On justifying the norms underlying decision support

Meinard, Yves; Cailloux, Olivier

doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2020.02.022

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…In this article, we have advocated a more moderate approach, according to which the rationalization potential of applications of these methods should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis in each decision process in which they are involved, depending on the ability of the economists using them to justify their usage of these economic valuations, materializing an ambitious justificatory task, deployed in ways that are responsive to the specifics of the decision situation. This reasoning draws heavily on the contributions of Meinard & Tsoukiàs (2019) and Meinard & Cailloux (2020), whose details it was impossible to present thoroughly in the present article. However, our reasoning here is largely independent from these details, and the main structure of the argument is independent from these contributions and their validity or invalidity 1 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What, then, would it be like to be a purely procedural economist? To answer this question, it is useful to come back to Rawls's (1993) and Habermas's (1983) attempts to capture what it is like to be a purely procedural philosopher (see Meinard & Cailloux 2020, p. 1005 for an exploration of this debate from another angle).…”

Section: The Procedural/substantive Debatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rationalizing environmental decision-making through economic valuation?

Meinard¹

2021

HiP

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Environmental economic valuations of biodiversity are an increasingly active field of academic inquiry, often presented as a prominent means to rationalize decision-making on environmental issues. However, the meaning of this argument is unclear, because it uses the term “rationalize” in a loose way. This argument, as it is typically formulated in the literature, makes it look as though economic valuations do not involve any value-judgment by economists: by emphasizing rationalization, this argument silences value-judgements. This blind spot is critical, since environmental inequalities are pervasive in economic valuations and their applications, and environmental decision making hence unavoidably involves value-judgements. In this article, we identify conditions upon which environmental economic valuations can truly contribute to rationalizing decision making, despite environmental inequalities. We review the main arguments found in the literature to entrench the credentials of economic approaches to rationalize decision-making, and argue that these approaches fail, at a fundamental level. We then argue that the key for economic valuations to truly contribute to rationalization is that their usage should be embedded in the deployment of what we will call a justificatory task. We then take advantage of an analysis of the notion of rationality, when applied to decision-aiding processes, to translate this reasoning in the concrete terms of applications of environmental economic valuations. According to the argument that we articulate here, standard economic valuations, just like any other application of economic tools, can indeed play a role in rationalizing environmental decisions, in spite of the inequalities that they (re)produce. But this possibility is conditioned by the requirement that the economist implementing them should produce justifications.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Procedural/substantive Debatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rationalizing environmental decision-making through economic valuation?

Meinard¹

2021

HiP

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“…Pielke's dichotomy is, however, typical of a broader tendency in the decision science literature to assume that decision makers are clear about the values they hold (Meinard & Cailloux 2020). Meinard and Cailloux (2020) suggest a third possible role for scientists: helping decision makers identify their own values and proceed to making decisions on this basis. The role that our framework assigns to conservationists in pluralist settings exemplifies this approach.…”

Section: The Role Of Conservationists In Participation and Beyondmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The risk, for a conservationist endorsing such an approach, is to lapse into what Pielke (2007) calls stealth issue advocacy. To prevent this risk, Meinard and Cailloux (2020) propose that scientists should structure their discussions with decision makers around the active elicitation of criticisms of values and their application, including the active search for criticisms that can be voiced by people or groups de facto excluded from participation. Structuring discussions around criticisms in this way can provide a partial answer to the concern that participatory decision processes can hide unequal power relations among participants or depoliticize decision making by ignoring certain political differences (Turnhout et al 2020).…”

Section: The Role Of Conservationists In Participation and Beyondmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adapting participatory processes to fine‐tune conservation approaches in multiactor decision settings

Buchs

Hassenforder

Meinard

2020

Conservation Biology

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Conservation decisions are typically made in complex, dynamic, and uncertain settings, where multiple actors raise diverse and potentially conflicting claims, champion different and sometimes contradictory values, and enjoy varying degrees of freedom and power to act and influence collective decisions. Therefore, effective conservation actions require conservation scientists and practitioners to take into account the complexity of multiactor settings. We devised a framework to help conservation biologists and practitioners in this task. Institutional economic theories, which are insufficiently cited in the conservation literature, contain useful insights for conservation. Among these theories, the economies of worth can significantly contribute to conservation because it can be used to classify the types of values peoples or groups refer to when they interact during the elaboration and implementation of conservation projects. Refining this approach, we designed a framework to help conservation professionals grasp the relevant differences among settings in which decisions related to conservation actions are to be made, so that they can adapt their approaches to the features of the settings they encounter. This framework distinguishes 6 types of agreements and disagreements that can occur between actors involved in a conservation project (harmony, stricto sensu arrangement, deliberated arrangement, unilateral and reciprocal compromise, and locked-in), depending on whether they disagree on values or on their applications and on whether they can converge toward common values by working together. We identified key questions that conservationists should answer to adapt their strategy to the disagreements they encounter and identified relevant participatory processes to complete the adaptation.

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“…This research program has already produced applications to the evaluation of environmental policies (Jeanmougin et al, 2017), the design of policy options (Ferretti et al, 2019;Pluchinotta et al, 2018Pluchinotta et al, , 2019, the development of methodological tools for large scale environmental policies (Choulak et al, 2019), among others. In the wake of these contributions, we endorse the methodological and epistemological approach clarified in Tsoukiàs et al (2013); Meinard and Tsoukiàs (2019); Meinard and Cailloux (2020) Our reasoning unfolds in three steps. In section 2, we begin by reviewing historical choices that led to the current development policy of DDSSs and past experiences in the elaboration of DDSSs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What does it mean to provide decision support to a responsible and competent expert?

Richard

Mayag

Talbot

et al. 2020

EURO Journal on Decision Processes

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Decision support consists in helping a decision-maker to improve his/her decisions. However, clients requesting decision support are often themselves experts and are often taken by third parties and/or the general public to be responsible for the decisions they make. This predicament raises complex challenges for decision analysts, who have to avoid infringing upon the expertise and responsibility of the decision-maker. The case of diagnosis decision support in healthcare contexts is particularly illustrative. To support clinicians in their work and minimize the risk of medical error, various decision support systems have been developed, as part of information systems that are now ubiquitous in healthcare contexts. To develop, in collaboration with the hospitals of Lyon, a diagnostic decision support system for day-today customary consultations, we propose in this paper a critical analysis of current approaches to diagnostic decision support, which mainly consist in providing them with guidelines or even full-fledged diagnosis recommendations. We highlight that the use of such decision support systems by physicians raises responsibility issues, but also that it is at odds with the needs and constraints of customary consultations. We argue that the historical choice to favor guidelines or recommendations to physicians implies a very specific vision of what it means to support physicians, and we argue that the flaws of this vision partially ex-A.

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On justifying the norms underlying decision support

Cited by 10 publications

References 47 publications

Rationalizing environmental decision-making through economic valuation?

Rationalizing environmental decision-making through economic valuation?

Adapting participatory processes to fine‐tune conservation approaches in multiactor decision settings

What does it mean to provide decision support to a responsible and competent expert?

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