Buridan’s donkey and determinism
I heard you introduce Buridan’s donkey question in a lecture on determinism.
The question places a person in the place of a donkey and asks, if a person were equidistant from food, would he die of hunger?
I wanted to add that for the situation to exist under perfect conditions, we need to assume not only that the person is equidistant from the food, but that his entire life has existed without any difference between left and right (for example, a person who as a child was told that it was always better to go right can choose the right side even at an equal distance, and this would be the deterministic rational choice for him).
If so, we need to imagine the situation in which a person experiences a completely symmetrical life, for food his entire life, both externally and internally. This means that his brain behavior is also completely symmetrical (he is not right-handed or left-handed) and that throughout his entire life, all of his experiences were equal and symmetrical. This means a reality and a world in which the laws of nature are also always symmetrical, and everything a person experiences is symmetrical.
This is a fictional reality for Holtin that is even difficult to imagine, but only in such a reality can the thought experiment be carried out.
In such a situation, it is no longer so difficult to imagine that the person might not be able to choose a side and die of hunger, and perhaps he might not even be able to move his legs, because any movement would be a first-of-its-kind symmetry breaking in a world with symmetrical laws.
Discover more from הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Discover more from הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Leave a Reply
Please login or Register to submit your answer