Natural and Unnatural Decision‐Making

Among the characteristics of human experience is the high frequency with which individual men and women get into situations in which they must say "yes" or "no," "true" or "false," "right" or "wrong." The questions that these words answer range over the full spectrum of the human condition-from "Should I visit my mother?" and "Should I get some beer?" through "Should I move to a new location?" to "Is this the best of all possible worlds?" These are four very different kinds of questions. They imply contemplation of very different kinds of action. Insofar as these answers do have some connection to real world behavior, we can say that they form part of the process of making a decision. Some of these decisions are of high frequency. They arise in situations that are repeated over and over, and that people expect to occur often during the course of their everyday affairs. Other decision situations occur infrequently; some maybe only once or twice in a person's life. The difference between a good decision and a bad one in such circumstances can be of major existential importance.