The Polish Cottage

Let us suppose that A and B are hungry and both suffer intensely from their hunger.  Let us assume that there is a menu at Polish Cottage that could help them in their hunger, which could physically change the state of their empty stomachs, but it takes a great deal of energy and courage to make the trip and choose a menu item.  Let us suppose that A has the energy and courage while B lacks it.  A makes the trip and fills their stomach.  B just gets more and more hungry and more and more miserable.  Now it is true that A helped form their own later satiation.  But their starting point, their desire to satiate their hunger, their energy, their courage, were already there.  They may or may not have been the result of previous effort, and the effort at that time was the result of factors that were not of their making.

Are these two people any better for the choices they have made?  We have to thank Paul Edwards for this intuition pump, and Edwards might say that we are determined to make a decision.  We may feel like we have the freewill to choose one from the other, but the determination of choice is still at the crux of this situation.  The problem is worsened by the fact that you still have to choose a menu item once you've raced through traffic to eat here.  Will you choose between the Polish sausage or the Polish wiener?  Will you choose between the strawberry crepe, the blueberry crepe or the sour cream crepe?  Choice, it seems, can still presuppose determinism, even if it is a soft, pierog determinism.  But pierog are rarely served singularly.  So it seems we still have to make a choice.

karat y chop