Reframing understanding of the decision-making context


Reframing the Art of Non-Decision-Making (Part #6)

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The civilizational puzzle meriting attention is the inability to focus on the nature of the failure of remedial strategies, whether individually or as a necessarily integrated complex (Recognizing the Psychosocial Boundaries of Remedial Action: constraints on ensuring a safe operating space for humanity, 2009; Mind Map of Global Civilizational Collapse: why nothing is happening in response to global challenges, 2011).

Especially striking is the long recognized focus on "small decisions", hyped as remarkable breakthroughs through the media (Alfred E. Kahn, Tyranny of Small Decisions: market failures, imperfections, and the limits of economics, Kyklos, 1966; W. E. Odum, Environmental degradation and the tyranny of small decisions, BioScience, 1982)

Binary cognitive implications of "decision": As the etymology of decision suggests, it a process of "cutting off". The key question is how to understand the context with respect to which this cutting off takes place. Also curious is the binary implication of cutting, effectively recognizing only the option chosen to the exclusion of the "path not followed". The irony is all the greater given the association of executive decision-making with the original function of executioner.

In a context of widely acknowledged complexity, in which it is claimed that "everything is connected to everything", any decision can then be understood as marginalizing or rendering irrelevant that which is not the focus of the option chosen -- whether by ignoring it or postponing consideration of it. The process can be called into question as a form of "cognitive gerrymandering", as separately discussed (Scientific Gerrymandering of Boundaries of Overpopulation Debate, 2012). A striking example is offered by the issue of "terrorism", a concept carefully crafted by legislative provisions to exclude the vast majority of processes by which people are "terrified" -- mugging, sex slavery, torture, domestic violence, bullying in institutions, racketeering, shootings, and the like (Varieties of Terrorism -- extended to the experience of the terrorized, 2004). As a consequence the unprecedent provisions for the detection of "terrorist threats" avoid detection of such processes and the need to respond to their perpetrators.

More curious is the sense in which those making a decision frame it (and themselves) as necessarily "right" with the implication that those whose preoccupations are set aside are necessarily "wrong" (as with their preoccupations). There is a continuing debate on the interplay of right with righteousness, especially with respect to any political right wing. There is corresponding concern with those on the left, readily associated and conflated with the left-behind, and the sinister.

Lefteousness? Further subtlety is evident in widespread recognition of righteousness and the almost total lack of reference to any complementary understanding of "lefteousness" of which the most subtle is that of Yaacov Haber (Righteousness and Lefteousness, Orchos Chaim, 2005), in contrast with the more obvious compilation by Paul Routledge (The Bumper Book of British Lefties portraits of all the forces of lefteousess, Politico, 2004).

Given the challenge to decision-making of self-righteousness, of some interest is the complementary insight of Pete George:

An overconfidence in lefteousness can appear as an arrogance of ideals as they blind themselves inside their own made bubble. Where they think the people must listen to them rather than them listening to the people. (30 May 2012)

This binary approach is of course most evident as being fundamental to democratic voting procedures, as in the 2016 US presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum. No matter how small the margin of any majority, the other option is excluded. The divisive consequences for a society are a matter of increasing concern (Criteria Justifying Recounting or Revoting in Democracy post-Brexit, 2016). Those thereby "remaindered" (if not "executed") and their preoccupations, call for new thinking (Reintegration of a Remaindered World: cognitive recycling of objects of systemic neglect, 2011).

Cutting the Gordian knot: The challenge of decision-making in contemporary of complexity has been usefully compared to the significance attached to the legend of the Gordian knot with which Alexander the Great was confronted (and chose to "cut"), as discussed separately (Mapping grossness: Gordian knot of governance as a Discordian mandala? 2016).

In the absence of depictions of such a knot in cognitive terms, the implication that the dilemmas of global management might be explored topologically as a knot merits consideration in the light of the mathematical interest in the endless knot, the trefoil knot, the cinquefoil knot, and the septoil knot. This would be consistent with the psychological significance associated with knot topology by Jacques Lacan and R. D, Laing in respect of individual self-governance. Commenting on a session of the World Economic Forum, John Jullens argues that: It's as if the global economy is being strangled by a gigantic Gordian knot from which it cannot untangle itself (The Gordian Knot of Global Economic Growth, Strategy-Business, 15 October 2013).

The legend has been used by other authors:

Several authors have related the associated dilemma to energy and climate change. For example, Ted Nordhaus (et al.) focus on the insight originally required by Alexander:

Alexander's new perspective -- what is sometimes called a "gestalt shift" -- was a prerequisite to cutting the Gordian Knot... We believe that both a gestalt shift and a bold stroke are required to cut the Gordian Knot at the heart of today's energy challenge.... In the end, it was impossible -- and unnecessary -- to untie the Gordian Knot. (Fast, Clean, & Cheap: cutting global warming's Gordian Knot, Harvard Law and Policy Review, January 2008)

Such considerations resulted in an earlier focus on the problematic interlocking of cycles embodying so-called wicked problems -- calling for cyclic comprehension, as discussed separately (Encycling Problematic Wickedness for Potential Humanity, 2014; Encycling wickidity in the light of polyhedral viruses and their mutation, 2015). This approach is consistent with the cycles inherent in spherically symmpetrical polyhedra, as discussed below.

Non-binary decision-making possibilities? It could be readily assumed that a non-binary decision is a logical impossibility. Reference has however long been made in political philosophy to a third way. This is understood as a position akin to centrism that tries to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies. Arguably the very process of alternation, held to be fundamental to democracy, suggests a distinctive dynamic understanding of conventional binary approaches (Policy Alternation for Development, 1984). A tripartite approach is reflected in tripartism, understood as economic corporatism based on tripartite contracts of business, labour, and state affiliations within the economy.

Constraints on more complex modalities are evident from the logical law of excluded middle (or the principle of excluded middle). This is the third of the three classic laws of thought. It states that for any proposition, either that proposition is true, or its negation is true. This is associated with the sense of a dilemma, which is between two opposing alternatives. This is associated with the trilemma, namely a difficult choice from three options, each of which is (or appears) unacceptable or unfavourable. Similar understanding is associated with the quadrilemma, a seldom-used and unconventional term describing a problem requiring a choice among four alternatives.

Such perspectives are fruitfully called into question by a distinctive understanding of quadrilemma as articulated within various Eastern philosophies (for example the Maadhyamika catuskoti), and notably by Kinhide Mushakoji (Global Issues and Interparadigmatic Dialogue: essays on multipolar politics, 1988). In that articulation, four modalities are distinguished (as separately interpreted):

  • Affirmation: Leading to affirmative action in the form of support, commitment, initiative, proposition, cooperation, consensus formation, empowering, 'opening'.
  • Negation: Leading to negative action in the form of sanction, withdrawal (of support), denial, disassociation, delimitation, criticism, opposition, promotion of dissent, disempowering, 'closing'.
  • Affirmation and negation: Leading to ambiguous action, non-violent resistance, 'dumb insolence', 'giving with one hand and taking with the other', 'double dealing', 'stick and carrot tactics', the 'yes but no' response of the frustrated cross-examinee.
  • Non-affirmation and Non-negation: Leading to action in the form of indifference, indecision, non-action (in the oriental sense), 'neither confirm nor deny', 'opening and closing'.

The possible significance of pentalemmas, hexalemmas, heptalemmas, and octalemmas is discussed separately in the light of some references in the literature (Decision-making capacity versus Distinction-making capacity, 2015):

Arguably conventional reliance on binary decision-making is also significantly called into question by the unforeseen emergence of so-called post-truth politics. Intriguingly, whereas conventional logic is dependent on truth tables, there is now a case for exploring what might be termed a post-truth extension of that framework, as discussed separately (Towards articulation of a "post-truth table"? 2016).

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