An Essay Concerning Human Decisions

Abstract

B ased on decades of combined experience in teaching, observing and working with decision makers, we realized that the praxis of decision making as well as our own approach has always been transdisciplinary. Therefore in this paper we offer a transdisciplinary model of decision making at three levels of reality, namely model, method and tool. We conduct our inquiry in the realm of human-social studies, and argue that in this realm we need to transcend the traditional hard sciences and include a soft approach. Along the way we examine the concept of transdisciplinarity within human-social studies, and introduce the concept of meta-knowledge. Examining the research and teaching of decision making on this basis, we suggest that 'coffeehouse philosophers' should teach about decision making, bringing in practicing decision makers whom they interview, while students will need to go through a process of 'bootstrap learning' figuring out their decision problems.