Thinking and Deciding

472 DECISIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE
time. There would be no point in planning if we were unable to hold ourselves to
this decision. The study of planning, therefore, is intimately tied up with the study of
self-control. A policy is a plan that binds us to perform a certain action regularly or
under certain conditions. We might establish a policy of practicing the violin for half
an hour every day, for example, or a policy of never picking up hitchhikers. A plan
is not a policy when it involves only a single, isolated decision, such as planning to
go to the movies on a certain day. A policy applies to a whole class of behavior that
recurs regularly in our lives.
Some policies are made all at once, but policies also result from individual decisions
made without any idea that these decisions will affect the future. Without
realizing that we are doing so, we set precedents for ourselves (Hare, 1952, ch. 4).
Suppose a friend who has missed a class you take together asks to borrow your notes.
If you decide to lend them, it will be difficult for you to make a different decision if
she asks again. Even if a different friend, who does not even know the first one, asks
you for the same favor, you will tend to be bound by your initial precedent.
The same mechanism of precedents applies to the most minute details of our
lives, such details as what we eat, when we go to bed, and the way we deal with other
people. Practically every decision we make sets a precedent for the same decision
in similar cases in the future. In this way, we form policies for the various domains
of our lives. At times, of course, we think about these policies and change them. At
any given time, however, we can be said to be following certain policies whether we
have thought about them or not.
Plans and policies create new personal goals, or they change the strength of
old ones. If I decide to take up the violin, that gives me a new set of goals right
away: finding a good teacher, finding time to practice, obtaining a good instrument.
I will also not be surprised if this decision creates or strengthens other goals over
time. I will come to like violin music more than I do now, and I will develop certain
musical standards. If I start early enough, I could even acquire the goal of being a
professional musician. When we make plans and set policies, then, we are making
decisions about our own personal goals.
Up until this point, in Part III, we have been concerned to discover the best ways
of making decisions that will enable us to achieve our personal goals. We have,
on the whole, regarded these goals as “givens.” We now consider how these goals
themselves are chosen. These personal goals that we create for ourselves are the most
important determinants of our identities as individuals. They are what we stand for,
what makes our lives worth living. They are, as noted, chosen through a variety of
decisions. Some decisions are apparently trivial: A choice to work on a philosophy
term paper instead of one in psychology sets a precedent for similar decisions, which
could eventually make the decision in favor of a career in philosophy rather than
psychology. Other decisions are made after great agonizing. Should I sacrifice the
income I could earn in computer science for a career as a philosophy professor? Is
my desire to help others strong enough to make me want to live in a poor country
for several years, possibly at the cost of not finding a spouse? Should I retire from
working, and what should I do in my retirement?