2. Choosism And Conviction Formation

Conviction Formation Theory may seem to leave little room for deliberate choice.

Convictions emerge.

Perhaps what we call deliberation is merely something that happens to us.

On this view, the spreadsheet does not help us choose.

It merely becomes one more cause among others.

The distinction between good and bad criteria begins to dissolve.

Reasoning becomes another process within conviction formation, alongside habit, emotion, imitation, and social influence.

At first glance, this conclusion appears to follow naturally.

Yet something important seems to have been lost.

People really do compare alternatives.

Arguments sometimes change minds.

Mathematics exhibits remarkable stability.

In questions about the natural world, scientific procedures routinely outperform intuition.

Some methods repeatedly lead to convictions that survive criticism better than others, like logic or probability theory.

These observations are not illusions. Situations exist where we regret not using criteria. Looking back, we sometimes realize that we should have compared more carefully, checked more thoroughly, or taken considerations seriously that we dismissed at the time.

"Had I only" is the sound of missed opportunities for good choices.

Any account that dismisses them too quickly creates new problems while solving old ones.

Both choosism and conviction formation theory capture something real.

We deliberate.

We evaluate.

We compare.

Yet the capacities that make such activities possible do not arise from nowhere.

The question is therefore not whether criteria exist.

The question is how criteria themselves arise, stabilize, and acquire authority.