Looking At Choice

Choose a number between 1 and 10.

How did you do it?

Maybe you waited for the right number to appear.

Maybe you already had one in mind.

Or maybe a number appeared with the question, or while you were preparing to answer.

Is the chosen number your doing?

It came into the world by your fiat numerus.

But how exactly did you choose?

There does not seem to be one fixed way of choosing a number like that. The process seems receptive and active at once.

But this is an unusual kind of choice. There is no goal beyond choosing, and no obvious criterion by which one number would be better than another.

Suppose the screw on one of the legs of your desk is loose.

On the desk lie a hammer, a screwdriver, and a knife.

Which tool do you choose?

Probably the screwdriver. It is made for tightening screws.

But suppose the screwdriver is too large and the knife fits perfectly.

Then maybe you choose the knife instead.

Here the choice has a purpose.

You want to tighten the screw, and the available tools differ in how well they serve that purpose.

You may stop and reason about this.

Or you may simply reach for the screwdriver.

Either way, one possibility becomes the one you act on.

But were the hammer, screwdriver, and knife really all your possibilities?

Suppose there were only a hammer, a knife, and a lighter on the table. You could ignore all three, walk to another room, and get a screwdriver.

The possibilities were not simply given by what happened to be in front of you.

You can alter, update and abandon the set.

Now choose two names that potential partners of yours might have.

Replace Hanna and Mary with those names while reading.

Hanna and Mary both have qualities you value, and qualities you do not. Which one, if either, should you choose as your partner in life?

Here the situation is different again.

There may be many things that matter.

Affection, trust, attraction, shared plans, character, family, and timing may all matter. Maybe some of these matter greatly and others only a little.

But even when the possibilities and relevant considerations are known, nothing in them may make one choice follow.

By the way, how did you choose the names? Or did you choose not to choose?

Sometimes we respond by choosing a procedure.

A rule, a vote, a coin, or advice from someone we trust.

It changes where our participation lies.

We choose how the decision will be made.

And then we allow something else to settle what happens next.

Does calculation belong here too? We choose to begin and follow the procedure, but not what result it yields.

Suppose you promised two different people that you would spend the same evening with them. You cannot keep both promises.

Whichever one you keep, you break the other.

You may look for another possibility.

You might move one meeting, explain the problem, or bring the two people together.

But suppose none of this works.

Then you must choose.

Yet choosing one does not make the other promise disappear.

Nor must the chosen option suddenly appear good.

It may remain merely the less bad one.

Or simply the one you can finally bring yourself to enact.

Choice can settle action while conflicting convictions remain.

Choice seems to require possibilities and often involves criteria, goals, rules, or boundaries. But the possibilities need not simply be given, and the criteria need not determine one answer.

We may even choose the procedure by which the decision is made, while conflicting convictions remain afterward.

How do possibilities appear?

How do we know which ones belong to the choice?

How do we know that we have considered them all?

In practice, we just choose without being able to say how all of this was settled.

So is choice where our doing begins?