Disasters and Dilemmas

The author presents a number of strategies for making decisions based on desires or values which are incompatible or which conflict with one another in various ways. Cases discussed include conflicts of first and second order desires, conflicts between desires for present and for future ends, problems deriving from anticipated changes of desire, risk-taking problems, and coordination problems. One central claim of the book is that the same dilemma-managing strategies can be applied to all of these. The book also argues that many of the characteristics of moral dilemmas appear in non-moral decision-making. The relations between these strategies and utility-maximizing decis…