, the power of choice itself to secure exact ends. This is the human predicament. Information is necessarily about fragments of the cosmos and of history. At any time a man has some collection of pieces of information, fitted into various systems of thought or accepted stereotypes of experience. He cannot know, except in regard to the most immediate physical effects, whether his information is all that exists which bears on his choice of action. If there are gaps, the filling of these gaps by inventive thought with one or another set of suppositions can radically affect the implications of even his well-founded information. He must select among contrary suggestions. What the decision-maker wants is access to hope. The greater the possible loss or misfortune, the more exhilarating may be the success which is then brought within imaginative reach. Decision is not, in its ultimate nature, calculation, but origination.