grgr (31): "decisions are never really m a d e"/: a luhmannian amplification

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

 "decisions are never really  m a d e - at best they manage to emerge, from a 
 chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all-round assholery." (676)


old nick sez: "before the decision there is (...) a difference of alternatives, 
after the decision there is additional a relation to this relation, namely the 
relation of the chosen alternative to this difference of choice. two forms of 
contingency,open contingency and also-having-been-possible-different of the made 
decision come to unity. the decision transfers the contingency from one form 
into the other; and that it is able to do so is made secure by the fact that 
contingency is constituated along expectations that structure the situation. 
thus the semantics of 'decision' are necessarily ambivalent. the usual 
definition of decision as choice names only a partial aspect of the whole thing.
this complicated internal structure of deciding as transformation of contingency 
makes clear that the difference of alternatives can change during and after the 
deciding. the decision may drop old expectations and pull up new ones to claim 
its contingency. (...) the decision can, with other words, change its quality, 
be that before, during or after the decision. often, for example, the being 
caught in the act is a reason to give the horizon of alternatives a new 
structure; and on that the participators (observers) may have different 
opinions now and forever, but this does not take away from the decision its 
identificability and its character as decision. the situation of decision 
remains constructed, its definition can still be changed.       
(...) it's rather an exceptional case, in which the expectation of rational 
choice in the sense of optimizing or maximizing, thus in the sense of the one 
right decision plays a role. so one suppusedly has to count on such expectations 
in  organized companies and, trough this, gets forced to make decisions on the 
way of deciding one can present to the outer world. normal life gets along 
without superlatives." 

(m.o.p.a.t. from niklas luhmann: soziale systeme. grundriß einer allgemeinen 
theorie. ffm 1984: suhrkamp. pp. 402f.; an american edition was published at 
sup)


outside there's heavy rain: kfl