Ignorance and Decision-Making, Part One
The Logical Priority of the Epistemic: The Theoretical Foundation of the Problem of Policymaker Ignorance
Hi, folks. Here comes another multi-part series, this time on the theoretical underpinnings of the problem of policymaker ignorance. In this first part of the series, I describe the thesis that underpins the problem, the logical priority of the epistemic. In subsequent parts of the series, I will offer philosophical arguments for the thesis, discuss the empirical evidence that supports the thesis, explain the meaning of logical priority, illustrate the significance of the thesis for surrogate decision-making in medical, legal, and other contexts, and consider the implications of the thesis for moral philosophy. I’m not sure how many parts I will ultimately write in this series or how long it will take to write them all, but, in any case, keep an eye on this space for more to come.
Alongside the work that I’ve done on the problem of policymaker ignorance in the last few years, work that considers the significance of relevant ignorance for political decision-making, I’ve been involved in a related research project that investigates the consequences of ignorance for decision-making in general.[1] The problem of policymaker ignorance is just a particular instance of a more general – indeed, fully general – problem of ignorance.[2]
Notice that, when making a decision, when choosing between various courses of action, whatever your circumstances, only a limited array of all possible courses of action appear in your conscious mind for consideration. Not every course of action that you might pursue under the circumstances appears in your consciousness.
This fact leads naturally to the question, what considerations determine whether a course of action consciously appears as an option to a decision-maker? It is somewhat surprising how rarely this question has ever been asked over the course of the history of the various decision-related disciplines, e.g., economics, psychology, decision theory, moral philosophy. These disciplines typically treat a decision-maker’s incentive structures (or preference rankings) as brute facts, as if a ranked set of options just pops into a decision-maker’s mind ex nihilo, unrelated to and undetermined by any prior considerations. More problematically for these disciplines, this method of treating preference rankings as brute givens systematically neglects any effects that the determinants of a decision-maker’s preference rankings might have on their ultimate decisions.
My research on the general problem of ignorance suggests an answer to the question of the determinants of a decision-maker’s preference rankings. The nature and extent of a decision-maker’s relevant ignorance place brackets around their options. Only courses of action that fall within these brackets – only courses of action with regard to which a decision-maker’s relevant knowledge is (in some way and to some extent) adequate – count as options for the decision-maker and are likely to appear in consciousness. Courses of action that fall outside these brackets, courses of action that lie in the realm of the decision-maker’s relevant ignorance, do not appear as options in their consciousness.
The epistemic burden of a course of action is everything that the decision-maker needs to know, but does not already know, to pursue the course of action effectively, without resort to luck, providence, fortune, or any other spontaneous forces. In other words, the epistemic burden of a course of action is all of the knowledge (including know-how) that the decision-maker still needs to acquire to deliberately realize the goal(s) of the course of action, whatever the goal(s) might be.
According to the thesis of the logical priority of the epistemic, epistemic burdens function as criteria for the pre-conscious culling of courses of action and the sorting of surviving options in a consciously tractable preference ranking. Courses of action that bear impossibly heavy epistemic burdens typically do not qualify as options in a decision-maker’s preference rankings. Courses of action that bear comparatively heavy epistemic burdens tend to be systematically discounted in a decision-maker’s preference rankings relative to less epistemically burdensome options.
The logical priority of the epistemic suggests, moreover, that epistemic burdens do affect a decision-maker’s ultimate decisions. A decision-maker cannot choose courses of action that are so epistemically burdensome as not to count as options, so epistemically burdensome that they do not even appear in the decision-maker’s conscious preference rankings. More generally, a decision-maker is less likely, other things equal, to choose an option that is sufficiently burdensome to be discounted in their preference rankings relative to other, less epistemically burdensome, options.
Simply put, the decision sciences systemically neglect the effects of epistemic burdens, qua determinants of preference rankings, on decision-making, effects that are – if the thesis of the logical priority of the epistemic is sound – pervasive.
[1] Here are links to non-paywalled versions of a few papers from this research project:
“The Priority of the Epistemic”:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4304157
“Epistemic Burdens and the Incentives of Surrogate Decision-Makers”:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4304167
“Ignorance and moral judgment: Testing the logical priority of the epistemic”:
https://philpapers.org/rec/CRUIAM-3
[2] And I mean truly, universally, fully general, a problem for all conscious beings, human or otherwise. My dogs, inasmuch as they can be said to make decisions, are no less subject to the general problem of ignorance than I am. This is not to say that our epistemic circumstances are otherwise comparable.