Can I Choose Between Two Possibilities When, Before Choosing, I Find No Difference BetweenThem?
Year: 2026
Type: book
Abstract: : I examine whether I can choose between two possibilities when, before choosing, I experience no difference between them. My answer is affirmative, provided that I distinguish the absence of a perceived or endorsed difference from the absence of every condition capable of producing a selection. A choice can occur without a comparative reason that favors one option, while still depending on a minimal practical situation: I understand that alternatives are available, I perform an act of selection, and the act establishes one possibility as the path I will presently follow. I develop this argument through the philosophy of Finite Continuance. Within this framework, agency is situated in a finite and changing field of possibilities, and continuance depends on preserving a capacity for reconfiguration under conditions of erosion. I distinguish comparative preference, explicit deliberation, causal determination, arbitrary selection, and retrospective rationalization. I argue that apparent indifference can coexist with asymmetries of attention, bodily orientation, habit, context, temporal pressure, or the act of choosing itself. I also consider a stronger case in which the alternatives are equal in every respect available to the chooser. In that limiting case, a choice remains conceptually possible as an event of selection, although the claim that it was wholly unconditioned requires caution. I propose that choice should be analyzed at three levels: the structure of the options, the process through which selection occurs, and the consequences that selection opens or closes. The ethical significance of such choices depends on their effects on future capacity, reversibility, and the relational field in which the chooser continues to exist. This account preserves the distinction between choosing for a reason and choosing without a comparative reason, while explaining why an apparently insignificant selection may acquire importance through its subsequent consequences. Keywords: choice; indifference; reasons; agency; finite continuance; reconfigurative capacity; future possibility; importance;deliberation; freedom
Author: Niami, Morteza
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7224367367