We're too often encouraged, by many contemporary thinkers and self-help gurus, to "live in the moment" in order that we may create more pleasurable lives for ourselves. While I believe this advice has some merit, I feel it presents a dangerous pitfall to those of us endeavoring to create more stable and consistent lives for ourselves.
In this essay I will introduce my "Four Causes of Choice" (inspired loosely by Aristotle's Four Causes). I will provide a simple then complex example of what considering these new causes looks like in real life, explain why I feel this consideration is important, and I'll end by offering you a novel way of framing future choices so they might cause you less worry and anxiety.
Before starting I want to share Wikipedia's outline of Aristotle's Four Causes since this work of Aristotle's was the inspiration for framing my approach to decision-making in the way that I now do:
The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelian thought, four fundamental types of answer to the question "why?", in analysis of change or movement in nature: the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final. Aristotle wrote that "we do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause." While there are cases in which classifying a "cause" is difficult, or in which "causes" might merge, Aristotle held that his four "causes" provided an analytical scheme of general applicability. – Wikipedia, Four Causes
And with that refresher, I will begin.
Tanner's "Four Causes of Choice"
As we saw above, to understand a thing fully you must understand its essence completely – that is, you must understand its four causes fully. I believe to make choices well we must understand a different four causes: the four causes of choice. Only with such an understanding can we understand the quality of our choices and make them well. These causes are:
#1. Polychotomatic cause
A polychotomy must exist, or be perceived to exist, in order for a person to be caused to make a choice.
#2. Motivational cause
Internal desire to choose (or external pressure to choose) must exist in the chooser in order for them to believe choosing is appropriate and/or necessary. This cause is linked to outcomes.
#3. Competency cause
Competency to carry out subsequent efforts required by a choice must be perceived to exist within the chooser's mind, by the chooser, in order for a choice to manifest in the outcomes suggested by the motivational cause. To put it differently: the chooser must believe their choice has a chance of manifesting the desired outcome.
#4. Commitment cause
The commitment to choose.
A simple example: choosing what we want for breakfast
First, the Polychotomatic Cause is present. We can choose between Froot Loops in milk, frozen waffles with syrup, or cold leftover pizza.
Second, the Motivational Cause. We are motivated by our desire to no longer be hungry. We believe eating something for breakfast will result in our no longer feeling hungry.
Third, the Competency Cause. Are we competent to choose our breakfast? Presumably we are. We know we can carry out the choice to have Froot Loops in milk because we know we can grab a bowl & spoon, open a cereal box, pour cereal, pour milk, sit down at our table, and eat. Competency doesn't just refer to our human competency to act (and act competently), but also the environment's competency to enable us to act. We cannot have Froot Loops in milk if there is no milk, or if the milk has curdled.
We are, of course, free to choose Froot Loops in milk despite the milk being curdled. We would, however, be choosing poorly in doing so.
Just as Aristotle's Four Causes can each be understood well in order to understand the essence of a thing well, or understood poorly in order to understand the essence of a thing poorly, the same is true of my Four Causes of Choice: one can understand the four causes of a choice and, with that understanding, make a choice well or, without it, make a choice poorly.
Lastly, the Commitment Cause. Imagining we find the milk curdled, we commit to choosing something else and wind up eating waffles with syrup.
Here you may be asking yourself: "But what if I understand the four causes of a particular choice and still choose to make a poor decision?" In my estimation this is impossible for (at least) two reasons:
- The Socratic perspective on evil or wrong choices: that a person will only choose to act in ways they believe to be the good or correct ways to act. Evil or wrong acts (choices) are the result of false impressions about what is right or good.
- The poor or superior nature of a choice can only be determined once its effects expire. The Four Causes of Choice do not determine whether a choice is a good or bad choice, or a right or wrong choice. Instead, the Four Causes of Choice help us to determine whether the choices we're making are being made well or poorly (I'll add color to this shortly).
A less simple example: buying land in the Philippines
My partner and I recently visited the Philippines to get married (she's Filipino and we wanted her family to easily attend). While there, we were prompted to think about the future when we were presented with the Polychotomatic Cause – which was: do we want to buy land and build a house in the Philippines?
Buying land in the Philippines wasn't something we'd considered before traveling to the country to wed, but it was something we came to consider during our stay. We spent some time investigating the ins and outs of land and home ownership in the Philippines, and speaking to a trusted real estate agent.
The Polychotomatic Cause presented itself to us at the busiest and most complicated time of our lives (so far 😅 ). We weren't just becoming newlyweds, we also discovered a few weeks prior that our first child would be born in April 2024! Newlyweds becoming new parents. There are also four additional goings on in the background (which I won't go into here), but any decision we would make concerning land in the Philippines (for future living and family building) would have to be thought through very carefully.
So what did we decide?
You'll find out in a moment, but first...
You'll notice that using the Four Causes of Choice as a framework for how to make choices better, requires you to consider the past, present, and future (at the same time) in your thinking. The past gives us clues as to our personal competencies, the present provides space for the polychotomy itself, and the future provides something like a canvas for the outcomes we are motivated by.
To make decisions well, we cannot live solely in the past (allowing it to define our future), the present (ignoring our past experiences and giving no thought to the consequences of our decisions), or the future (with our head in the clouds perpetually dreaming, or buried in our hands perpetually fearful of not-knowing). Instead, we must draw from all states of time (past, present, future) in order to make informed choices in the present.
There is no such thing as living in the now and, if there were, anyone living there would be a hapless fool – or worse, a hedonistic nihilist.
What of choices you're forced, or otherwise don't want to make?
Are there choices foisted upon us in our lives that don't afford us the ability to choose well? I don't believe so. Choosing well has nothing to do with choosing preferentially. Returning briefly to the breakfast example: I may want to choose to eat Eggs Benedict at the swanky new restaurant down the street – this may be my preference – but if my financial situation limits my ability to choose this option, such that making this choice would find me unable to pay my rent, then I must choose from the other options available to me. However, I can still choose well from these available options.
But what of the choice between evils? Perhaps we don't like any of the candidates running for President, but feel strongly that we must vote for one of them. How do we make a "lesser of evils" sort of choice well?
Again, choosing well is not about choosing correctly, it's about using the information you have at hand (and the predictions about the future you feel comfortable making) to choose well whenever you're in a position to choose at all. So, when facing a "lesser of evils" type choice, you must reason for yourself how to choose well between them.
In the end, we chose to buy. But why?
We already had our polychotomy, so we had to next understand our motivations.
Our first motivation was that we have a child on the way, and Ross's entire family (with the exception of her sister) lives in the Philippines. We want our baby to be easily close to its Filipino roots and its family here.
Our second was the life we wanted to provide our child as its mother and father. An NHS nurse and a podcaster/writer (our respective careers) make incomes that allow them to live in the US or the UK as single people, or as married people, but these are not lucrative careers. However, if Ross and I earn in stronger currencies (to the Philippine Peso) we can stretch our money further in a less robust economy.
Our third was the icing on top. A custom house with a view of a mountain, built in a tropical paradise and central to business and educational institutions. Also, it matters that this land is in a steeply appreciating area which would allow us to leave our kids with something to start their own adult lives with in due time. These weren't the primary motivations, but they are solid ones.
Next we considered our competencies. We considered what each of us were capable of, and what the environment (economic, personal, etc) was going to allow us to do. In order to do this we'd have to come up with a fairly significant upfront downpayment. Then we'd have to take on, essentially, a second rent payment for two years to pay the land off. Then, finally, we'd have to take out a considerable loan in an unknown future economy to contract builders and architects in the construction of our first family home.
Could we come up with that money? Could we make our monthly payments on the land for two years while living and paying bills in the US and the UK? Could we continue to do that once our child was born? Are we capable of navigating this challenging of a road for the sake of our desired outcomes?
We believed so – and we still do.
Lastly, the commitment. We committed to a choice and we chose, just about a week ago as of the publishing of this essay.
We won't know if this was right decision for many many years, but we can say that with the information presently available to us, and our intimate understanding of the causes which created our choice, that this choice was made well.
A word on dealing with decision anxiety
Even when approaching decisions the way I've outlined above, it's still scary and stressful to make big choices. If you think Ross and I committed to the choice we made with no worries about what might go wrong – or how we might fail in our aims entirely – you have severely overestimated the steeliness of our nerves!
We may have made our choice as well as we could at the time, but carefully laid plans do not eliminate risk.
If you're struggling to make a choice in your own life, or if you've made one recently and you're feeling particularly stressed out about it, I'd like to end this essay by challenging you to think about choices differently (in general):
We often worry about whether our decision is going to be "the right" decision, but this is impossible to know until we're on our death bed.
Our (Ross and I) choice to buy land and live in the Philippines might seem wrong in six months time when my podcast goes belly up and I have to find a new job and we get to within a hair's breadth of defaulting on our land payments. But a month from then, it could seem right again because I find a great job, am happier than ever, and am enabled to pay for the land outright much sooner than expected. But three years from then it could seem wrong again because I lose my leg in a car accident on my way to make my annual property tax payment. But then, on the day of my death, moments before I kick the bucket, it might again become right because I determine, in those final moments, that I'm happy and content in the life I've lived and wouldn't anything about it.
So, then, assessing the absolutely value of any decision before we make it is absolutely impossible unless we're talking about math problems or a trivia questions (or things like these – things which have definite answers). The future contains no answers or outcomes until it becomes the past, but it can't become the past until it's already over. To refuse to choose until you discover the one truly "correct" choice is to not understand this fact. You cannot knowingly make the correct or incorrect choice ever, you can only ever make a choice well or poorly in the moment – then, only time will tell.
Keep this in mind when considering my Four Causes of Choice in the making of your next big (or small) choice.
