A matter of choice

From the most common to the most significant, our lives are interwoven with choices. Why do we make them? Are they really rational? Is the freedom to choose a biological necessity? Are we really free to decide?

According to some studies, we make several thousand decisions every day. Some are quite trivial: what to wear in the morning, where to eat lunch or what to read next. Others, on the other hand, will have a significant impact on our lives: what profession to choose, whether to live as a couple or remain single, whether to start a family…. These decisions, for which quick action is not necessarily required, will weigh heavily on our future lives, and it is also through these extraordinary choices that we will be able to exercise our freedom.

Choosing freely and rationally? According to neuroscience, our brains are constantly manipulated by all kinds of biases. Sociology teaches us that our values and life goals are conditioned by our culture and social environment. Psychology explains how our personal history, with its wounds and successes, influences our judgement. Finally, philosophy and literature remind us that our human condition, with its complexity and fears, limits our capacity for reflection.

So, faced with the complexity of crucial choices and the impossibility of always making logical decisions, what can we turn to? Reason, chance, intuition? Would the latter enable us to find a more appropriate and rapid answer than the logical analysis of a mass of data?

Interested in this subject? Immerse yourself in these fascinating works… and make your choice from our selection to be discovered from November 1 to 27 at the entrance to the Agora on the Riponne site.