Decision, Choice and Rationality

Abstract

The nature of enterprise of science, general cognition and scientific activities are shown to be embedded in human decision and choice behavior under reason. Within this context of knowledge construction, rationality is seen as a guide to cognitive activities at the level of critical deliberations. Here rationality is viewed in terms of decision-choice process in operating on the best cognitive path of scientific practice that maximizes the possibility and probability of the discovery of what there is or maximizes the explanatory and predictive powers of explanans and predicens respectively. Rationality is further related to the selection process of the best path for actualizing that which ought to be from the potential (that which is not). Human history is thus seen as an enveloping of success-failure outcomes of decision and choice behaviors at the levels of both individual and the collective. In other words, social history is continuously interconnected outcomes of decision-choice processes whether these are established by some intelligence or not. By some slight qualifications this statement may be generalized to all living things. Viewed in terms of resource commitment to knowledge production, and in terms of Euler’s maximum-minimum principles of universal system, decision-choice rationality is seen in terms of benefit maximization and cost minimization in knowledge construction process.