First, just want to say that I have no problem at all with what Phil says below. To me it represents an articulate and thoroughly reasonable account of our usual commonsensical assumptions about decisions. Second, as a social anthropologist by training, I am delighted to have Phil mention social circumstances as something that ought to be looked into. As evidence that I have not succumbed to vulgar reductionism, I am particularly happy to be able to point to my latest response to Robert Paul concerning his similar suggestion in re the work of Gary Klein. There, you might have observed, my response to Klein's description of the case of the shooting down of the Iranian airliner was to suggest a whole series of possibly relevant social circumstances: (1) short training and retention cycles that increase the probability that novices are manning the radar screens; (2) training which assumes a hostile situation; and (3) a tense situation in which the possibility of a genuine threat was salient. All that said, I wonder about the stance of insisting on the commonsensical view of terms like "decision" aids understanding of how quite serious people in several different disciplines are talking about when they use such terms in their own technical contexts, especially when the convergence of their disciplines on the idea that "decisions" are largely unconscious seems to represent a major intellectual trend, albeit one uncomfortable to the common sense that Phil articulates so nicely. John On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 2:52 PM, Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I would, of course, say what John has me saying but I wouldn't make > any such appeal. We don't ordinarily point to blips on a machine as > evidence of decisions, making me wonder whether some form of > reductionism is going on in this argument. The reductionism would > suggest that _really_ a decision is this neural activity. On the > other hand, it seems to me that whatever else a decision is, it is a > social phenomenon. It is one manner by which we distinguish various > kinds of behaviour. -- John McCreery The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN Tel. +81-45-314-9324 http://www.wordworks.jp/