Understanding Decisions About Foreign Policy Interventions to Save Lives

研讨会以一种直接而激烈的方式，探讨了几个世纪以来一直困扰着人类的估值、判断、偏好和选择问题，这些问题在今天是现代智力事业的核心，被称为“行为决策理论”。这一提议的核心是两个主要的学术辩论。第一个涉及经济学家、哲学家和其他研究选择的学生，关注的是与通过选择揭示的价值观相比，表达或陈述的价值观对决策的影响。以往的研究表明，这两种评估模式所显示的价值往往不同。对这种不一致的一种解释是围绕决策选项的各种属性或目标的权重，以及与表达和显示的偏好相关的权重的系统性差异的证据。特别是，我们将研究这样一个假设，即当价值观通过决策而不是明确陈述时，与人道主义目标相比，国家安全和经济安全等目标具有相对更大的权重。研讨会提出的第二个智力辩论是关于如何权衡涉及价值的多个维度，“包括诸如生命、成本、国家安全、不确定性、政治和声誉等不同的问题”，作为艰难的国家政策选择的一部分进行评估。很难想象还有什么问题比理解人道主义目标在国家安全决策中的地位更重要。数百万人的生命和全球安全取决于这些决定。我们认为应该指导理性决策的政治、社会、经济、文化和人道主义价值观，实际上以某种连贯一致的形式存在吗？如果有，这些被认为的价值观是什么，我们如何确保我们的决定，在一天结束时，与这些价值观一致？这个项目在一个讲习班的框架内处理这些至关重要的问题，这个讲习班的目的是澄清和解决所表明的人道主义愿望和价值观之间的明显脱节以及随后缺乏相应的行动。讲习班向公众和专家与会者提出问题，以便更好地了解所表达的人道主义价值观在决策过程中可能崩溃的根本原因。第二个目标是了解决策者在决定是否出于人道主义原因对其他国家进行干预方面的实际经验。

The workshop examines, in a direct and intense way, issues of valuation, judgment, preference, and choice that have engaged humanity for centuries and, today, are at the heart of the modern intellectual enterprise known as "Behavioral Decision Theory." Two primary intellectual debates lie at the heart of this proposal. The first, involving economists, philosophers, and other students of choice, concerns the influence on decisions of expressed or stated values as compared to values that are revealed through choices. Previous research has shown that the values indicated by these two modes of assessment often differ. One explanation for such inconsistency has centered around the weighting of the various attributes or objectives of decision options and the evidence for systematic discrepancies in weighting associated with expressed and revealed preferences. In particular, we shall examine the hypothesis that objectives such as national security and economic security get relatively greater weight compared to humanitarian objectives when values are revealed through decisions as opposed to being explicitly stated. A second intellectual debate addressed by the workshop concerns how tradeoffs involving multiple dimensions of value "including such disparate concerns as lives, costs, national security, uncertainty, politics, and reputation" should be evaluated as part of difficult national policy choices. It is hard to imagine an issue that has broader significance than understanding the place of humanitarian objectives in national security decisions. Millions of lives and global security depend on these decisions. Do the political, social, economic, cultural, and humanitarian values that we assume should guide rational decision making actually exist in some coherent and consistent form? If so, what are these considered values and how do we ensure that our decisions, at the end of the day, are in accord with these values? This project addresses these vital questions within the framework of a workshop designed to clarify and address an apparent disconnect between stated humanitarian aspirations and values and subsequent lack of commensurate actions. Questions are asked of public and expert participants in a workshop setting to better understand the underlying reasons why expressed humanitarian values may collapse in the decision-making process. A second objective is to understand the thinking of decision makers with hands-on experience in decisions about whether to intervene in other countries for humanitarian reasons.