TY - JOUR
T1 - Moral decisionism and its discontents
AU - Abend, Gabriel
N1 - Funding Information:
Thanks to JTSB editor Douglas Porpora and the anonymous reviewers. Thanks also to Alice Crary, Andreas Pettenkofer, Bettina Hollstein, Caitlin Petre, Gotlind Ulshöfer, Nicholas Mark, Nicholas Wilson, Patrick Schenk, Sonia Prelat, Sophia Rosenfeld, Stefan Bargheer, Steven Lukes, Max-Weber-Kolleg, Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Universität Luzern, and New York University. The author is not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, financial holdings, implicit biases, or unconscious thought processes that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of his authorial choices.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
PY - 2019/3
Y1 - 2019/3
N2 - Decisionists use decision/choice concepts to understand and represent X: bees, Deep Blue, and Ron Carter make decisions. Explicit decisionists argue that X should be understood and represented using decision/choice concepts: it's correct to speak of bees', computers', and jazz improvisers' decision-making. Explicit anti-decisionists disagree: bees, computers, jazz improvisers, algorithms, and drug addicts aren't correctly understood and represented as decision-makers. Sociologists look at decisionism and explicit decisionism as social phenomena, which show up in discourses, practices, technologies, and organizations. I make a contribution to the sociology of decisionism and the sociology of morality by examining three kinds of explicit moral anti-decisionism: Murdochian, sociological/structural, and Confucian/Daoist. I show why these discontents are discontent, what theories and evidence they draw on, what assumptions they make, and how they conceive of morality without decision/choice concepts. Then, I consider how moral anti-decisionism might matter, how the sociology of decisionism might matter, and where to go from here (if anywhere).
AB - Decisionists use decision/choice concepts to understand and represent X: bees, Deep Blue, and Ron Carter make decisions. Explicit decisionists argue that X should be understood and represented using decision/choice concepts: it's correct to speak of bees', computers', and jazz improvisers' decision-making. Explicit anti-decisionists disagree: bees, computers, jazz improvisers, algorithms, and drug addicts aren't correctly understood and represented as decision-makers. Sociologists look at decisionism and explicit decisionism as social phenomena, which show up in discourses, practices, technologies, and organizations. I make a contribution to the sociology of decisionism and the sociology of morality by examining three kinds of explicit moral anti-decisionism: Murdochian, sociological/structural, and Confucian/Daoist. I show why these discontents are discontent, what theories and evidence they draw on, what assumptions they make, and how they conceive of morality without decision/choice concepts. Then, I consider how moral anti-decisionism might matter, how the sociology of decisionism might matter, and where to go from here (if anywhere).
KW - Ron Carter
KW - decision-making
KW - decisionism
KW - social theory
KW - sociological theory
KW - sociology of morality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85058157203&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85058157203&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/jtsb.12191
DO - 10.1111/jtsb.12191
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85058157203
SN - 0021-8308
VL - 49
SP - 59
EP - 83
JO - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
JF - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
IS - 1
ER -