The Undecidability of Decision

This article addresses the phenomenon of decision. I want to examine the possibilities of defining the question of decision within a communication-theoretical systems theory. In this context communication theory is defined in opposition to theory of action. The aim is to view decisions as communication rather than action and therefore also to free theory of action from any behavioural theory including the reduction of decisions to an underlying agent-born intentionality of either rational or symbolic character. The communication-theoretical recasting of the question of decision will take as its starting point the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann and his theory about social systems of communication. Moreover, I will draw on writers like Jacques Derrida, George Spencer-Brown, and Heinz von Foerster.