Deconstructing Outcomes in Cases of Alleged Sexual Abuse

Abstract

It is suggested that students of decision making may find it profitable to reconsult Cassirer’s laws that describe the ways that human situations are progressively clarified. Cassirer’s ‘law of continuity’ states that each outcome is a fulfilment of the preceding definition of the situation. His ‘law of new emphasis’ states that each outcome develops the past definition of the situation. These ‘laws’ remind us that persons, in the course of a career of actions, discover the nature of the situations in which they are acting, and that the actor’s own actions are first order determinants of the sense that situations have, in which, literally speaking, actors find themselves. (Garfinkel, 1992)