Deciding Decision-Making Away

When faced with a hard decision, we can and sometimes should decide decision-making away, for instance by flipping a coin. At first, this strategy might look suspect: it seems that conforming with the verdict of a coin flip and φ-ing as a result involves making the decision to φ. To address this worry, we inquire into the psychological structures that make deciding decision-making away possible. Our main contention is that it involves conditional intentions: you form the intention to φ if the coin lands heads and ψ otherwise. We then rely on the nature of the conditional intentions involved to argue that we do not make the decision to φ when the coin flip tells us to φ. We conclude by exploring the normative status of deciding decision-making away. Not only is it often permissible, whether the choice situation is mundane or life-defining, deciding decision-making away may sometimes be required, for example, to promote equality in shared agency or fairness in distribution.