Decision Making

In our everyday lives, consciously or unconsciously, we use all our ways of knowing. We don’t use each way of knowing in every situation, neither do we use one specific one for one specific situation, rather our ways of knowing overlap and work together to influence our thinking and decision making. When we face a problem in life, we use (or should use), all of our ways of knowing to help us get to an answer or conclusion. How much influence a specific way of knowing has on our judgment is based on the context of the problem. If it’s a calculation problem, we may use memory to recall the formula or reason based off of our memory of things to deduce what makes the most sense. If it’s a trick question or a riddle, there can be many ways of knowledge used. For example, you would use logic and reasoning to think of the most sensible answer. Language would aid you in figuring out which answer is most logical based on the memory and experiences you’ve had in your life (i.e. If there was a trick question about a female bull or a widow’s husband you would use language and memory to recall that there is no such thing). Sense perception could aid you in visualizing the problem if it’s relevant. For example, a simple problem where the result of moving things is to be determined, drawing out the objects and using imagination to move them around in your mind can help solve it. A more general example of this could be listening to a presentation; sense perception allows us to hear the emphasis on certain words or phrases to figure out what’s important. Visuals aid in visualizing trends in data or size comparisons which help with understanding the content. Emotions can effect the way you interpret or look at a presentation; if you feel happy, you’ll notice the positive points of delivery of the presentation such as the enhancing visuals, good voice projection, etc. If you’re in a bad mood, you will notice the negative points of the presentation, like how distracting the visuals are or how the person was screaming at the class. It’s similar to the analogy of the glass of water which seems half full if you’re happy and half empty if you’re sad. The language used by the speaker is specifically chose to deliver their message; if an advertising company is trying to get you to buy something they will only talk about the positive aspects of the product and enhance it with positive attributes such as popular, efficient, trendy…etc. Furthermore, the speaker may want you to recall something they expect you to know or a situation you’ve been in.

When it comes to ethical dilemmas placed upon an individual, emotions and cultural background have the most impact on the decision. Culture and background would be an overarching component of this type of decision making, but the balance between emotions and reasoning is crucial in making holistic decisions which weight both morals and logic equally. This can be a decision for our everyday lives such as sharing secrets, or it can be a life changing / life saving decision on a much more serious and significant level. When making an ethical decision such as saving 10 lives for the cost of one, different people will have different views as to what is right or wrong. For example, some people might say that sacrificing one person’s life is the most logical thing to do as saving 10 people is better than saving one person. Others may argue that the one person may be very intelligent and help bring a great change into the world while the other 10 are criminals in which case it is better to kill the 10 and save the 1. If the people who are to be saved are given attributes such as young, old, related to you, stranger…etc, these attributes then spark an emotional impulse and you look at them differently based on how you see people with that attribute in your daily lives. This is therefore impacted by your culture and what specific attributes mean to specific people. However, reasoning should still play a role in this type of thinking when it comes down to saving 10 of the most intelligent scientists or your baby brother. Some people, like me, would look at this in a completely different way; in my religion, Islam, we are taught that humans have no right to make choices over lives of other humans or even our own lives. So in a situation like this I would leave it to the hands of God who is the only one who has that right to make the decision of whose life is more valuable. This shows how faith can also play a significant role in ethical dilemmas. Moral dilemmas like these have no right answer and even though people always judge the choices of others, as long as the decision is supported with a balance of reasoning and emotion/faith, it can be considered a valid decision.