Rational choice theory – also known as the classical theory – is an important component of academic criminology. (Cao, 2004; Lilly, Cullen and Ball, 2007) The classical school of criminology begins with the assumption that humans are rational creatures. We seek pleasure and avoid pain. We decide to benefit ourselves and not be injured. We want happiness, rather than suffering. According to this theory, those who break the law do so in order to gain values, increase their happiness and achieve pleasures. The way to stop them is to increase the cost of crime, making it difficult; and by emplacing strict, certain and swift punishments, appropriate and commensurate with the crime.
In discussing symbolic interactionism, George Herbert Mead said that we come to
terms with the world by discussing it with ourselves. (Wallace and Wolf, 2006) It may
be that not all people do this. Julian Jaynes theorized that before the invention of writing people literally had no selves. The self is a peculiar construct caused by the medium of record. Jaynes suggested that there are among us people who claim to "hear voices" because they do not perceive their own thoughts as interior events. (Jaynes, 1976)
Apparently unaware of Jaynes or Mead, the American philosopher Ayn Rand re-
established the classical tradition by drawing directly on Aristotle. (Rand, 1963; Rand
1961; Rand 1967) Rand apparently was the first to identify the decision to think. This
can also be characterized as a "metachoice" because it is categorically different from all other choices. Consciousness may be automatic, but the level of consciousness, its degree or depth, is volitional.
"Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the othersproceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment." (Rand, 1961: 157)
Read the full paper here via Google Documents
"The Choice to Think: A Metachoice to Explain the Conflicting Data of Rational Choice Theory" by Michael E Marotta, CRIM 447: Senior Seminar; Winter 2008: Dr. Liqun Cao, Eastern Michigan University.