Decision-making can also be regarded as a problem-solving activity terminated by a solution deemed to be satisfactory.
"The last, and Neo-Platonic, wave of Paganism which had gathered up into itself much from the preceding waves, Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, and what not, came far inland and made brackish lakes which have, perhaps, never been drained" - CS Lewis, The Discarded Image, Ch 3, pg 48.
"He who believes this may as well believe that if a great quantity of the one-and-twenty letters, composed either of gold or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them." Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero, De natura deorum, 2.37. Translation from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations; Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth, C. D. Yonge, principal translator, New York, Harper & Brothers Publishers, Franklin Square. (1877). "Intuition is a process of thinking. The input to this process is mostly provided by knowledge stored in long-term memory that has been primarily acquired via associative learning. The input is processed automatically and without conscious awareness. The output of the process is a feeling that can serve as a basis for judgments and decisions." - TILMANN BETSCH
The Nature of Intuition and Its Neglect in Research on Judgment and Decision Making TILMANN BETSCH University of Erfurt https://www.scribd.com/doc/40598215/Intuition-in-Judgement Wittgenstein said that truths can be shown but not stated. (Oversimplification) This probably indicates that certain metaphysical truths cannot be stated in language as propositions. McLuhan said "The Medium is the Message." I have taken this, incorrectly, i am sure, that who delivers a message and how a message is delivered, sends a message as important as, or more important than, the propositional statements within the message itself.
Jesus often used parables to illustrate, that is, "show" truths. The good Samaritan story does not answer "Who is my neighbor?", it shows it in a way that is beyond any propositional answer. Jesus' life, death and resurrection, the actual events, are His gospel message in a way that propositions cannot describe. Jesus made statements of propositional truth, but his parables, his life as he lived it, his character and his sacrifice are, in themselves, the gospel message in a way that mere human language cannot express. "Good mathematicians see analogies.
Great mathematicians see analogies between analogies." --Stefan Banach, as quoted by Stanislaw Ulam. "What then is the relation of law to morality? Law cannot prescribe morality, it can prescribe only external actions and therefore it should prescribe only those actions whose mere fulfillment, from whatever motive, the state adjudges to be conducive to welfare. What actions are these? Obviously such actions as promote the physical and social conditions requisite for the expression and development of free—or moral—personality.... Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality. Happily it is impossible. No code of law can envisage the myriad changing situations that determine moral obligations. Moreover, there must be one legal code for all, but moral codes vary as much as the individual characters of which they are the expression. To legislate against the moral codes of one's fellows is a very grave act, requiring for its justification the most indubitable and universally admitted of social gains, for it is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters." R.M. MacIver (1882–1970), Scottish sociologist, educator.
The Modern State, ch. 5, Oxford University Press (1926). Read more at http://quotes.dictionary.com/What_then_is_the_relation_of_law_to#YOuB4TZh2IMG6l0C.99 Read more at http://quotes.dictionary.com/What_then_is_the_relation_of_law_to#YOuB4TZh2IMG6l0C.99 It's about responsibility for the wellbeing of others. I don't buy the whole pitch. It assumes that factory work has no negative environmental and social consequences. But this is what business is for. Useful products, a good living for all the employees and a community that is better to live in. Linus:
If I got married, I'd have to take a Dictaphone, two secretaries and four corporation counsellors along on the honeymoon. I'd be unfaithful to my wife every night with vice presidents, boards of directors, slide-rule accountants... This... [pointing at the office around him] this is my home. No wife would ever understand it. David: Well neither can I. You've got all the money in the world. Linus: What's money got to do with it. If making money were all that there was to business it would hardly be worth going to the office. Money is a by-product. David: - What's the main objective? Power? Linus: - Ah! That's become a dirty word. David: What's the urge? You're going into plastics now. What will that prove? Linus: Prove? Nothing much. A new product has been found, something of use to the world. And so a new industry moves into an undeveloped area. Factories go up, machines are brought in, a harbor is dug and you're in business. It's purely coincidental of course that people who've never seen a dime before suddenly have a dollar and barefooted kids wear shoes and have their teeth fixed and have their faces washed. What's wrong with the kind of an urge that gives people libraries, hospitals, baseball diamonds and movies on a Saturday night?
0 Comments I know this is too long but set aside some time and read it. John Maynard Keynes on the European Economy between 1870 & the First World War. "What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914! The greater part of the population, it is true, worked hard and lived at a low standard of comfort, yet were, to all appearances, reasonably contented with this lot. But escape was possible, for any man of capacity or character at all exceeding the average, into the middle and upper classes, for whom life offered, at a low cost and with the least trouble, conveniences, comforts, and amenities beyond the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages. The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or he could decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend. He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference. But, most important of all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice." "Society was so framed as to throw a great part of the increased income into the control of the class least likely to consume it. The new rich of the nineteenth century were not brought up to large expenditures, and preferred the power which investment gave them to the pleasures of immediate consumption. In fact, it was precisely the inequality of the distribution of wealth which made possible those vast accumulations of fixed wealth and of capital improvements which distinguished that age from all others. Herein lay, in fact, the main justification of the Capitalist System. If the rich had spent their new wealth on their own enjoyments, the world would long ago have found such a régime intolerable. But like bees they saved and accumulated, not less to the advantage of the whole community because they themselves held narrower ends in prospect." "Thus this remarkable system depended for its growth on a double bluff or deception. On the one hand the laboring classes accepted from ignorance or powerlessness, or were compelled, persuaded, or cajoled by custom, convention, authority, and the well-established order of Society into accepting, a situation in which they could call their own very little of the cake that they and Nature and the capitalists were co-operating to produce. And on the other hand the capitalist classes were allowed to call the best part of the cake theirs and were theoretically free to consume it, on the tacit underlying condition that they consumed very little of it in practice. The duty of "saving" became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion. There grew round the non-consumption of the cake all those instincts of puritanism which in other ages has withdrawn itself from the world and has neglected the arts of production as well as those of enjoyment. And so the cake increased; but to what end was not clearly contemplated. Individuals would be exhorted not so much to abstain as to defer, and to cultivate the pleasures of security and anticipation. Saving was for old age or for your children; but this was only in theory,—the virtue of the cake was that it was never to be consumed, neither by you nor by your children after you." http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Keynes/kynsCP2.html Dan's note: 1. Some of the cake can be eaten occasionally in small quantities when times are good. It can be eaten slowly as needed when times are bad. 2. Most of the cake must be used to maintain, improve or grow the bakery, else in bad times the cake will be gone. |
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