[lit-ideas] Re: Conscious after the fact?
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:42:41 -0700
[Some worries about 'satisficing.']
Almost fifty years ago, my friend, the late George Lear, and I were
sitting next to each other at a table around which the other members of
a class taught by (the late) D. A. T. Gasking, were arranged. Gasking
was going on (and on) about the criteria for something's (I forget what)
being identical to something else (also forgotten). George leaned over
to me, and whispered, 'Ask him if he'd accept "roughly similar".'
I've had occasion to remember this useful comment many times in the
course of (what else?) philosophical discussions, especially those that
involve perfection. essentialism, identity, and the like.
A theory of 'satisficing' purports to show how people arrive at
decisions that are 'good enough'—'good enough, but not 'optimal.' It
seems to involve some sort of folk induction (past satisfaction) and
other excruciatingly difficult concepts. Its major benefit seems to be
that often a solution that is 'good enough,' can be found by a process
or processes that are more 'cost-effective' than a search for an
'optimal' solution would be.
That this is accepted as self-evidently true is odd. There's no a priori
reason why an 'optimal' solution to a problem should take any more
effort or cost more than a solution that's only good enough. Of course,
it does, in a loopy kind of way: if you want to win a marathon, you will
probably have to train harder and more frequently than if your goal is
merely to finish. However, these are not the same goals. If your goal is
merely to finish, then if you train in such-and-such a way, and you do
indeed finish, this isn't just 'good enough,' it's optimal, by
definition. There's no such thing as 'merely finishing' in a 'good
enough' manner. Perhaps this is unclear.
Suppose I want to save enough money to have sufficient funds during my
retirement (something I should have thought about before now). If I save
enough so that my life in retirement is 'good enough' (given my way of
life and allowing for future contingencies) why isn't this 'optimal'?
'Optimal' is too often left undefined by satisficionists, and this isn’t
surprising, unless satisficionists sneak value judgments into the
equation, such that my being satisfied isn’t a sufficient for what I’m
satisfied with’s being ‘optimal.’
A clearer example. Ask a mathematician what a proof is, and he or she
will almost always answer, 'what satisfies me.' What more could one
want? (In the case of asking someone what counts as a good performance
of la Traviata, it isn’t clear that ‘one that satisfies me’ is the end
of things.) Different schools of mathematics will give different answers
when asked what _kinds- of proofs satisfy them (constructivists and
intuitionists apparently don’t accept reductio proofs), but the general
answer will be the same. Does the Omniscient Observer have anything to
add?
I’ve been wondering here about the relationship between something’s
being ‘good enough’ (where satisfaction is the criterion of its being
so) and something’s being optimal, and what I’m suggesting is that not
only does the former often entail the latter, but that to draw a
distinction between them may require an illicit value judgment on the
part of someone other than the agent.
Robert Paul
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