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Act First, Reason Later

By Hanno Kaiser

In today’s NYT, David Brooks writes:

Roughly speaking, there are four steps to every decision. First, you perceive a situation. Then you think of possible courses of action. Then you calculate which course is in your best interest. Then you take the action.

At least when it comes to most individual decisions (i.e., not those that go through an institutional, deliberative process) he’s got it exactly backwards. First we act, then we make up justifications. Or minds are marvelously attuned near real-time revisionists. Hegel got it right:

The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.

Full post as published by Antitrust Review on October 29, 2008 (boomark / email).