Deliberation

Conscious deliberation, under the guidance of a robust self built on an organized autobiography and a defined identity, is a major consequence of consciousness, precisely the kind of achievement that gives the lie to the notion that consciousness is a useless epiphenomenon

Damasio argues that conscious deliberation is the definitive achievement of selfhood and proves consciousness causally efficacious in life-management, while simultaneously acknowledging its limitation by nonconscious biases.

Damasio, Antonio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010thesis

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Book 6, we must remember, treats the dianoetic virtues… It offers, however, a more complex model of deliberation. Here, deliberation is the path followed by phronesis, practical wisdom… and, more precisely, the path that the man of phronesis — the phronimos —

Ricoeur situates deliberation within Aristotelian practical wisdom, arguing that it is the distinctive path of the phronimos rather than a mere instrumental means-end calculation.

Ricoeur, Paul, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis

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Aristotle explicitly says that deliberation and choice are concerned not with ends, but with the means to the end… But if this is so, it will be argued, then the things with which choice concerns itself… must, after all, be seen as (comparable) means to something beyond themselves

Nussbaum interrogates the Aristotelian claim that deliberation is confined to means, arguing that accepting this wholesale reintroduces a suspect commensurability of values incompatible with non-scientific practical reasoning.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986thesis

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Those benefits relate largely to planning and deliberation… It became possible to survey the possible future and to either delay or inhibit automatic responses. An example of this evolutionarily novel capacity is delayed gratification

Damasio frames deliberation as an evolutionary achievement of consciousness enabling deferred gratification and the management of sociocultural homeostasis.

Damasio, Antonio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010thesis

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power to distort deliberation, 83, 91, 94, 132, 138, 142-4, 147… role in rational deliberation, 46, 134, 190, 204-6, 214-15, 217, 218, 224, 307-9, 317

Nussbaum's index maps the dual role of passions in deliberation — both as distorting forces and as necessary contributors to rational deliberative processes.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting

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Excellence Non-scientific deliberation 299 is a state of character (hexis) concerned with choice, lying in a mean… determined by a logos, the one by which the person of practical wisdom would determine it

Nussbaum shows that Aristotle's account of excellence invokes a logos guiding deliberation, yet simultaneously insists practical wisdom is not scientific knowledge — marking deliberation as irreducibly contextual.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting

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Which is not to say that there are not times when the admixture of conscious deliberation pays off — why else would we have developed the capacity to add it? Just that its relationship with intuition has often, and increasingly, been wrongly conceived and projected.

McGilchrist grants deliberation an adaptive function while criticizing the modern tendency to privilege it over intuition, arguing the relationship between the two has been fundamentally misconstrued.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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Using strength flexibly, speaking only after deliberation, acting only after consideration, effecting the intended events with deliberation and consideration — this is called joy after deliberation.

The Taoist I Ching presents deliberation as the disciplined restraint that transforms potential joy into genuine happiness, linking careful consideration to a wary, non-complacent orientation toward action.

Thomas Cleary, Liu Yiming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting

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Joy after deliberation: If one is firm and wary without complacency, there will be happiness… speaking only after deliberation, acting only after consideration, effecting the intended events with deliberation and consideration

Liu I-ming's parallel commentary reinforces the Taoist principle that deliberation is the necessary antecedent to right action, guarding against the impulsive submission to desire.

Liu I-ming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting

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Make up your mind then, or rather have your mind already made up, for the time of deliberation is over, and there is only one thing to be done, which must be done this very night

Crito marks deliberation as bounded by temporal urgency, contrasting the open interval of reflective weighing with the irreversible moment of decisive action — a structural limit on deliberative process.

Plato, Crito, -399supporting

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conflict is in order in the activities of deliberation involving the priorities to be established among the primary goods, given short shrift in the Rawlsian theory of justice

Ricoeur extends deliberation into the political sphere, positioning it as the activity through which competing primary goods are weighed within a state of law, a dimension he finds undertheorized in Rawls.

Ricoeur, Paul, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting

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power to distort deliberation, 83, 91, 94, 132, 138, 142-4… role in rational deliberation, 46, 134, 190, 204-6, 214-15, 217, 218, 224

A second index reference in Nussbaum confirms the systematic attention she accords to the interplay of passions and deliberation across the Fragility of Goodness as a whole.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting

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all things come from one beginning; either all severally and particularly deliberated and resolved upon, by the general ruler and governor of all; or all by necessary consequence

Marcus Aurelius invokes deliberation cosmologically, positing a dichotomy between a universe governed by providential deliberation and one driven by blind necessity — framing the concept at the level of cosmic governance rather than individual praxis.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 180aside

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the objects of deliberation and desire… compare the good discussion of the evidence in D. Wiggins, 'Weakness of will, commensurability, and the objects of deliberation and desire'

A bibliographic note directing attention to Wiggins's discussion of the relationship between deliberation, desire, and commensurability — confirming the centrality of this nexus in Aristotelian scholarship.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986aside

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meetings and deliberations bringing the men of Lesbos together at the center of the island to discuss their common affairs

Detienne traces the archaic Greek institution of communal deliberation as a spatial and political practice, rooting the concept historically in the formation of civic discourse.

Marcel Detienne, The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece, 1996aside

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