> There are psychology experiments which indicate that the explanation for a decision is generated after the decision is made. Beyond experiments, there just i

> There are psychology experiments which indicate that the explanation for a decision is generated after the decision is made. Beyond experiments, there just isn't an alternative. Unless our decision making was completely conscious and objective (lists, arithmetic, logical selection or elimination, etc.) then it includes subconscious components (feelings, instinct, intuition, reflex, etc.) whose processes we don't know, and which are dependent on so many parameters that they likely could never be accurately summarized. Even if we could somehow be conscious of our activity at the individual neuron, synapse and neurotransmitter reservoir level. So for most decisions, there is no alternative to conjecturing/confabulating our decision making process. For the same reasons we have to conjecture/confabulate other's decision making processes. Other than simply self reporting that we don't know, and we know that we don't know ("I have a bad feeling about this!") In both cases, the point is that it is better to have some model to predict future decisions by ourselves and others, inevitably incomplete and inaccurate, than to have no model at all.