Chapter 15

CHOICE

“You are free, therefore choose – that is to say, invent.”

- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) Existentialism and Humanism, 1948 (Sartre 1948)

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set ye free.”

           - New Testament, John 8:32

            We can now see more clearly the goal of our quest. Our goal is to lead lives that we rightly judge worthy of a cluster of self-directed emotions. We must each build a self, a character, and an identity truly worthy of our own respect and esteem. We must each live a life with which we are deservedly pleased.

            We construct the life on which we direct these emotional judgments through the choices that we make. Outwardly directed emotional judgments will guide these choices. We become worthy of our own self-esteem if we guide our choices by judgments that are true of other people and things. We must guide our choices through our admiration for those who are admirable and our indignation at those who deserve it, through our delight in activities that are delightful and our disgust at activities that are disgusting, and so on. We build meaningful lives and identities on the foundation of these outwardly directed emotional judgments. The truth of our self-directed emotional judgments depends on the truth of our outwardly directed emotional judgments. The emotional judgments that we make about ourselves depend on how the emotional judgments that we make about the world guide our choices.

Holism

            Previous chapters showed just how difficult getting these judgments right is. The holism of evaluative judgment means that every judgment must both fit with our immediate emotional responses and cohere with our other judgments. We must be aware of ourselves, of our situations, and of our other judgments.

            Consider the following analogy involving colors rather than emotions. Suppose someone is trying to pick the color of a new sofa in the showroom of a furniture store. Picking the best color involves at least three factors: One, he must be aware of his own peccadillos. Is he color blind? Does he have an initial tendency to see colors as bright that he later sees as pallid? Does he rely too much on a salesperson’s judgment? Two, he must be aware of the environment of both the showroom and his living room. How does the lighting in the showroom compare with the lighting in his living room? How do the colors of the surrounding items in the showroom affect his perception of the sofa’s color? Three, he must be aware of what the sofa must match. How will it fit with his wallpaper? Will it match his armchair? Would he be better off to get rid of the armchair and match a new one to the sofa? Good interior decorating is difficult, but it is easy by comparison to constructing a life.

            To make emotional judgments that are true, to predict the emotions if we were free of the distortions to which emotions are prone, we require three types of knowledge:

(1) We must know the truth about ourselves. We must be in able to identify our initial feelings and their origins. Then we can predict how these feelings would change if they were properly processed and worked through.

(2) We must know the truth about the world. We must reflect on what we know both about the world and about other people. Then we must predict how our feelings would change in the light of this knowledge.

(3) We must know a host of other true evaluative judgments. We must already know what sorts of things are enjoyable, admirable, despicable, cruel, kind, and so on. Then we must predict how our feelings would change in response to this knowledge.

            Truth is an ideal. In the real world, our quest is never finished. We are continually seeking these three types of knowledge and struggling to fit them into a whole. We are constantly revising judgments in response to new understanding and new responses to the world. In a favorite simile of contemporary philosophy, our situation is like that of a sailor fighting to repair and rebuild a ship at sea. Our ship grows stronger as we replace one plank after another, managing all the time to keep our ship afloat. We use both our hearts and our heads, as our emotions respond to the world and our intellects process our reactions.

Underdetermination

            In this quest for meaning, we leave contemplation behind and begin to worry about constructing our identities and leading our lives. As we do so, I become less and less a guide and more a traveling companion. Becoming a person worthy of one’s own respect and leading a life deserving of one’s own esteem are tasks we all share. We construct the person that we become through our choices. Our judgments guide, but do not always determine, the choices that we make. Judgment underdetermines choice.

            Only in very simple, ideal cases, do an emotional judgment and its cognate emotion produce a determinate motivation to act in a certain way. Her sense of wonder for the truly wonderful views along a nature trail provides motivation for a hiker to carry out her litter instead of dropping it by the trail. She could choose otherwise; her will is free. Yet, given her judgment and emotion, for her to choose otherwise would be hypocritical, weak-willed, or irrational.

            In real cases, underdetermination lurks in the vagueness of emotional judgment. Many non-evaluative judgments that we make are vague. A standard example is judging someone bald. We can easily judge some people to be bald, and easily judge others to be hirsute. Some people’s hair falls between, though, and our judgment becomes indeterminate. The regularity that governs the use of the adjective, ‘bald,’ has a gap. (Horwich 1998:80-81) Many, if not most, of the adjective that we use to describe our everyday world have gaps in their application. We know what is green, we know what is not green, but we are vague in between. We know who is tall, we know who is short, but again we are vague between. Emotional judgments, too, have these gaps in their application. All feelings felt and all thinking done, we may be unable to predict how we would respond to a situation because of the vagueness of the auxiliary judgments on which we have depended. When our judgments are vague, we must still choose.

            Underdetermination lurks when judgment leaves us neutral between options. Some people we admire, some people we despise, and some people we neither admire nor despise. We are neutral about them; they leave us cold. The judgments of admirableness and despicableness are contraries, not negations, of one another. If someone is admirable, then it follows that he is not despicable. However, if someone is not admirable, then it does not follow that he is despicable. He may be neither admirable nor despicable, and our emotional judgments will not determine whether we should choose to either further or hinder his projects.

            Underdetermination lurks when we legitimately have mixed emotions. Suppose we have an associate who is trustworthy, but unlikeable. How do we bring these judgments together into on overall judgment to guide our decision? Sometimes we can make a rough judgment based on intensity. Perhaps he is only slightly trustworthy, whereas he is extremely hateful. Often, though, we cannot count on things being this simple. Because evaluation is diverse, not unified, we can have no guarantee of an overall judgment to guide decision.

            Because evaluative judgments are emotional judgments, we can make no all-inclusive judgment of “good” or “valuable.” We can make no unified judgment, only a diversity of judgments corresponding to the particular emotions in play. The situation might have been different if the pleasure theory or the desire theory of value had been satisfactory. Each of these theories reduces all value to one standard of measurement, intensity of pleasure, or intensity of desire satisfied, respectively. We decide, on these theories, by weighing the alternatives against this unified standard. Both theories promise to make value comparisons possible. This promise, like the theoretical appeal of the theories themselves, disappears on closer scrutiny. The measuring and weighing called for is largely metaphorical; confronted with hard cases, both theories run out of determinate answers. Options frequently become incommensurable, where “incommensurable” is the analog of “underdetermined” in the measuring and weighing metaphor.

            Underdetermination lurks whenever we must decide between valuable options. Suppose someone must decide between two careers, each of which is worthwhile in different ways. The choice is forced on her only because she cannot fit both careers into one life. Yet no considerations determine one as, overall, more worthwhile than the other.

            Because there is no One Big Thing that is the meaning of life, there is always potential conflict between the little things that are. What can be meaningful is highly plural. The many sources of bliss, the many types of self-realization, the things that satisfy wants, the people that we love, the projects which matter to us, these are all sources of meaning. Without a God-ordained purpose to existence, we have no recipe to follow when we cannot realize all possible valuable goals in one, finite life.

            Still, decide we must. If we do not, then we will suffer the fate of Buridan’s ass. In the fable, Buridan’s ass perished halfway between two equal-sized piles of hay, unable to see any grounds for deciding which pile to eat first.

            Nevertheless, our judgement that a choice is underdetermined is itself an evaluative judgment. Before we choose for no reason at all, we must examine every bit of evidence that points to an answer. Before we choose, we must think carefully about which options true emotional judgments rule out. Paradoxically, the judgment that a choice is underdetermined requires as much deliberation as the judgment that one or other answer is true. We need the same degree of care, imagination, and critical reflection in both cases.

Self-invention

            Existentialists see the human situation differently. Jean-Paul Sartre explains the famous existentialist slogan, “Existence precedes essence,” in the following way. (Sartre 1948: 26-29) Consider a human creation like a pottery table lamp. The potter designs such an artifact to light a room. Lighting a room is the purpose or function of the lamp; lighting a room is a lamp’s essential quality, its essence. The potter had this purpose in mind when she planned the lamp. She had this plan in mind when she produced the lamp. The lamp’s essential quality of lighting a room guided her as she brought the lamp into existence. For a table lamp, its essence comes before its existence.

            To the God-fearing, human beings are God’s artifacts. God creates human beings with a purpose in mind just as the artisan creates the artifact. In the God-fearing picture of human beings, their essence comes before their existence.

            The Godless, says Sartre, cannot accept this picture. Human beings do not come into existence with a purpose preplanned by God. Nor do humans have a fixed nature discoverable by scientific investigation. They find themselves, abandoned and alone, with no purpose given. In the Existentialist picture of human beings, their existence comes before their essence. First people find themselves existing, and then they create their own purposes.

            Since human beings have no pre-existing natures or preordained purposes, they must create their own goals and lives. Sartre sees a dichotomy here; purposes are either given or invented. Since purposes are not given, then they must be inventions. In counseling a student facing a difficult choice in his life, Sartre reports his advice as this:

You are free, therefore choose – that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do; no signs are vouchsafed in this world. (Sartre 1948:38)

The idea of freedom in Sartre’s existentialism is very radical. Decisions create values. They do not merely choose between values. Freedom is the freedom to invent what is good, not just the freedom to choose between good and evil. Those who decide between courses of action in difficult situations know that:

. . . the action presupposes that there is a plurality of possibilities, and that in choosing one of these, they realise that it has value only because it is chosen. (Sartre 1948:32)

Thus living, of necessity, brings anguish. For choice is unavoidable and radical. In choosing, one creates the values that determine the person that one becomes.

            Sartre, however, exaggerates the role of radical choice in leading a life and constructing an identity. Radical choice, the sort of choice that Sartre thinks of as creating value, comes into play only within the boundaries set by emotional judgments. Only after thoughtful deliberation and judgment have ruled out potential courses of action does a person make a choice between the remaining options.

            To see this, consider Sartre’s philosophical counseling example. (Sartre 1948:35-38) During the Nazi occupation of France, a young man sought Sartre’s advice. He was the sole emotional support of his mother, who would suffer grievously if he goes away. He faced the choice of staying with her or leaving France to join the resistance against the Nazis. Yet he could find no basis for making a choice. Christian charity could not tell him, for both his mother and his cause were worthy of his love and duty. He could not treat his mother as an end-in-herself without treating the resistance as just a means to his liberation. His feelings of love for his mother are not comparable to his feelings of solidarity with the resistance fighters. In picking his counselor he picks the advice he gets. Sartre’s advice was to make a radical choice and to realize that in that choice he was creating the person that he would become. By his choice, he invents himself.

            Sartre’s example, however, puts the spotlight on these two options, while neglecting a whole background of deliberation. The young man has already rejected as false a whole range of other options. He could have collaborated with the Nazis. He could have ignored both his mother and his comrades and lived a life of mindlessly seeking pleasure. He could have become a drunkard. He could have fathered a child and created a third set of duties that outweighed the two he faced. All these options, and others, he judged unworthy and rightly so. Only after this deliberation could he rightly face the underdetermination involved in choosing between his mother and the resistance.

Self-construction

            We should replace the romantic Existentialist metaphor of invention with the more prosaic metaphor of construction. Invention carries the connotation of creation out of nothing. Invention, though, is not the way to lead a life or build a self. We are not free always to give value to an option simply by our choice. Instead we start with a host of emotional judgments that we have discovered by fitting them to the evidence and to one another. From these judgments we build a life, taking guidance from them whenever possible. When deliberation runs out, then, and only then, do we invent.

            Self-construction is like house-construction.  We are not free to start anywhere; we need a solid foundation. We cannot create a house on a cloud. We must respect our materials; each material will only bear a certain load. We cannot build a castle using only twigs. Yet house design still permits a great deal of freedom. The walls must support the roof, and the roof cannot be more than the walls will bear. Nevertheless, many roof designs are still possible. At each stage, design is limited both by the nature of materials and by earlier choices, but it is not totally determined. We may create freely only after we have correctly judged what our materials permit. It is not architectural bad faith to build a house out of materials other than loose straw. It is bad faith, however, to pretend that we had no choice but to paint it pink.

            Evaluative judgments underdetermine choice. The underdetermination of choice by judgment is what allows for the particularity of meaning. No universal meaning of life exists that is the same for all human beings. We will not find one, true way of living a meaningful life. With the materials of true emotional judgments, many ways of constructing a meaningful life are still open. With some exaggeration, Victor Frankl wrote:

. . . the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and particular personality of one’s opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. (Frankl 1959:130-131)

The exaggeration is due to Frankl’s existentialist outlook; the idea of meaning changing from hour to hour suggests continual self-invention rather than the constrained process of self-construction. Still, Frankl is surely right that we should not look for an abstract meaning of life true for all people universally. Instead we should construct our own particular lives within the limits of what does and does not truly matter.

            Thus, people can lead meaningful lives in many ways. The truth or falsity of judgment limits, but does not legislate, people’s choices. Underdetermination licenses people to make different choices and to build different lives.

            In building ourselves a life, our judgments about what matters must guide us. When, after careful deliberation, we have eliminated those options that we judge unworthy, then we must choose outside reason. And we must choose in the full realization that we are strictly liable for our choices. We must bear the consequences of our choices.

Luck

            For the Godless, no supreme lawgiver or judge exists. The Godless live with no appeal. We cannot deny responsibility for our choices by denying either that we intended the consequences, or that we could not have foreseen what happened. It does not matter that we tried our best. No judge exists to accept our excuses and no afterlife exists to balance evil with good. The world is not fair. Humans can only try to make life fairer through schemes of justice that compensate for disadvantage. All the wisdom in the world, however, cannot remove the part of luck in how we judge our lives. (Nagel 1979:28-37)

            Luck intersects our lives regarding our starting points. Each of us is born with a certain temperament, and each of us acquires a certain personality as a child. Both affect how easy it is for us to become the sort of person whom we would judge worthy of our esteem and respect. A child who grows up in a violent and abusive family may react by acquiring either abusive or submissive traits as an adult. The adult will, rightly, esteem neither an abusive nor a submissive character. Still, avoiding such a character will take more effort for this person than for another person brought up in a loving and respectful home.

            Luck intersects our lives regarding how our acts turn out. We cannot always foresee the outcome of our choices. Nor can we avoid the occasional carelessness. Human beings are not perfect. Most often we get away with our little failures of concentration. For years on end someone backs out of her driveway after a quick glance in the mirror. One day her neighbor’s child is playing behind her car. In an instant her life becomes unliveable. Yet she was no more careless that day than on any other. Bad luck intervened.

            Luck intersects our lives regarding the choices we will face. Sartre’s friend faced a choice that few people ever face in peace time. During that war, Nagel points out, the Nazi regime put ordinary Germans in a position that made it hard for them to choose well.

Ordinary citizens of Nazi Germany had an opportunity to behave heroically by opposing the regime. They also had an opportunity to behave badly, and most of them are culpable for having failed this test. But it is a test to which the citizens of other countries were not subjected, with the result that even if they, or some of them, would have behaved as badly as the Germans in like circumstances, they simply did not and therefore are not similarly culpable. Here again one is morally at the mercy of fate . . . . (Nagel 1979:34)

Our luck affects the difficulty of the decisions that we will face, and the corresponding judgments that we will make on our lives.

            Our goal is to lead lives that we judge truly meaningful. We must lead lives that are worthy of life-affirming emotional judgments. We must merit our own respect and esteem and not deserve our own shame or contempt. To lead meaningful lives, we need both wisdom and luck.

            We need wisdom to make true emotional judgments to guide our lives. Wisdom is not just a matter of cleverness; wisdom is a matter of both the head and the heart. We need wisdom, too, in judging when truth has run out and choices are underdetermined.

            As well, we need luck. We need luck in the choices that we will face, in the resources that we bring to those choices, and in the way that our choices turn out.