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The intuition for the existence of choice

שו”תCategory: philosophyThe intuition for the existence of choice
asked 5 years ago

One of the rabbis’ arguments for the existence of choice is the personal intuition that we have that we have the right to choose,
And since animals have the same intuition [they get angry and kick and want and run, etc.], and since our intuition tells us that they are wrong [as the rabbi wrote in his book that Buridan’s donkey would really starve to death if the physical conditions were met], and since we are supposedly an evolutionary continuation of those animals, there is no reason to say that we are different from them, especially in something so fundamental?!


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0 Answers
מיכי Staff answered 5 years ago
I have never been an animal. When I am and experience it, I will form my opinion.

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נור replied 5 years ago

I don't understand.
Animals act as if they are sure that there is a choice. This is proven by their actions and by the fact that they get angry when another animal does something against them.

נתמי replied 5 years ago

In my opinion, the fact that animals seem to act according to choice (angry, loving, etc.) does not mean that they really have intuition that they choose. It just means that they are complicated in a way that seems unlikely to us for input and output, but this is an incorrect assumption, since even such branched and complicated responses can be input and output that is only complicated.
The argument is that we feel our ability to choose (and we do not feel that of animals) and therefore a person should not give up his intuition until proven otherwise.
The idea is that animals do not act as having choice but only as a complex output and input. The only difference between them and us is that we feel that we do not input and output and they do not necessarily feel that way.

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