Apply Evaluative Criteria to Judging Outcomes, Not Alternatives
Please note that evaluative criteria are not used to judge the alternatives, or at least not directly. They are to be applied to the projected outcomes. It is easy to get confused about this point—and to get the analysis very tangled as a result. This confusion is encouraged by a commonsense way of speaking: “Alternative A looks to be the best; therefore let’s proceed with it.” But this way of speaking ignores a very important step. The complete formulation is “Alternative A will very probably lead to outcome O, which we judge to be the best of the possible outcomes; therefore, we judge Alternative A to be the best.”