**2.1 A decision-making proto-schema**

The most concise characterisation of decision-making facing with uncertainty [1] consists in describing it as an approach prior to choosing one action [Ai] amongst a set of *n* actions [An] considered as being potentially relevant. In this characterisation, decision-making consists in generating what psychologists call a conduct (a behaviour in common language) in order to choose the action [Ai] amongst a set of **n** possible actions. This action is evaluated as being the most relevant to change an existing situation considered to be inappropriate or dangerous. For example: which action(s) should be chosen to stop the persistent financial losses of a company? However, the cognitive approach is not solely interested in the end result (the chosen action); it attempts to explain the characteristics which led to this conclusion. These characteristics must be found in the information present in the situation and with respect to the objective to be reached. The theoretical references used will therefore concern cognitive psychology, whose purpose is to study how to process the information which will lead to a judgement, then to a decision.

### **2.2 Decision-making as cognitive management of systems and networks**

It can be observed that, in this conception, decision-making is not limited to initially selecting outcomes to create the set **n** and to making a limited number of binary comparisons. This type of limitation would exclude from the field of the decision any "surprise" which could arise from the reality of the situation processed. We will then observe that the informational characteristics of the environment and even more its ability to evolve, are largely or totally absent from this approach. While the condition that the set of **n** actions must be exhaustive is initially put forward, it is not always possible to meet this condition. All operational decision-makers are aware of the frequency of unexpected or unforeseen conditions in the initial plan [2]. Mental fixism, which consists in thinking that "everything is under control" and that everything has been planned, is often accepted too readily due to the sole fact that it confirms an earlier mental representation.

*Cognitive Decision-Making in Dynamic Systems: When the Objectivity (of the Processing)… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98937*

This type of difficulty is frequently encountered in situations where behavioural automation is important, for example when piloting an aircraft. While it undoubtedly reduces the mental effort, automation may nevertheless prove to be disconcerting faced with unplanned situations, especially if the level of concentration drops temporarily. Amongst the causes mentioned during "inappropriate decisionmaking", analysts estimate that "airline pilots do not receive sufficient training on manual piloting".

#### **2.3 Epistemological characteristics of the chosen action**

The chosen action [A1], also referred to as the dominant action, is that which, at the end of the decision-making process, is the one most likely to achieve the required effect. This first requirement applies to all decisions to define the objective to be reached but involves specificities in decisions qualified as complex. In such contexts, deciding is much more than choosing a subject or a procedure. Based on the dynamics of the systems concerned, we must consider that the decisions are taken to cause *state changes* in order to set up new operating balances in the systems: the health system, the economic system, the company, the emergency systems, etc.

Except in special cases, to obtain these state changes, the "decision" entity must itself be composite, i.e. must consist of a set of elementary actions (a1, a2, … ak), where each individual action has an impact on the system and where the set of actions taken together forms a global action module. The decision as such is the equivalent of a vector.

Scientific knowledge requires that the epistemological characteristics of the chosen informations must be clearly defined. The most obvious are the validity (*v),* the generality (*g*) and the fidelity (*f*). The sequence of elementary actions must prove that it is composed in such a way that it can act on the system in the required direction (v), do so for all situations of the same type (g), with a stability of effect which is repeated over time (f). These qualities can be used to distinguish the daily information forming know-how from the scientific information which satisfied these requirements, substrate on which the theoretical systems are built.

### **3. Information, cognition, and assignment of meaning**

#### **3.1 Perception and interpretation**

In the press and in the media, the discriminating power of the sensory functions is largely overestimated. Taking vision for example, the eye, compared with a camera, which would record events, is supposed to provide a faithful image of the external context sometimes called reality. However, the information that we will use to build an adapted our conduct is necessarily obtained by *interpretation*. It consists of dynamic entities to which meanings are assigned due to the mere fact they have transited via the neural networks of the brain. The retinal image therefore acquires, in the brain, a meaning related to the decision-maker's knowledge networks.

#### **3.2 Two cognition modules (levels)**

Decision-making thus appears as a mental task involving two different but complementary types of operation corresponding to two cognition levels, each one representing a homogeneous subset of operations and therefore deserving to be considered as a module.
