A Phenomenology of Moral Decision Making - #1 The Speed of Decision Making

I was taught religious ethical theory in consistently drafty classrooms and lecture halls from the age of 16-23. Nothing was warm. The commonality of a cool study environment was matched by a perpetual chilliness in the air - an atmosphere not of discontent but of relaxed introspection. This was anything but Klaus Klostermaier's theology at 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It was more like doing theology in a freezer bag.

Choices and questions were presented to us in those classes, and are still presented in similar classes today, as theoretical options to be mulled over and pondered. Choices and questions were presented to us as possibilities having received, and as demanding, a good deal of reflection and head space. Nothing was to be rushed in the great game of 'what are we to do'?

The reality of making an ethical decision is, of course, much different. Most important to recognise is that one does not approach an ethical decision, rather, an ethical decision approaches you. The luxury of a free consideration of what to do in any given situation, or even for that matter the ability to frame a given situation into an array of equal ethical possibilities, is non-existent in a world governed by the forces of practicality, communality and time. It is this last factor, time, which is the most unpredictable and unforeseeable variant in the process of having to make a moral decision, and the one that requires immediate attention.

When a situation arrives in which one has to make a decision with no clear and simple alternative satisfactory to both one’s conscience and the general course of things, a timeframe in which to make that decision almost always accompanies it. The pressure of making a decision, and how one assesses the resources that one has at one's disposal to make it, will always be affected by the urgency of the decision itself.

In some cases that urgency can be a useful resource in itself, clearing away theoretical detritus as the mind and heart become fixed on what is central. In other cases though it can be only confusing, causing panic and distress to muddy any clarity with which one previously had approached the events at hand. Most often, I feel, the latter is truly the case. The reality of having to make a decision and having to make one quick stultifies earlier reasoning. One has to start afresh and has to make quick ground to come to a conclusion that he is happy with.

Whatever the effect of time on ethical decision making is, that it has an effect is undeniable. If then, I may say finally, if then ethical theory is to have any value for those who study it, the restrictions that present themselves on the occasion of an ethical decision arising - restrictions that limit one’s possibility of choosing from the numerous ways of approaching a moral decision - must be noted with the same expertise as the numerous ways of approaching an ethical decision itself.

Perhaps the chilliness of those old classrooms and lecture halls shouldn’t have been the norm, perhaps now its about time for a justified climate change.