For example, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War (c. 404 bce) contains marvelous renditions of speeches in which the leaders of different states attempt to persuade their listeners to follow a given course of action.
Even the most upstanding of chief executives is sometimes tempted by policies whose legality is murky; he wants to ask advisers whether a given course of action would survive a court challenge.
When people have no idea of the consequences of a given course of action or inaction, they don't know which way to turn — or they turn both ways.
Humans also have a complicated ethical system that is able to not only weigh the good against the bad, but is also able to make judgments about the degree of benefit of a given course of action.
This is the view that for one to freely choose to undertake a given course of action — say, to throw out the trash — one must have freely chosen the determinants that lead one to undertake that course of action, including one's antecedent desires and one's character (in this case, perhaps a desire for a filth-free home, among others).
If you trust your provider (a clinical, but hopefully all-encompassing word), then you can know that an emergency really is an emergency, that a treatment is the best, or at least one of the best, options, and that a given course of action was chosen with your needs in mind and not based on a fear of lawsuits, a lack of training or some other incentive.
But Chan freedom is not identified with the exercise of control or choice; neither is it rooted in rational determinations of whether a given course of action is good or will have good results.
