Few questions feel more practically urgent than this one. It appears in ethical reflection, legal reasoning, personal identity, and everyday self-assessment: did I really choose that, or was it determined by prior causes? Am I genuinely free, or is freedom an illusion produced by deeper processes?
The question feels like it must be answered one way or another: either we are in control, or we are not.
But this framing depends on a structural collapse of distinct explanatory strata into a single undifferentiated causal space.
Once that is exposed, the question no longer divides reality correctly.
1. The surface form of the question
“Are we in control of our choices?”
In its everyday form, this asks:
- whether human decision-making is genuinely autonomous
- whether choices are determined by prior physical or psychological causes
- whether freedom is real or merely apparent
It presupposes a binary:
- free will vs determinism
And it treats these as competing explanations of the same phenomenon.
2. Hidden ontological commitments
For the question to function, several assumptions must already be in place:
- that “choices” are discrete events that can be isolated as objects of explanation
- that causation operates uniformly across all levels of description
- that freedom and causation belong to the same explanatory stratum
- that agency is either fully present or fully absent in a given system
- that “control” refers to a single, globally applicable property
These assumptions flatten multiple relational layers into one causal plane.
3. Stratal misalignment
Within a relational ontology, the key distortion is de-stratification.
The question collapses at least three distinct strata:
(a) Physical constraints
Systemic conditions under which any instantiation occurs.
(b) Instantiation (event level)
Actualised actions within constrained systems.
(c) Individuation (participation level)
The distribution of semiotic and behavioural potential across a person’s history of participation.
The question “Are we in control of our choices?” treats all three as if they were competing descriptions of a single level.
This produces a category error:
causation is applied as if it must explain what agency is, rather than operating as one layer within which agency is realised.
4. Relational re-description
If we remain within relational ontology, “choice” is not a metaphysically isolated event. It is:
- an instantiation within constrained systems
- shaped by prior patterns of individuation (history of participation)
- realised through semiotic and material constraints interacting at multiple strata
Agency, in this framework, is not defined by exemption from causation. It is defined by:
- the organisation of constraints such that alternative trajectories are structurally available
- the capacity for variation within bounded systems
- the stabilisation of decision-patterns across instances
Freedom, then, is not an absolute property. It is a relational degree of constrained variability within instantiated systems.
5. Dissolution of the problem-space
Once stratal collapse is removed, the question “Are we in control of our choices?” loses its binary structure.
It depends on:
- treating all causation as a single explanatory layer
- equating freedom with absence of constraint
- collapsing individuation, instantiation, and physical constraint into one plane
- requiring a yes/no global property of “control”
If these assumptions are withdrawn, the question no longer divides neatly.
What remains is not a verdict on freedom, but a re-description:
- agency is distributed
- constrained
- and stratified across systems of realisation
The question does not resolve into yes or no.
It dissolves into structure.
6. Residual attraction
The persistence of the question comes from several reinforcing habits:
- moral responsibility frameworks require binary attribution
- causal explanation is often treated as globally uniform
- introspective experience feels like unified authorship
- cultural narratives privilege “control” as a singular property
Most importantly, it feels like there must be a single answer because the experience of deciding feels unified.
But unity of experience is not evidence of unity of explanation.
It is an effect of integration across strata, not a single causal level.
Closing remark
“Are we in control of our choices?” appears to ask whether freedom exists.
Once that collapse is undone, the question stops functioning as a binary.
What remains is a structured field in which agency is not absent—but distributed, constrained, and differentially actualised across relational strata.
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