ABSTRACT
As my mother always says, life is choices. Experience seems to back this up. From the time I woke up this morning, I made countless decisions: exactly when to get out of bed, whether to eat breakfast and what to eat, when to brush my teeth and so on. In my conscious life, I cannot seem to avoid making choices. Suppose I say, “I am tired of choosing all the time. I think I will just refuse to make a decision”. Paradoxically, my refusal is itself a choice I make. I can’t get out of choosing so easily. In fact, our lives are so marked by choices that some philosophers have claimed that this defines what and who we are. In other words, these philosophers say that we are beings who must constantly choose. And it could be that the choices we make determine, or at least largely shape, who we become. It is perhaps unlikely that whether I have toast or cereal for breakfast will contribute much towards shaping who I become. But of course, not all of my choices are of such a trivial nature. Sometimes I must make weighty decisions, such as whether to get married and to whom, what kind of career to embark upon, or whether to resist some sort of temptation in order to do what I think is morally right. Because choices are such a pervasive and important part of our
experience, it should come as no surprise that all sorts of thinkers and writers have chosen (!) to study the nature and significance of
choice in human life. Even those who have not formally studied or written about these issues have most likely wondered or even worried about them at one time or another. But what, exactly, might someone be worried about? One very famous, much-discussed, and central concern is referred to as the problem of free will.
