Is Refusing to Choose Still a Choice?

A committee is voting on a proposal whose rules preserve the status quo when the vote is tied. One member understands the rule and has enough information, but says, “I don’t want to choose,” and abstains. Formally, the member has voted neither yes nor no. In practice, the abstention increases the chance that the default will prevail. Declining to choose does not remove the person from the causal or normative structure.

Sartre’s existentialism stresses that a person cannot escape freedom simply by refusing to decide: within a situation, not acting can still contribute to who one becomes. Yet it would go too far to turn this into the claim that every omission is an active choice. Someone unconscious, coerced, or unaware that a decision exists has not chosen the outcome in the same way. Contemporary debates about acts and omissions likewise show that the absence of bodily movement does not eliminate responsibility, but responsibility still depends on capacity, knowledge, role and alternatives.

My view is that refusing to decide approximates a choice when the person knows the default, has a genuine capacity to decide, and occupies a role that calls for an answer. Abstention may express caution or protest, but it cannot automatically claim neutrality. Conversely, delaying a decision can be responsible when the available options are inadequately understood. What matters is not whether a box was ticked, but whether the person understood and accepted which result would remain in force.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/