Topic summary
Arbitrary
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Arbitrariness.
Philosophy
Arbitrary actions are closely related to teleology, the study of purpose. Actions lacking a telos, a goal, are necessarily arbitrary. With no end to measure against, there can be no standard applied to choices, so all decisions are alike. Note that arbitrary or random methods in the standard sense of arbitrary may not qualify as arbitrary choices philosophically if they were done in furtherance of a larger purpose (such as the examples above for the purposes of establishing discipline in school and avoiding overcrowding at gas stations).