Structured Deliberation

Abstract Rather than deciding between all of the options on a menu in one fell swoop, you could instead structure your deliberation by splitting it up into submenus. That is, rather than deliberating about the synchronic, all-at-once decision you actually face, you could instead deliberate about a hypothetical diachronic decision with two choice points: first, choose a submenu; next, choose an option from that submenu. I defend three theses about this kind of structured deliberation. The first is that structured deliberation can lead you to treat a rational option as irrational. The second thesis is that we nonetheless have a tendency to structure our deliberation about complicated decisions in this way. For this reason, our intuitions about complicated decisions are susceptible to a novel kind of framing effect, in which rational choices can appear irrational if the decision is framed so as to encourage dividing the available options into submenus. I apply this lesson to some recent decisions discussed by Jack Spencer, Ian Wells, and Joe Horton. The third thesis is that structured deliberation will never lead you astray; it may lead you away from a rational choice, but it will never lead you towards an irrational one.