Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This essay, written in Indonesian, examines choice not as a single act that ends once a decision is made, but as a possibility that never finishes. Every decision gives birth to smaller choices while cutting off others. I read choice through three lenses that grow heavier in turn. Economics shows how uncertainty unsettles the logic of value. Psychology shows that the human capacity to process possibilities is limited. Philosophy shows that, without an absolute foundation, every choice may be mistaken and nihilism becomes possible. I argue that the familiar exits, Camus’s revolt amid absurdity and the pragmatist idea of correction, remain inside this chain, since each is itself a further choice. Instead, I propose that choice cannot be resolved by standards, which demand verdicts and fall into an endless regress of justification, but can only be given meaning. I compare this diagnosis with Hans Albert’s Münchhausen trilemma, while locating my answer in lived choices rather than in the foundations of knowledge. Meaning is distinguished from self-justification by one criterion, openness: genuine meaning remains willing to be tested, whereas self-justification closes itself off. Euphoria marks the phenomenological moment in which meaning is born, while reason is relocated from a foundation before choosing to a tester after meaning emerges. I call this position existential fallibilism.
Author: Bugi', Kiki Reskianto
Language: Indonesian
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7224386674