ON CHOICE
JULY 15th 2004
Today, July 10th 2004, a striking sentence was broadcast by the BBC. A couple of crime novelists were discussing the ethical aspects of crime fiction and they agreed, rightly in my opinion, that it is wrong in principle to depict good guys and bad guys in simplistic terms. Good guys have blemishes and bad guys have redeeming features. That much was stunningly unoriginal. The magic sentence was "It is my job to kick people in the assumptions". What a telling statement of the proper function of philosophers!
We still live in an age of magic words and the latest of these is the title word of this essay - CHOICE. We have a general election likely in Spring 2005 and our two biggest parties - Labour and Tory - have both adopted this word in relation both to health care provision and to education. Much phobosophy (see last June 15th AT for the meaning of this word; it means an aversion to wisdom) will be evident in these areas of proper public concern.
The first thing is to learn to distinguish between choice and threat. "Your money or your life" is, superficially, a choice but in reality it is a threat. A somewhat similar case is associated with fanatical religion "Adhere to our beliefs and you will go to heaven; reject our beliefs and you will go to hell. The choice is yours". In so far as such a confrontation is taken seriously it is not a choice being offered; it is a threat being made.
Then there is the classic philosophical divide between determinists and non-determinists. Determinists believe that all events are caused and that choice is an illusion and that chance events are not really by chance at all but merely the effects of unidentified causes. Non-determinists think that genuine non-illusory choice is a factor in our lives. Thinking determinists (as opposed to unthinking fatalists) who have considered both sides of the question have, presumably, chosen, by perceived force of argument, to be determinists. It is a little odd to choose to believe that you have no choice - is it not?
Given that we have some choices - and our conduct in life, and in the forthcoming election, is predicated on the assumption that we have - it is important that the choices on offer should represent real alternatives and that those choices are actually informed choices. Bogus choices made in contrived ignorance are good propaganda but, as is so often true of politics, preaching and advertising, they are intellectually corrupting.
In passing, the basic theory of the market-driven economy is what Adam Smith called the "Hidden Hand" of informed choice on the part of consumers. Very good in theory but our choices are routinely subverted by cunningly misleading advertisements and the seductiveness of fashion. Smith could not have known much about these factors when he was writing (in the eighteenth century). We know about them today and our manipulators know them, and us, all too well.
Choice is indeed a complex concept in very many areas of human endeavour.
Our two main political parties confront one another in presenting policies that offer patients a choice of which hospital to go to and parents what school to send their children to.
Choice of something implies rejection of something else and so good hospitals must have spare beds and good schools must have spare capacity for possible acceptance. Likewise bad hospitals and bad schools must, if choice is real, have spare capacity which the punters, in their informed wisdom, have chosen to reject. It is clear that such choices are void UNLESS there is surplus provision of hospital services and school places.
What then about over-provision, about wasted facilities? What about value for money in the arena of public expenditure? The parties make much of this and rightly; they all want greater efficiency in the delivery of public services. The general election promises to be a festival of phobosophy but we shall live to tell the tale - some time afterwards. If I were a film maker I would try my hand at 'Carry on Voting'.
There is an alternative to this potentially bogus choice scenario and that is to have decent hospitals and schools readily accessible so that the need for choice simply does not arise, as any more than a marginal challenge, to the recipients of health care and schooling That is how we are placed, albeit somewhat precariously for the time being, in Orkney; we have services that are still so good that choice is almost a meaningless concept both for patients and for parents of school children.
The mythical horse was a choice offered to the Trojans. They were unwise, in the event, to choose to open it. But even so, that disastrous choice has had its good results. Fortunately for philosophy the Trojans made the wrong choice and so the Greeks prevailed and philosophised to great effect. We are still in their debt. Someone said that modern philosophy is but "a footnote to Plato". So it is; the footnote should be "Take the above with a grain of salt".
E.S..
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