The Cognition of Conflict: Ontology, Dynamics, and Ideology - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 13

Settling goals
Not all the goals motivating our actions are the goals we start from, the original
“motives” of our activation, planning, deciding, and so forth, not only because
some of the original goals (or parts of them) might be given up but because new
goals necessarily enter into the decision not just as simple “positive” or “negative”
predicted outcomes, but as being crucial for the choice.
In fact, we may start from a given motive G1 (going to Naples) and, by a top-
down reasoning process, find/build its possible means and paths, but we may learn
that we have some alternative means: we can either choose action A1 (go by train)
or action A2 (go by car). How do we choose? We must start a reverse, bottom-up
process by activating new goals that originally did not appeal to us; more precisely,
we must construct a prediction scenario where we consider the possible further
outcomes (in addition to the achievement of G1) of A1 and A2, and we must evaluate
those outcomes against the new goals: for instance, G2 (reading during a trip) or G3
(arriving at a meeting without having to take buses or taxis). Those goals will serve
to settle the matter of what it means to prefer (hence the label settling goals ), since,
as for G1 (going to Naples), A1 and A2 are equivalent; we will choose between those
goals, not really between the two actions. Thus, the chosen goal (which makes a
given action preferable) is a “necessary” outcome for it and is hence a “motivating”
goal in a weak sense (it is certainly not “sufficient” in that the whole process is
implied).
Preference between G1 and G2 can be reason-based, argued with pros and
cons, or affective, based on the evocation of attractive or repulsive responses to
two scenarios: a conflict between associated somatic markers (Damasio 1996 ). In
that case, too, we can actively search for affective appraisal, evoking or imagining
different affective experiences in the two cases.

1.4.2 Subjective or Psychological Conflict in the Strict Sense

Of course, subjectively speaking, there are different kinds as well as “strengths” of
conflicts that make choosing a more or less difficult and demanding process. More
precisely:
We can view conflict in a weak, potential, broad sense or in a narrow and specific
sense of “being in conflict,” “experiencing conflict.”
Any decision in fact presupposes the perspective of more than one scenario, of
some “alternative”: to do or not to do, or to do either A or B. We examine/consider
pros and cons (at least the “costs”), or different ways to achieve the higher goal, and
we must choose . However, this is just a possible conflict; it does not necessarily give
rise to a “subjective experience of conflict.”