Thinking and Deciding

52 THE STUDY OF THINKING
ably are not. They could simply be the results of exposure to certain cultural standards,
or they could have been formulated by individuals and used uncritically for
so many years that they have come to be accepted as truth. Although most people
in our culture agree that killing and stealing are wrong, for example, we disagree
strongly about whether premarital sex, abortion, or euthanasia are right or wrong.
When intuitions disagree like this, someone’s intuition must be wrong.
Often, as in the problem about the six children presented at the beginning of the
chapter, intuition yields easily to convincing arguments such as those based on mathematics.
These arguments frequently concern the purpose of the normative model in
question, for example, having accurate beliefs. In other cases the arguments for some
principle are less comprehensible or less compelling, than are, say, mathematical arguments
about probability theory, but the arguments may still be correct. Intuitions
are often useful evidence in philosophical reflection, but they are not the last word.
I shall take the view that normative models result from imposing an analytical
framework on reality and from working out the implications of that framework.
Arithmetic is an example. Why do we think that one plus one is two? It is not a
fact about the world, but of a system that we impose on the world whether the world
fits or not. When we watch raindrops fall on a windowpane, we often see that they
merge. One raindrop plus one raindrop can make one big raindrop, not two. You may
be tempted to say that this isn’t fair. We say it isn’t fair because drops falling on top
of each other do not count as “addition.” We do not apply the framework this way.
But why not? The answer is that, once we have adopted the framework, we force the
world into it. Drops falling on top of each other doesn’t count exactly because, if it
did, we would have to give up the framework. If we have to do too much forcing,
or exclude too many things, then the framework seems less useful, and we look for
another one. But once we have adopted a framework, we can deduce conclusions
from it, just as many of the conclusions of mathematics can be deduced from a few
simple principles of sets and arithmetic, principles that we impose on the world.
I will use a similar kind of imposed framework in analyzing decisions. For example,
I will analyze some decisions into options, unknown states of the world, and
outcomes. Once we adopt this framework, many normative conclusions will follow.
Arguments about normative models should be about the applicability of such
frameworks, as opposed to alternatives.
Many people find the idea of normative models bothersome. They think that, if
most people violate some model in some situation, then the model could not be truly
normative in that situation. The majority cannot be wrong, they think, and we should
adjust the normative model to fit what people do. There is a point to this argument.
People who tried to develop normative models have made mistakes, and a normative
model is more likely to be a mistake if most people violate it than if most follow it, so
a lack of fit with behavior is first-blush evidence that something might be wrong with
the application of the model to the situation in question. We should look carefully
for such errors. But the evidence is only first blush. We cannot adjust the model
just because it doesn’t fit behavior, or we risk undercutting its entire purpose, which
is to determine how our behavior subverts the achievement of our own goals. The