Essay
The Ambiguity of Human Decision-Making
Why We Lack Free Will, and Its Opposite
The nature of human volition is ambiguous, for it is common for one’s being to be aligned in equal measure to a thesis and its antithesis. One can feel just as strongly about one decision as one does about the opposite decision.
Insofar as one “chooses” between the two, the nature of one’s decision-making process is vague.
Yet, human beings are liable to give themselves and others excessive credit in the decisions made from such conundrums, when in reality, the hand which guided one any which way can barely be identified as “one’s own” –only with immense subterfuge might a human being determine themselves as the “chooser of choices.”
Nevertheless, such mendaciousness is the default interpretation.
It is not a mistake to give oneself credit or discredit for one’s empowering or disempowering life events.
Nor is it a mistake to give others such credit or discredit. Instead, the mistake regards human volition as a zero-sum game –a game where we either have perfect freedom of will or no will whatsoever.
Even in those instances where, ostensibly, one’s or another’s hand white-knuckled the wheel, that ostensability is but one’s first…
