ABSTRACT
References.....................................................................................................................................560
The defining characteristic of decision making is that it involves freedom of choice. Choices are
constrained to a greater or lesser degree, of course, but they exist within constraints-otherwise,
no decision remains to be made. The exercise of choice reveals preferences, which are always
subjective in the sense that from a decision maker’s vantage point, one course of action is
preferred over others, based on criteria with varying degrees of explicitness. Given the imperfect
knowledge that characterizes most decisional situations, no objectively right answer can be known
in advance; hence, discretion is intrinsic and ineradicable. However, traditional social science has
generally been unable to understand acts of choosing and preferring because, as Morc¸o
¨
l (2002)
suggested, it has been unable to shake a Newtonian tradition that lacks a way to qualify the
subjectivity involved and looks instead for causes and contingencies that are objective and as
unencumbered as possible by value considerations.
