The Logic of Speculative Discourse: Time, Prediction, and Strategic Planning

This paper continues and completes a previous paper on the logic of decisionmaking. That paper considered the problem of speculations in decisionmaking discourse, and the metaproblem of how the procedures for making decisions are decided on. This paper extends the logic of the previous paper by considering decisions based on propositions which cannot be determined as true or false until some later time (speculations). This allows a definition of tactical decision, but in most cases begs the question of predicting when things will occur. This leads to a fundamental reconsideration of social time versus clock time in the description of social processes. Most of this paper is concerned with formulating a definition of social time in terms of the states of social systems. A Q -system is defined to be a hierarchical backcloth supporting traffic and supertraffic, concepts developed in the methodology of Q -analysis. State-changes can then define social time in the Q -system being planned and managed. Goals are defined as desirable states of the Q -system with strategic decisions involving the selection of Q -system trajectories expected to achieve goals. The relationship between social time and clock time is investigated and results in the concept of clock-time windows for social events. The sixteen guidelines for decisionmaking given in the previous paper require little amendment to apply to tactical and strategic decisionmaking, and they are extended by six more. The main conclusions of the two papers are that decisions are often bad because elementary rules of logic are violated, the social system being managed or planned is not well-defined, the hierarchy of authority is confused with the hierarchy of set-theoretic aggregation, and clock time is used inappropriately in planning social systems.