Does choice exist.?

Question

I have been pondering over this for ages and i think i have proved that choice is a myth.

If we have a personality, our personality will decide what to do in any given situation. For example, if you were asked to play in a music concert, you could say yes or no. Your personality is that you are daring to try new things, but you can't play music to save your life. You also like to be abnormal. So whilst the obvious choice would be to say "No, I can't play music," you will say, "Yes, I'd love to." But was that really your choice?I don't think so.

Am I talking crap?

Answer 1

"choice" exists and is apparent in all activities involving thought. that's just a technical statement that intends to make a distinction between "choice" and "free will".

i get the feeling you meant to say that "free will" does not exist. there i agree. choice naturally exists; although i have my doubts about the credence of "free choice"

i can endorse your view that a person's choices are a product of their personality. by "personality" here i mean the aggregate myriad of preferences, tendencies, attitudes, desires and external influences.

if one has free will, ie. the uninhibited, unaltered ability to make a choice, it is tantamount to saying that one can actually and literally pick and choose the thoughts they wish to have at any point in time.

when someone says that a murderer had the choice to either become the murderer he became, or not, they are completely and conveniently ignoring the fact that the murderer became who he is due to attempting to avoid the various ramifications and difficulties that he would have been faced with, had he not murdered. hence the choice that was made to become a murderer was dictated by factors beyond his control.

at the time of the murder, had the murderer's actions been governed more predominantly by fear of commiting felony than by the impulsive, unabashed urge to eliminate the existence of another, i think his hands would not be blood-stained.

so, in effect, in order to not become a murderer, he would have had to been able to choose to have thoughts centered round fear of commiting felony and suppress or erase the unabashed urge to kill.

so in the end, the thoughts he had were more inclined towards the unabashed urge to kill and the thoughts of fear of felony had to take the back seat.

the thought of killing urge occured to him; not that of fear of felony.

i wonder how much responsibility propagators of "free will" assign to the ability to suppress thoughts.

if a person has free will, let me see them deny the fact that they are all-powerful, as they would logically have to be if they can astutely choose the thoughts that are to occur to them.

Answer 2

You've been pondering this for "ages".

I see where you are going with this. Just like we have no control over what color our hair is, or our eyes, our personalities are predetermined for us. Some people don't have control over certain body parts. Michael J. Fox can't chose to stop shaking because his brain is doing the shaking for him.

I read some where that 70% of our brain power is spent on suppressing urges.

So if we are good we suppress bad urges and if we are bad then we suppress good urges. So if choice is a myth, should a bad person be punished for being born with a bad personality? Is all responsibility for actions wiped clean?

Imagine if you didn't have a predetermined personality. You would have no starting point. You wouldn't like anything, yet you would like everything. You would hate everyone, yet love everyone. Even though we don't get to chose our basic personalities, we still have a say in our choices and it helps shape our personalities.

Answer 3

we would say "yes, I'd love to" because we are being polite... You subconscious mind told you to do so...
1. people say choice exists because in every situation there is always at least 2 choices, the easy path and the hard path, we humans are usually lazy and dislike hard things when you can do something simpler. For example your child is kidnapped and the kidnapper calls and says give me a million dollars or i will kill your kid, if you call the police the kid will die!" this is what we usually do, due to the suddenness of this situation we choose to give a million dollars when we still have other choices such as call the police, don't care, and others, but we choose give a million dollars because well it has the least risk rate.
2. If you believe in destiny then you will never have any choices for all the choices are made for you. using the kidnapping situation for example if you believe in destiny your choice of calling the police or paying the money, is already chosen for you therefore you don't have a choice.

Answer 4

Hmmm. Does choice exist? I think so since I've chosen to answer your question. I admit that I am a know-it-all sometimes and like to share what I know, but I could just as easily have answered someone else's question.

Yes, our background and personality does help determine our choices. For those of us with a good grounding in religion when we were young, we are unlikely to choose to commit crimes but some still do.

For those of us who chose to stay in school, we have a greater range of choices than those who dropped out.

It's a matter of choice.

Answer 5

It does exist. Taking a choice is not a random process. Usually you'll choose what you consider best for yourself, the problem many times is that such a thing is not clear, or easely accomplished. Therefore there's drama involved, it's not mechanical. And if it's a choice that has no dramatic consequences, like deciding the flavor of ice cream you want to eat, it still is not a phisic/mechanic process, emotions are involved, which are ultra-phisical (sort of), they are not merely random.

Answer 6

Our choices are, in large measure, determined by who we are. But that doesn't make "choice a myth" because who we are is also, in large measure, determined by the choices that we make.
Free will isn't absolute, of course. But I believe it does exist and that we express it though the choices that we make. Think of life as a gigantic highway with many lanes; we can change lanes but we have to remain on the highway.
The reasons why we make our choices does not negate the fact that they ARE choices.
I chose to try to answer this question; I could have chosen not to.

Answer 7

You are positing some form of substance dualism. It is a fundamental mistake to dichotomize you and your personality. They are the same thing.

Answer 8

Choice can neither be proven nor disproven.

Answer 9

You do have choice but it's limited all too often.

Answer 10

yes you are. what kinda question is that. go home and have some ice-cream. and then sleep and then when you wake up just dont hink about it and go to work or school... 8)