CHOICE AND DECISION IN SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE.

This article presents an author's response to Professor George Geiger's statements that "the very methods of intelligent inquiry have been excluded from prosperous contact with whole segments of human experience, those of human decision..." The author finds Geiger's argument satisfying and also a crucial point at which it presents a difficulty. Accordingly, the statement highlights the argument (1) that scientific method can come into effective relationship with values only as its hypothetical temper and its experimental, operational test come to be realized in the processes of human choice and decision, and; (2) that this imperatively needed relationship has been, and is still, blocked by the persistent and institutionalized conjuring of absolutes and mystical certainties. The author further adds emphasis to the conclusion that scientific method can come into full play in relation to values only as decision and choice become the focus of methodological attention.