18.8.2006
(This is nothing really spectacular, I'm just recapitulating some
well-known lines of thought related to the theory of action.)
Here is an example of someone pondering a decision:
- If I don't stop working so hard, I will have
serious health problems.
As is not uncommon, the speaker may have realized that his work is both
very rewarding and demanding, and that the price of keeping the hard work
that the job requires is a risk of overworking himself and finally ending
up with a damaged health. So he has to decide if the work experience is so
valuable that he wants to take that risk and perhaps endure the pain that
ensues, or if he would rather would do without the job.
Now the first thing to note here is that this is not necessarily a
foregone conclusion. If the speaker puts his work experience above
everything else, nothing may prevent him from going on. (Indeed, it is
not even unusual that people actually do keep on their hard work until they
get their health into a threatening state; this needs not always be the
result a conscious decision, but it may well be.)
A analogous, but less dramatic situation is this:
- If I don't switch off the air conditioner, I will get a
headache from the noise.
The situations are similar, it is just the intensity of the imminent
unpleasantness that is different; and the difference here is one of
degree.
What are the limiting cases to this? On the one hand, the decision could
involve consequences toward which the speaker is even more indifferent than
toward the headache in example (2). Eventually, the options would carry
equal weight to him, and he would view the choice as arbitrary. On the
other hand, the situation could be sharpened more and more so that the
consequences would be even less favourable than the serious health risk
envisaged in (1). Could it be taken so far that one of the options
becomes impossible, so that there is no more any choice? Perhaps if such an
option would involve an existential threat for the speaker? We might imagine
a soldier in combat who thinks:
- If I carry on the attack in this situation, this means
certain death.
This would be a clear case where the action under discussion endangers
the agent's very existence. But still he may choose to press on.
In all these cases, even if it could seem that the agent is
forced into something, it is still a course of action that
he chooses. It is not something that merely happens to him, nor is it
impossible for him to opt for the alternative. (Although the agent may fail
or at least hesitate to present both options to himself as genuine.)
Compare this with the situation of someone who has endured a long
period of sleep deprivation and thinks:
- If I remain sitting here, I will fall asleep.
If he indeed falls asleep, that was not an action on his part. He did not
decide to do so, on the grounds laid out in (4). Rather,
his falling asleep just happened to him, and what is formulated in (4)
are the conditions that caused it. In this case, there is
something (in particular, a physiological condition) that forces the speaker
into a certain outcome; the previously discussed cases are different in that
the alternative outcome is well in reach of an action on the part of the
speaker. He has a choice (and consequently, also bears responsibility for
his action, once it is taken).
This sort of decision between options that have unequal weight is not
restricted to cases where one of the options has painful or unpleasant
consequences. Imagine a policeman talking to a suspect:
- If you continue to be silent to my questions, I will have no
choice but to arrest you.
Even though the policeman himself presents the situation here as one
where the indicated course of action is the only available option (let's
suppose it is not merely a figure of speech), the case is similar to those
described above. There is a genuine choice: he can either do what he
explicitely announced and arrest the suspect, or he can ignore the prescribed
action that the situation calls for and let him go. (Let us leave aside the
further possibility that he chooses such a behaviour simply for tactical
reasons.) If the suspect happens to be a person he likes, or whom he owns a
favour to, such corrupt behaviour would be well within the range of choices
that are open to the policeman.
(This may or may not be something that the policeman himself is aware of.
Depending on his moral stature, the idea of violating his duties might
indeed not even enter his thought; this would be a case of 'silencing' in
the sense of McDowell, [1].)
What is special about the sort of situation considered here is, first,
that the choice is between two negatively evaluated options. In the case
of (1), the speaker will either have to give up a job that he thinks is
rewarding, or he will risk serious health problems, both of which are not
desirable outcomes. In example (5), the policeman's options are either to
violate his duties (which he may want to avoid because of his moral attitudes
or simply for fear of the consequences it might have for him personally), or
to arrest the suspect to whom he is sympathetic.
But, secondly, equally common to the cases (1) to (3) and (5) is that
there is already a leaning towards one of the options: the speaker of (1)
strongly tends to give up the job. (One might even read, in a different
context, the statement (1) as expressive rather than indicative - the speaker
would thereby not try to work out the consequences of a hypothetical action,
but, having taken his decision already, rather formulates a certain sadness
or regret for the inevitable implication of that decision, namely, that his
health conditions will now prevent him from carrying on with a job he likes.)
The policeman who utters (5) is heavily inclined to do the arresting. (Again,
the statement may well be understood as an after-the-decision expression
of the feeling of being forced to initiate this course of action.)
This combination of features generates a difficulty for someone who
has to take such a decision: he may not recognize it as a genuine choice,
because he tends not to see all the options. The speaker of (1) may think
that he is being forced to give up his job, and not realize that this is only
one of his options (even if it is the pre-eminent one and probably also the
one that is in his own best interest). The policeman who utters (5) even
makes it explicit that he does not see himself as choosing the course of
action which he will take, but as something over which he 'has no
choice'.
But this is a mistake. Even if the agent takes the obvious action, it
is a deliberate choice (and he is responsible for it).
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[1] John McDowell, Mind, Value and Reality, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press 1998, especially "The Role of Eudaimonia in
Aristotle's Ethics", 77-94, and "Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical
Imperatives?", 3-22. See also the critical discussion in Jeffrey Seidman,
"Two Sides of 'Silencing'", in: Philosophical Quarterly 55 (2005),
68-77.
