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Dancing on a tightrope
Decision making requires a fine balance between emotion and reason — nowhere more so than in matters of justice
To make decisions — picking an option among two or more possibilities (sometimes a binary choice between do something and do nothing, sometimes choosing between multiple options) — we need to do two distinct things. One is to compare the available options: pulling apart the different relevant aspects and establish how they differ. But comparing is not enough. We also need to make a judgement to guide our choice: which one is better (or worse)? For the first, we need analytical skills. For the second, we need emotions: whether something is better or worse depends on how it makes us feel. Both comparing and judging are crucial, and striking a suitable balance between the two is not always straightforward.
A simple illustration is how we consider the weather. We can compare temperatures, precipitation, pressure, and so on, and determine which one is higher or lower in two different weather patterns. But a warm, sunny day is not inherently better or worse than a cool, rainy day. A holidaymaker will think the former is better, while a farmer whose crops are suffering from drought will think differently.
