JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, II

 

In terms of the construct, liberated federalism, the first item of interest to this blogger is the assumptions regarding decision making – that would be decision making in the realm of governance and politics.  And in this vein, the duality mentioned in the last posting between forces that either focus political concerns or studies at local communal levels or at national levels will be highlighted shortly in an upcoming posting.  

But before addressing this duality directly, however, some contextualizing needs to be done.  Specifically, factors of decision-making processes need to be fleshed out.  While this posting will only skim the surface of this topic, one might find the path it paves a bit challenging – hopefully readers will enjoy the scenery.

This synthesis of views – which this blog is currently addressing – between natural rights and critical theory is not totally divorced from the nation’s earlier view, parochial federalism, with its more local orientation.  That orientation stands in contrast with a more nationalistic orientation that the natural rights view assumes, and which is prominent today.  Of note, the natural rights view relies heavily on assumptions posed by behavioral sciences and, with that, an important link to decision making becomes relevant. 

Within that behavioral mode of thought, it is worth noting that most decisions that people make are made to advance one’s interests on the margin and the assumption held here is that reality is more complex and that decisions are based on several cognitive domains not adequately addressed by behaviorist analysis.  Therefore, this aspect of natural rights is judged to be wanting. 

While it is beyond the purpose of this account to present a comprehensive model for decision making, the process of making decisions is seen as one in which individuals weigh several motivating factors at any given time.[1]  And so, before explaining the assumptions entailed here with this synthesis, the importance of decision making should be established and somewhat explained.

In terms of considering mental constructs that pertain to guiding how citizens view governance and politics, the question of how and why people decide to act politically as they do seems to be of central importance.  Decision making is a precursor to all actions excluding actions that are classified as reflex reactions.  That is, before people act, they decide to act, i.e., they are motivated to individually act in a certain fashion.  In turn, people’s motivations vary in terms of intensity and direction.[2] 

Therefore, to get a clear understanding of why people act the way they do, one needs to have an explanation of why they have decided to act in a particular fashion; why they have generated the motivation to act in the ways they do.  What follows is how this blogger has broken down this process – part relies heavily on psychological works of well-regarded scholars and part on self-reflection.

To assume people are merely responding to the conditions facing them in such ways as to marginally advance their interests, as crude behaviorists do, leads one to miscalculate various aspects of those decisions.  That is, it might very well underestimate how these actors weigh the values before them or the priorities these actors place on those values, not to mention the personal histories of similar situations people bring to that point in time.[3]  Granted, a lot of this happens at the subconscious level, but it happens, nonetheless.

Those who study these decision-making sessions write about these miscalculations by those who engage in the politics of various challenging situations; for example, the politics of ethnically diverse nations and how “irrational” behaviors there can and at times are judged to be.  Usually, such studies look at segments of those nations’ populations and have often judged them to be chaotic. 

In those cases, which are often like other sorts of decision-making episodes in challenging situations, the chaos originates not from what the minds read to be the facts of the situations in question.  Instead, people misread how their values are engaged and/or miscalculate the strength of their or of others’ values as they pertain to the situations at hand.

And this description of what is going on is not just the opinion of unsophisticated parties but of experts who find it excessively difficult to predict the behaviors of those populations.  What is called for are closer views and understandings both of what mental processes go into decision making and of what such decisions potentially consider; that can be, as hinted above, a large array of complicated notions, beliefs, habits, desires, fears, and complicated memories. 

It turns out, therefore, that there are numerous factors that go into these acts of deciding to act.  One, as the behaviorists argue, are the conditions of the present situation, or at least, what is perceived from the current situation or from extrinsic factors.[4]  For purposes of identification in this discussion, this set of cognitive elements can be called the real domain.  The real domain is constituted by the theories or paradigms one holds about reality, one’s memories, and one’s current perceptions. 

These elements make themselves usually known in a holistic way in that individuals attempt to create congruence among their substantive components.  Usually upon reflection, often in response to a relevant question, people think in terms of individual elements.  Short of that, the sum of these elements constitutes a holistic picture of what is.

Components or elements that do not “fit” substantively; they offend the logical wholeness of the rest and cause internal discomfort known as dissonance.[5]  In this domain there are the recognitions of all the relevant values and goals people have in life as matters of fact.  These elements – while in themselves belonging to the ideal domain (to be explained below) – add vibrance to any dissonance one might feel in each situation.  It can intensify dissonance and when it is experienced, individuals seek and usually arrive at some accommodation so that the dissonance is lessened.

How?  For one, individuals can abandon their related values or goals or rationalize the perceived inconsistencies in question if the situations allow.  Another option is that they can neglect the inconsistencies, or the affected values or goals can be diminished, if only for the time being, in importance.  This last possibility is often an important attribute of that other domain, the aforementioned ideal domain – that is, those beliefs individuals hold concerning what should or should not be.[6] 

In that other ideal mental domain, people harbor those values and goals in some order of priority which is to some degree (usually when they are fairly high in intensity or in relation to other values and goals) are readily recognized and felt by the individuals in question.[7]

Priority listings are supported by emotions and feelings, which in turn are motivating forces within the perceived mental purviews of individuals.  The substantive elements of the ideal domain are products of decisions themselves.  But unlike the decisions to act, these decisions are made without the consequences of such decisions immediately present.  One can, in a moment of reflection, decide to hold in high regard the desire to do some activity but when the opportunity arises, one can think better of that initial decision.

Ideal decision making is done upon reflection of past experiences, socialized lessons, and formed habits.  Most of the literature discusses the formulation of such ideals as those which are formed because of past rewards and punishments.  Some have commented on the role communal settings have played in the formation of ideals and often take on moralistic status and can be described as duties and obligations. 

And usually, the elements of ideals conform with the way they were developed or attained.  For example, technical values are generally acquired in technical environments; loving values tend to be attained in loving relationships.  The substance of the values and goals not only tend to be congruent with each other, but also with their formulation.

That is, they create patterns of dealing with the entailed emotions, the allegiance to sets of mores – this harkens to that delightful book, Habits of the Heart, by Robert Bellah, et al.[8] – and from the first domain, the real domain, their supportive beliefs – the “habits of the mind.”  All this is sensed not as individual components, but with a comfortable, repeatable wholeness within one’s consciousness – “this is just the way I see things,” or “this is just the way I feel about it.”

Another set of motivations or influences on the decision-making process is the physiological factors.  Here, the elements of this set of factors are not intentional on the part of people.  The elements include the genetic makeup of individuals, the changes, through aging, in the chemical compositions of people, and the social reactions to behaviors that such genetic and chemical compositions encourage. 

These factors or motivations are not chosen by individuals but are the product of given conditions that are present in either affected situations that people confront or exist more or less chronically in their biological makeups.[9]  Of course the other factor that affects this domain is accidental occurrences that have negative physical consequences – from a slip and fall to wartime injuries.  People so afflicted may have had life changing experiences that have affected how they see their worlds, which include mental effects on their real and ideal domains.

So, this account will stop here and simply state that decision making sessions are influenced by what occupies people’s minds in the form of what they “see” as the real (either in the present situations or from what they recollect from their past), what they believe should or should not be – their ideal beliefs – and what the mind recognizes are the physiological conditions or limitations that people’s bodies are experiencing. In the next posting, this account will venture into the time space in which decisions are made.

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[1] For a lighthearted description of this claim, see “Critical Thinking and Decision-Making:  Why Is It So Hard to Make Decisions?” GCF Global (n.d.), accessed June 10, 2023, https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/problem-solving-and-decision-making/why-is-it-so-hard-to-make-decisions/1/# AND for a more professional account (involving business related decisions) see Vassundhara Sawhney, “Why Do We Try to Dodge Difficult Decisions?” Ascend (August 19, 2021), accessed June 10, 2023, https://hbr.org/2021/08/why-do-we-try-to-dodge-difficult-decisions AND for a more scholarly account, a bit dated, Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1997).

[2] Robert Slavin, Educational Psychology:  Theory and Practice (London, England:  Pearson, 2022).

[3] This has been studied from various perspectives.  For example, how others influence people’s decision making, see Vanessa K. Bohn, M. Mhdi Roghanizad, and Amy Z. Xu, “Underestimating Our Influence over Others’ Unethical Behavior and Decisions,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 3, accessed June 10, 2023, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167213511825 AND for a more standard account, see Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium:  Ethnicity in International Politics, (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1993).

[4] Slavin, Educational Psychology.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Robert L. Solso, Cognitive Psychology (8^th Edition), (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2007).

[8] Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart:  Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York, NY:  Harper and Row, Publishers, 1985/2007).

[9] For example, Bruce Goldman, “Two Minds:  The Cognitive Differences between Men and Women,” Stanford Medicine Magazine (May 22, 2017) accessed June 10, 2023, https://www.google.com/search?q=recent+review+of+moir+and+jessel+brain+sex&rlz=1C1RXMK_enUS966US966&oq=recent+review+of+moir+and+jessel+brain+sex&aqs=chrome..69i57.20198j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#ip=1 AND Anne Moir and David Jessel, Brain Sex:  The Real Difference between Men and Women (New York, NY:  Dell Publishing, 1989).