Warren, on the centrally important point that some parts or
our decision making is nondeliberative, and some parts are
deliberative, I couldn't recomment more highly the recent work
of _my_ intellectual mentor and thesis advisor Larry Wright.
See his:
Larry Wright, "Argument and Deliberation: A Plea for Understanding",
_Journal of Philosophy_, Nov. 1995, pp. 565-585.
Wright, IMHO, (and I am biased on this matter), is one of the great
thinkers currently on the scence. Alex Rosenberg bluntly calls Wright
the most important writer on teleology since Aristotle (see Wright,
_Teleological Explanation_), and he does so without any tone of
exageration.
>From my own perspective, this work on teleology is just a part of far
deeper insights on deliberation, skills, argument, and understanding which
are to be found in Wright. Some of Wright's own intellectual mentors and
influences include Michael Scriven, Norwood Hanson, and Wesley Salmon
as teachers, and Thomas Kuhn and Ludwig Wittgenstein and intellectual in-
fluences. I think, Warren, that you will find Wright's discussion of
the role of background understanding, tacit nondeliberative skill, and
argument structure in deliberative argumentation to be helpful in thinking
about the some of the relations between nondeliberative and deliberative
decision making.
Greg Ransom
Dept. of Philosophy
UC-Riverside
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