Choice

I notice that what I have learned during my 2 years at college revolve around 1 concept: choice. How people make choices? Do people really have the freedom to choose? Is that kind of freedom important? etc. These questions more or less pop up in the classes I have taken, though they have never been explicit about their subject – choice.

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One topic in Philosophy is free will and determinism. It is about whether people can make choices out of their will. The simple picture is this. Future events are determined by current events. Current events are determined by past ones. Making decisions is an event. Thus, the decision we make, or are about to make, in fact, have already been determined. Events happen million years ago dictate that. Human beings, therefore, do not have free will. The world is deterministic, and whether you are successful or failure does not depends on your choices because such freedom to choose is just an illusion. Anyway, this is just one view. But the core question remains the same in many different perspectives: “Do people really make choices?” (Or, more precisely, do people really have the ability to make choices?) After all, when we make decisions, our brains undergo some kind of chemical and physical process. And the physical world is deterministic. Object 1 interacts with object 2, resulting in this physical state. This molecule interacts with that molecules, resulting in that physical state. The world is simply an aggregation of physical events. If that is the case, then isn’t our freedom to choose illusion?

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Economics ignores this question of free will and determinism and assumes that people can and do make decisions with their free will. Economists are more interested in answering “How people make choices?” People are complex. But economists are notorious for simplifying things. They think of human beings as creatures who want to maximize happiness (or in economic jargon, “utility”). And since resources are scarce, when a person decides to use her resources, she will choose based on the utility brought about. That leads us to Consumer Theory (those who study microeconomics will know this). Budget constraint (how much money do you have) and indifference curve (how happy you are when you consume this amount of these goods). Given that you have $10 and you want to buy pizza ($5 each) and coca cola ($2 each). What is your choice? 2 pizzas or 5 coca colas? Or 1 pizza and 2 coca colas? It all depends on how much utility I get from these goods with the amount of resources (money, in this case) that I have. That’s the economists’ theory of how a single person make choices. What if there are many people who make choices? Economists come up with “Game Theory” (“Multiple people decision theory”). The goal is still maximizing the utility (which game theorists often call “payoff”). But here’s the twist: one’s action can affect the well-being of the other. In other words, there is inter-dependence. The most popular case in game theory is “Prisoners’ Dilemma.” Two criminals are arrested. If both decide to “rig” the other, they are both sentenced to 5 years. If one rigs and the other remains silent, the silent get 4 years, and the one who rigs get only 1 year. If both remain silent, they are set free. How would the prisoners choose?

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Sociology concerns with choices in a different way. Though they do not radically disregard free will as many philosophers do, most sociologists think that individual choices are kind of illusory. People do make choices, but under the influence of some kind of structural system. People are not individuals born out of the vacuum. They live in groups and communities. These groups and communities shape the choice or determine what options are available to the individuals. For example, I make the choice of going to college. But that happens only because I was born into a relatively well off family. My parents can afford to send me to private lessons so that I was well prepared enough to pass the university entrance exam. The socioeconomic class I was born into instilled in me the belief that education is valuable. It cultivated in me the habit of relating education to a better future. The choice of going to college, really, is made by me, but under the structural influence of the social group I live in. Another example concerns the status of women. Some people argue that women are naturally more suitable for child rearing and home maintenance, so they choose to become housewives. But others, especially the sociologists, contend that we have a repressive masculine society the institutions of which undermine women’s rights and choices. Behind these institutions lies the belief that men are more important than women. Men go out to the world while women must stay home to support them. Not until after World War 2 (when all the men went to war) did American women really enter the workforce. Sociology, then, thinks about choice in contexts. The discipline is about “What structural cause does this choice reflect?”

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Historians think about choices, too, but with a temporal sense and in rich contexts. They examine specific decisions that really did happen in the past. In this discipline, the question is “Why was this decision made, and what did it lead to?” Why did the Japanese decide to bomb Pearl Harbor? Why did this attack trigger the US involvement in World War 2? In a sense, history allows determinism: past events lead to current events. History also accommodates free will. You can notice that there are plenty of accounts of important historical figures who made the right decisions at the right time. These decisions were not deemed as a result of some deterministic process, but rather the product of some presidents and generals’ genius. History looks at choices in a different angle: it looks at the meaning and significance of a choice.

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[This note is kinda long, and may contain many grammatical/spelling mistakes because I’m too lazy to edit.]