{"id":15031,"date":"2021-10-10T22:27:43","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T02:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=15031"},"modified":"2021-10-11T07:13:54","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T11:13:54","slug":"buridans-donkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=15031","title":{"rendered":"Buridan\u2019s Donkey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"commentary\">Free will is not what you suppose.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Should two courses be judged equal, then the will cannot break the deadlock, all it can do is to suspend judgement until the circumstances change, and the right course of action is clear. ~\u2009<em>Jean Buridan, c. 1340<\/em>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Buridan\u2019s claim led to the development of a thought experiment that goes by the name <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Buridan%27s_ass\">\u201cBuridan\u2019s Ass\u201d<\/a>. However, that word has an ambiguous meaning in American English so I decided to rename the experiment to \u201cBuridan\u2019s Donkey\u201d. For non-native speakers, if you take your son to the petting zoo, you wouldn\u2019t say to him, \u201cLook at that nice ass over there!\u201d You should say instead, \u201cLook at that cute donkey over there!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The simplest version is to suppose you place two bales of hay equidistant from a hungry donkey. Since he would have no rational basis to choose between the two bales, he would starve to death. Philosophically, this story attempts to convert the metaphysical question of free will into a science experiment. If the experiment were actually carried out, the donkey would not starve. Hence one of the premises must be false, to wit:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The donkey does not have free will<\/li>\n<li>The donkey is not rational<\/li>\n<li>The two options are unequal<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The donkey is not rational so he does not have free will. Let\u2019s look at al-Ghazali\u2019s version which I can relate to:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nSuppose two similar dates in front of a man, who has a strong desire for them but who is unable to take them both. Surely he will take one of them, through a quality in him, the nature of which is to differentiate between two similar things.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I do have a bag of Turkish dates. Whenever I desire one, I stick my hand in the bag and pull one out at random. What I should do is put two of them each equidistant from me and let you know what happens; maybe I can even record it and put it on Tik Tok. Al-Ghazali says something much more intelligent. He assumes I will take one of them through a \u201cquality\u201d that can choose the correct date. So let\u2019s investigate that quality.<\/p>\n<h2>The Intellectual Soul<\/h2>\n<p>A donkey only has an animal soul, so it is incapable of making a rational judgment. It does not deliberate options and then make a choice, which is a gnomic will. Rather it acts by instinct, which is its \u201cquality\u201d that \u201cchooses\u201d the correct bale of hay.<\/p>\n<p>A human being has an intellectual soul as well as an animal soul. In a well-ordered person, the animal soul is subservient to the intellectual soul. A being with intellect needs to be free because:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The intellect chooses the true rather than the false<\/li>\n<li>The intellect chooses the good rather than the bad<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can see, then, that if the intellect cannot choose between the true and the false, there is no possibility of knowledge. The most important thing to know is what is the good. It would be pointless to know the good, but to be unable to act on it.<\/p>\n<h2>Physical Causation<\/h2>\n<p>The most primitive objection to free will is to assume that the brain works entirely through physical causes and executes \u201calgorithms\u201d. The corollary is that the mind is merely a passive observer of those processes and can do nothing to change them. That is a horrifying thought if you understand it and try to live by it.<\/p>\n<p>While it purports to be \u201cscientific\u201d, there is no science behind it at the moment. There is no testable theory. More critically, there is no scientific measurement to determine if a subject is conscious or not. Nor is there an independent way to determine if an idea is true or good.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, who is executing the program?<\/p>\n<h2>Free Choice<\/h2>\n<p>A free choice is one made by the conscious subject or person. The free person knows the good and acts on it. That is our real and true nature. Freedom, therefore, is to act in accordance with our true nature.<\/p>\n<p>Choosing the bad, therefore, cannot be free because the choice is based on ignorance or on weakness that yields to the inclinations of the animal soul.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.pinimg.com\/originals\/fa\/72\/a9\/fa72a9cd02c44120adac5bb9defecf9f.gif\" \/><br \/>\n<em>So you can be a person or a donkey, like Pinocchio.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>How to tame your inner donkey.<br \/>\n[youtube &#8220;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EDK9KOfknTw&#8221;]<br \/>\nHow to make up your mind.<br \/>\n[youtube &#8220;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=C0cJ__JBnWg&#8221;]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A free choice is one made by the conscious subject or person. The free person knows the good and acts on it. That is our real and true nature. Freedom, therefore, is to act in accordance with our true nature. <span class=\"continue-reading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=15031\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15031"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15040,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15031\/revisions\/15040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}