Living with Uncertainty: Reconceptualizing Uncertainty for Political Decision-Making

In a world rife with uncertainties stemming from political upheaval, environmental crises, and technological acceleration, the traditional frameworks of understanding and quantifying uncertainty fall short. This paper challenges the prevailing paradigm that views uncertainty primarily through a quantifiable lens. Instead, it argues for a reconceptualization of uncertainty as a fundamental, persistent condition of human existence, shaping our knowledge, decisions, and political landscape and in doing so seeks to create the theoretical conditions under which new ways of thinking about how to live with uncertainty might be imagined. By tracing the evolution of the concept of uncertainty from the Enlightenment to contemporary political theory, this study opens a dialogue on the unquantifiable, yet profound, influences of uncertainty on the human experience. Since the Enlightenment, focus has primarily been on understanding and relating to uncertainty primarily as a quantifiable element and as such something to be managed, overcome, and transformed. While the Enlightenment saw a break with certain worldviews regarding certainty, namely those looking to secure certainty through subscription to some ultimate authority, this has been replaced by a scientific and pseudo-scientific understanding that is concerned with controlling outcomes, natures, and the unpredictable, by seeking to make these predictable through particular processes, human rationality, etc. In this way, empirically driven thinking tends to acknowledge the illusion of certainty, while searching for a certain way to deal with an uncertain world. While acknowledging the utility in measuring the limits of knowledge, and theorizing as to better ways of risk taking, this paper seeks to address and engage with the implications of uncertainty as a dynamic, persistent aspect of human experience, knowledge, and decision-making. Furthermore, quantifying uncertainty and managing outcomes, theoretically or otherwise, overlooks the deeper, unquantifiable aspect and impact of uncertainty as a background condition and does not address how this condition of uncertainty shapes conceptual development and decision making. I will suggest that when considering uncertainty from a theoretical perspective with an eye towards political decision-making, uncertainty should be treated as a background condition rather than primarily as a quantifiable element. This exploration not only underscores the challenge of living with uncertainty but also suggests new conceptual approaches for political theorists and decision-makers to do so. Such theoretical considerations are of practical relevance as how we live with uncertainty will necessarily tell us something about decision-making.