Buridan's donkey, what is it, Buridan's donkey, a donkey between haystacks, a donkey between two lawns, paradox Buridan's donkey, all about Buridan's donkey

This is a donkey that is dying of hunger, being between two identical armfuls of hay, because it cannot prefer one of them.

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The essence of the experiment / paradox

Buridan's donkey is a paradox of absolute determinism in the doctrine of will, named after Jean Buridan. According to this 14th-century French scholastic philosopher, man acts according to what his reason judges. If the mind decides that the good presented to it is a perfect and comprehensive good, then the will rushes towards it. It follows from this that if the mind recognizes one good as the highest and another as the lowest, then the will, other things being equal, will rush to the highest. When the mind recognizes both goods as equivalent, then the will cannot act at all.

To illustrate his teaching, Buridan gave the example of a donkey standing between two equally attractive bundles of hay, but unable to choose one of them. These reflections were not preserved in the works of the philosopher known to us, so it is not known for sure whether this is true or fiction. According to Wikipedia [link], this paradox is known from the works of Aristotle, who posed the question: how can a donkey, given two equally tempting treats, still rationally make a choice? Buridan himself touched upon similar topic, advocating the position of moral determinism—that a person, when faced with a choice, should choose to greater good. Buridan admitted that choice could be slowed down by evaluating the results of each choice. His point of view was later exaggerated by other writers, arguing that a donkey, choosing between two equally accessible and good haystacks, would certainly die of hunger. Leibniz popularized this version.

Marginalized

• The ancient Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (384-322 BC) in his essay “On Heaven” spoke about a man who, despite hunger and thirst, being at the same distance from food and water, continues to remain in the same place, not daring to extend a hand to either one [link] .

Interpretations No donkeys were harmed
According to rumors, giving the example of a donkey, Buridan asked listeners: “However, where have you seen donkeys die in such situations?” If they could not make a choice, then, probably, all of Asia would be littered with donkey corpses. Donkeys walk quite calmly across Asia between armfuls of hay or between two identical meadows and chew both with appetite. From this we can conclude that the behavior of an animal, and even more so a person, is not determined by external circumstances, and since philosophical donkeys do not die, it means that free will exists [link]. The conclusion above is very comforting, however, given that Buridan was a religious philosopher, the author considers it important next nuance: the paradox shows the powerlessness of reason, since free will decides everything on the basis of faith. If we have two solutions, and they are absolutely identical, then the mind comes to a contradiction and cannot offer a rational way out of it. To still make a choice, you need faith [link].

• In the typology of conflicts, the position of Buridan’s donkey is called an “appetitive-appetent” conflict [link].

Image in culture

• There is a proverb in Latin: “Asinus Buridani inter duo prata” - “Buridani’s donkey between two lawns.”
• Expression " Buridan's donkey"has become a phraseological unit. This is an ironic name for an indecisive person who hesitates in choosing between two equal desires.
• On the website of Alexander Shcherbina, a Moscow singer-songwriter, you can find a song by the vagants named after Buridan’s donkey [link].
• The name "Buridan's Donkey" is given to one of the Tarot card layouts [link].
• Story of the same name, dedicated quite current problem elections, the Italian writer Eugenio Montale has [link].
• The same name is given to the novel by Gunter de Bruyn, where the protagonist, entangled in a love affair, finds himself in the position of Buridan’s ass.
• IN " Divine Comedy"Dante Alighieri, who needs no introduction, writes (by the way, even before Buridan):
  

  Between two equally enticing dishes, free
  In their choice, I wouldn’t bring it to my teeth
  Not a single one and would have died hungry...

  So the lamb would hesitate between two threats
  Voracious wolves, equally feared;
  This is how a dog would hesitate between two deer.

  And the fact that I was silent, equally languid
  Doubts, considered neither good nor evil
  It is impossible, since this path is necessary.

• In Henry Lyon Oldie's "Heroes' Home" there is an allusion to a donkey:

  At the fork - here Vysokoparnaya, like the sting of a snake, forked into Pipinov Boulevard and Degtyarnikov Street - the hinny stopped in indecision. He danced on the spot, looking like the legendary dragon Berrida Scalewing, who was unable to choose between two princesses and died twice: from hunger and longing for family life.

• Blogger Alenson compares Buridan's donkey paradox with Weierstrass's theorem in mathematics:

  If continuous function at one point it is positive (= the donkey wants to go left), and at the other it is negative (= the donkey wants to go to the right), then somewhere between them there is a point where the function is equal to zero (= the donkey does not want to go anywhere, prepare a funeral).

What is the meaning of the phraseological unit "Buridan's donkey"? Perhaps not so often in modern communication you can hear such a phrase, but it is quite well-known, and even in 1968 German writer Gunter de Bruin wrote the novel Buridan's Donkey. First we will look at the history of this expression, and then we will look at what "Buridan's donkey" means today.

So, first of all, let’s define the phraseological unit “Buridan’s donkey” - this is a paradox in philosophy, which received its name from the name of such a French philosopher and logician as Jean Buridan. Although it must be said that Aristotle also raised this topic. Then the question was formulated something like this: if a donkey is given two treats, each of which is tempting for the donkey, will he be able to make a rational choice?

Speaking about the meaning of "Buridan's Donkey", it is important to note that Jean Buridan himself did not cover the issue in his writings, introducing the donkey, but he touched on a similar topic. Buridan's position can be described as moral determinism, that is: when a person has to choose, he should do it, leaning towards the greater good. True, the philosopher suggested that sometimes the choice is slowed down because a person must first evaluate the results.

If you are also trying to understand the meaning of the phraseological unit "Buridan's donkey", then pay attention to its translation from Latin language- "Buridan's donkey between two lawns." After some time, other literary figures somewhat modified this concept, citing the example of a donkey and two good haystacks, which are equally accessible from the donkey. They argued that the donkey was doomed to starve in this situation because it would not be able to make a decision. This view was very firmly held by Leibniz, a Saxon philosopher and mathematician. He also made efforts to disseminate this version of the phraseology "Buridan's donkey."

Task logic

Speaking in more detail about the logic of the problem, it is worth drawing the following conclusion: a donkey that thinks rationally will not die at all starvation, however, it is impossible to say with certainty which haystack he will choose. After all, if the donkey refuses to eat, that will also be a choice. It turns out that he has three options: a haystack on the left, a haystack on the right, and death by starvation. Since the worst of these options is the third, the donkey's choice will never fall on it.

What does the expression "Buridan's donkey" mean today?

Having considered the history of this phraseological unit, it becomes clear that the expression “Buridan’s donkey” is usually applied to a very indecisive person who does not know what choice to make and hesitates. Especially if we're talking about about making two equivalent decisions.

Let's summarize: when we call a person this way, we refer to the philosopher Buridan, who proved that living beings make decisions not of their own free will, but due to external reasons.

In order to achieve ideal purity of the experiment, it is better to conduct it purely theoretically.
Yuri Tatarkin

The concept of a thought experiment was introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach. He meant, first of all, preliminary playback in the imagination real experiment. Mach believed that with the help of fantasy it is possible to introduce any experimental conditions, even completely absurd ones, and this makes it possible to consider all possible results.

The history of science is full of exotic thought experiments, which not only changed the generally accepted view of the world, but also gave rise to debates that lasted for decades. We will tell you about the ten most famous ones. Be careful - some of them can drive you crazy!

Ancient philosophers loved to come up with paradoxical propositions, but few could compare in this with the Greek Zeno of Elea, who lived in the 5th century BC. e. His aporias (that is, “difficulties”) were not preserved in original form and are known in the retellings of Plato and Aristotle. Zeno formulated at least forty aporia, but only nine reached interpreters.

Zeno's most famous aporia is the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. It owes its origin to a fable by the ancient Greek poet Aesop. It tells how the tortoise bet with the hare that he could outrun him in a fair race, and was able to do so. She took advantage of the carelessness of her opponent, who decided to take a break, confident that he would have time to come running first. Zeno replaced the hare with the fleet-footed hero Achilles, glorified in the Iliad.

Imagine that the tortoise and Achilles decided to compete in a race. Achilles is ten times faster than the tortoise and gives it a head start of a thousand steps. During the time it takes Achilles to run this distance, the tortoise will crawl a hundred steps in the same direction. When Achilles runs a hundred steps, the tortoise crawls another ten, and so on. The chase will be endless, Achilles will never catch up with the turtle. Therefore, any movement is an illusion.

Aporia is puzzling, because from the standpoint formal logic it looks flawless, but in practice, as experience suggests, any runner will easily outrun a turtle. Greek philosophers seriously puzzled over this paradox. It was also reflected in literature: Lewis Carroll, Leo Tolstoy and Jorge Luis Borges wrote about the Achilles fiasco.

Of course, Zeno's statement that Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise is false. Each subsequent “breakaway” of the turtle is shorter than the previous one, and Achilles will need only one thousand one hundred and twelve steps to get ahead. The paradox arose because Zeno and his followers did not understand the physical and mathematical meaning of the problem.

Monument to swift-footed Achilles in Corfu

Buridan's donkey turned into a humorous image

Buridan's imaginary donkey, as we know, found himself between two identical armfuls of hay and died of hunger, unable to choose between them. Oddly enough, this donkey was not invented at all French philosopher XIV century Jean Buridan. The oldest mention of this problem is found in Aristotle. He jokingly described a fictitious situation in which a man dying of thirst and hunger could not choose between water and food.

The idea proved fruitful, and later philosophers used the same image to illustrate resultant forces. In 1100, the Persian scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali took Aristotle's dilemma seriously and stated that a person will choose between similar things in favor of the one that suits him best. this moment. Buridan added that in a situation where rational choice is impossible, a person will turn to moral principles and will follow the path of greater good.

The donkey appeared thanks to the Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza. He argued that if a person, who finds himself in a situation of choice between identical possibilities, like “Buridan’s donkey,” fails to make a choice, then he can hardly be considered a person.

The mathematician Gottfried Leibniz complicated the problem of choice by describing a donkey between identical bundles of hay. He believed that such an experiment could not be implemented in practice, since there is no perfect symmetry in the Universe - one mop will always be preferable to another, even if we do not notice this advantage.

Modern philosophers believe that Buridan's ass problem is easily solved if we accept that refusing to choose between two armfuls of hay is also a choice. The donkey chooses not between hay and hay, but between life and death, therefore the choice is predetermined at the level of instinct: the donkey will choose life.

Galileo's experiment

Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei needed a thought experiment with falling objects to show the fallacy of the misconception that the heavier the body, the faster it will fall to the ground. According to legend, in 1589 Galileo climbed the famous “leaning” tower in Pisa and dropped two balls of different masses from it, which reached the ground simultaneously, confirming the scientist’s revolutionary hypothesis. In fact, he did not climb anywhere, but relied on purely speculative considerations, which he outlined in the treatise “On Movement” (1590).

Imagine two objects, one of which is heavier than the other. Let them tie them together with a rope and throw this bunch off the tower. If heavy objects fall faster than light ones, then the light object should slow down the fall of the heavy one. But since the system in question as a whole is heavier than one heavy object, it should fall faster than it. We come to a contradiction, which means that the original assumption (heavy objects fall faster than light ones) is incorrect.

Our consciousness resists the idea that a hammer and a pen, if dropped from the same height, will fall at the same time. In the world we know, the atmosphere will slow down the pen and the hammer will fall faster. But what if you place them in an airless environment? The astronauts of the Apollo 15 mission did this in 1971: in front of millions of television viewers, Dave Scott threw a geological hammer and a falcon feather on the Moon. Everyone was able to see that Galileo was right.

Feather and hammer on the surface of the moon

The thought experiment with a space gun was invented by the great English physicist Isaac Newton.

Imagine the highest mountain, the peak of which extends beyond the atmosphere. At its very top there is a cannon that fires horizontally. The more powerful the charge used when firing, the farther the cannonball will fly from the mountain. When a certain charge power is reached, the core will develop such a speed that it will enter orbit. The force of attraction for him will be balanced by the centrifugal force.

In the same work, Newton calculated the value of the first escape velocity required to enter orbit, which for our planet is 7.91 km/s.

Newton's idea was in demand in the 19th century, when the foundations of the theory of astronautics were laid. It is the cannon that is used for space flight by the characters in Jules Verne’s novel “From the Earth to the Moon,” which influenced the pioneers of rocket science, including Tsiolkovsky. Subsequently, the idea was played upon by such writers as Georges Le Fort and Henri de Graffiny, Jerzy Zulawski and Andrei Platonov. And Gregory Keyes has an alternative history novel, Newton's Gun (1998).

Paradox of duplicates

The thought experiment, later called the "paradox of duplicates" or the "paradox of teleportation", was first "performed" in 1775, when the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid wrote to Lord Kames:

“I would be glad to know your Excellency’s opinion regarding the following: when my brain will lose its original structure and when, hundreds of years later, from similar material will be created in an amazing way sentient being, can I consider him to be me? Or if two or three similar beings are created from my brain, can I believe that they are me and, therefore, the same intelligent being?

Reed's question leads to a serious problem of personal identity that has been addressed by philosophers many times. For example, Stanislaw Lem in Dialogues (1957) comprehensively examines the “paradox of duplicates” and comes to the conclusion that it cannot be resolved until we know what the soul is and what physical processes it reduces to.

In 1984, the English philosopher Derek Parfit modified the “paradox of duplicates” by describing a teleporter that breaks a person into atoms and transmits information about these atoms to Mars, where it recreates a copy from local resources. Parfit wondered: could such a teleport be considered a means of transportation and would a person on Mars be the same person who split into atoms on Earth?

The task can be complicated. Let's say the teleport was improved and it stopped destroying the original, but learned to create an infinite number of copies of a person. Can they be considered full-fledged people? Parfit came to the conclusion that philosophy does not offer a single satisfactory criterion for distinguishing a copy from an original, which means that duplicates should be considered equally valid. It follows from this that the law must take into account the rights of “future personalities” of citizens.

In science fiction, the “duplicate paradox” is especially popular. Recent examples include the films The Sixth Day (2000), The Island (2005) and The Prestige (2006)

Twin paradox

Twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly

Imagine two twins, one of whom went on an interstellar journey on a ship flying at near-light speed. The other remained on Earth and grew old faster than his brother. This thought experiment wonderfully illustrates the effects described in Einstein's theory of special relativity. But it follows from the twin paradox, which formulated French physicist Paul Langevin in 1911.

According to the special theory of relativity, the processes of moving objects slow down, that is, the twin, returning from a trip, will be younger than his brother. For example, a flight to Alpha Centauri and back with an acceleration of 1 g in the earth’s reference frame will take 12 years, and according to the ship’s clock it will take 7.3 years. On the other hand, the theory declares the equality of inertial reference systems. That is, the Earth relative to the spaceship is also moving with increasing speed. Consequently, time should slow down there too. This is where a contradiction arises that needs to be explained.

Gennady Golobokov’s painting “Time Paradox” illustrates the “twin effect”

Eventually explanations were found. True, to briefly outline them, a separate article is needed. But it is much more important that the effect of time dilation for a fast-moving object has been experimentally recorded in particles in accelerators and in atomic clocks on GPS satellites, the readings of which must be corrected. If the effect of time dilation were not taken into account when using these satellites, then the coordinates calculated from GPS would be incorrect after just two minutes, and the error would accumulate at a rate of 10 km per day! The effect and its consequences have often been described in science fiction - from Ivan Efremov's Andromeda Nebula (1957) to the recent Interstellar (2014).

Murder of Grandfather

This thought experiment of traveling back in time was originally called the "Professor's Paradox." It was first formulated by the British science fiction writer Fowler Wright in his novel The World Below (1929) through the mouth of his character, a professor:

Any changes in the past are obviously impossible; everything happens irrevocably. Otherwise there would be no finality and there would be unbearable confusion... For example, knowing that a murder has occurred, I can go there and intervene to save the victim. In this case, the murder seemed to have occurred, but was also prevented, which is absurd.

Two years later, the story "Time Flight" by the American Robert H. Wilson appeared, in which a murder in the past is not abstract, but is connected with the time traveler's grandparents. In 1933, the stereotype was reinforced by Nat Schachner in the story “Voices of the Ancestors.”

The “murdered grandfather paradox” in modern philosophy has an analogue called “auto-infanticide”: flying into the past with the goal of killing oneself. It is often used as evidence that time travel is impossible because it violates cause and effect. For example, the American philosopher Bradley Dowden in his book Logical Reasoning (1993) stated:

No one will ever create a machine that can send a person back in time. No one should seriously try to build it, because there is a reliable argument why the machine cannot be built.<…>Suppose you have a time machine, you enter it and are transported back in time. Your actions may prevent your grandparents from meeting. This would lead to the fact that you would not have been born and would not be able to go back in time in a time machine. Thus, the claim that a time machine can be built is internally contradictory.

But perhaps the events of the past already include an invasion by an alien from the future. Circumstances simply prevented him from killing or quarreling his ancestors. This point of view is shared by cosmologist Igor Novikov, who introduced the “principle of self-consistency” in 1983. According to it, when moving into the past, the probability of an action changing an event that has already happened tends to zero. The principle is well demonstrated in the film 12 Monkeys (1995), in the stories of Ted Chan, and even in one of the Harry Potter films.

Shroedinger `s cat

The thought experiment with a cat (more precisely, a cat) was invented by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger to demonstrate the incompleteness of quantum mechanics in the transition from subatomic to macroscopic systems. He described the experiment in the article "Current Situation in Quantum Mechanics" (1935):

A certain cat is locked in a steel chamber along with an infernal machine: inside a Geiger counter there is a tiny amount of radioactive substance, so small that only one atom can decay within an hour, but with the same probability it may not; if this happens, the reading tube is discharged and the relay is activated, releasing the hammer, which breaks the flask with hydrocyanic acid. If we leave this entire system to itself for an hour, then we can say that the cat will be alive after this time, as long as the disintegration of the atom does not occur. The first atomic decay would poison the cat. The psi-function of the system as a whole will express this by mixing or smearing a living and a dead cat (pardon the expression) in equal parts. What is typical in such cases is that uncertainty originally limited to the atomic world is transformed into macroscopic uncertainty, which can be eliminated by direct observation.

According to quantum mechanics, if a nucleus is not observed, its state is described by a superposition (mixing) of two states - a decayed and non-decayed nucleus. This means that the cat in the box is dead and alive at the same time. If the box is opened, the experimenter will see a specific state: “the nucleus has decayed, the cat is dead” or “the nucleus has not decayed, the cat is alive.”

Erwin Schrödinger made many discoveries, but went down in history as the “cat torturer”

In 1957, American Hugh Everett put forward a theory that the moment the box was opened, the Universe would split into two: with a dead cat and a living cat. Since we ourselves are in ordinary life Every second we make a choice (down to which foot to stand on today), every moment the Universe branches into an infinite number of parallel ones. At first, the scientific community rejected Everett's theory, but later he gained followers, and "Everettism" arose - a worldview according to which the Universe is a set of realizations of all conceivable worlds. The idea turned out to be in demand among science fiction writers: an article would not be enough to list all the books and films where it is played out.

Schrödinger's cat (or cat) has long been

Monkeys and Hamlet

The infinite monkey theorem states that a billion monkeys, randomly tapping the keys of typewriters, will sooner or later type any text - even Hamlet or War and Peace.

The origin of the theorem should be sought in the works of Aristotle, who believed that the whole world is a random combination of atoms. And since their number and size are limited, the probability of repetition of combinations is high. Three centuries later, the ancient Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero objected to Aristotle, pointing out that if cast letters were thrown onto the ground, they were unlikely to form even one meaningful line.

The infinite monkey theorem as we know it was formulated by the French mathematician Emile Borel. Thought experiment with monkeys and typewriters he needed to illustrate the improbability of violation of the laws of mechanics from the standpoint of statistics. Borel said that, theoretically, an object thrown upward by hand may not return to Earth, but this event is so unlikely that the monkeys are more likely to type Hamlet. And the experiment with monkeys entered popular culture thanks to humorous story Russell Maloney's "Indestructible Logic" (1940), where the monkeys, contrary to the theory of probability, succeeded.

Scientists have calculated that if we discard punctuation marks and spaces, then the probability of a random set of “Hamlet” consisting of approximately 130 thousand letters is equal to 1/3.4 × 10 183946. If the entire observable part of the Universe were filled with monkeys typing throughout its existence, the probability of them typing a play would increase to 1/10 183800.

It is in principle possible to carry out the described experiment, and in 2003 it was done by students from the University of Plymouth (Britain). Six crested baboons from a local zoo worked on a computer for a month, trying to create at least some kind of literary sketch, but only broke it. The result was five pages of meaningless text with a predominance of the letter S. What the baboons wanted to say with this is a mystery. Their great work was published in a limited edition entitled “Notes to full meeting Shakespeare's works."

Brain in a vat

The thought experiment “brain in a vat” (or, alternatively, in a barrel or flask) was invented in 1973 by the American philosopher Gilbert Harman, developing the idea of ​​Rene Descartes, outlined in 1641. He believed that the best way To know the truth lies through extreme skepticism. He illustrated this idea with the hypothesis of the existence of an "evil demon" who creates an illusion for the philosopher outside world, including imitation of bodily sensations. A number of questions followed from the hypothesis. For example, how can you be sure that you are not dreaming right now?

The demon hypothesis, for which Descartes was accused of blasphemy, had become outdated by the 20th century, so Harman modernized it in the spirit of science fiction. Imagine that a mad scientist connected a person's brain to a computer that could generate electrical impulses identical to those that the brain would receive while in the body. The computer can simulate virtual reality, and the experimental subject, despite the absence of a body, will be aware of himself existing. No one can know for sure whether his brain is in a vat or in his body, which means that we cannot be sure that the world around us is real.

In 1981, philosopher Hilary Putnam expanded the idea to the whole of humanity and gave birth to a fantastic assumption that later formed the basis of the Matrix film trilogy. At the same time, Putnam showed that the basis of the thought experiment proposed by Harman is a “self-negating assumption” - a statement whose truth presupposes its falsity - and this proves the existence of reality from the standpoint of logic. You can breathe a sigh of relief: “The Matrix” is just a Hollywood fiction.

* * *

Of course, it is impossible to describe in ten examples the entire wealth of thought experiments that scientists have come up with. But this is enough to see: imagination in science is no less important than the purity of calculations and accuracy of measurements. And often the flight of this imagination exceeds the most exotic ideas of science fiction writers.

0 If you are interested in popular catchphrases, then you have come exactly to the right place. Now the topic of phraseological units is again in great demand, because people always want to stand out from the crowd. Don’t forget to bookmark our website so you can check back with us periodically. Today we will talk about enough famous expression, This Buridanov's donkey, meaning and origin you can read a little lower.
However, before you continue, I would like to recommend you a couple of other interesting articles on the topic of proverbs and sayings. For example, what does it mean to wash the bones; how to understand The soul has gone to the heels; the meaning of the phraseological unit Awl in a sack cannot be hidden; what does it mean to be born, etc.
So let's continue What does Buridanov's donkey mean??

Buridanov's donkey- this is the name given to an extremely indecisive person who hesitates in choosing between two equivalent decisions

Example:

Asinus Buridani inter duo prata (Buridanov's donkey between two lawns).

Since ancient times, philosophers have been engaged in endless assumptions and conjectures, without trying to prove their words in practice.
One of these theories was that the actions of all living beings, without exception, depend not so much on their own will, but on external factors.

One medieval scientist became interested in this question. Jean Buridan/Buridan, who lived in sunny France in the 14th century.
Although it is worth noting that the paradox named after him was known back in the time of Aristotle.

In fact Buridan never mentioned this hypothetical donkey in his writings, but touched upon this problem in more in a deep sense. According to him, a person who is faced with this task must make a choice towards the greater good. Although this French scientist admitted that such a choice could last for some time while a person is busy assessing the results of each of the two elections.

In fact, they started talking about this donkey later; other philosophers exaggerated this problem and made it easier to understand. That's when the one appeared Buridanov's donkey, which froze at an equal distance from two haystacks of equal size and weight. As a result, this ungulate died of hunger, unable to give preference to any of these identical haystacks.

If we consider this idea within the framework of ordinary logic, then we can safely say that it does not matter what kind of hay the donkey chooses, it is important that he does not die of hunger. The option of death should not be considered at all, since nature and instincts will not allow him to do such a thing suicide.

Now we do not know whether someone in ancient times could actually carry out this experiment, but only since that time, people who hesitate for a long time, are indecisive, and are unable to make a decision for a long time, are sometimes called “Buridan’s donkeys.”

In mathematics there is Weierstrass's theorem, which can be compared to Buridan's donkey paradox:

If the donkey wants to go to the left haystack (If the continuous function at one point is positive), or eat the right haystack (and at the other - negative), or the donkey will remain in place and die of hunger (there is a point somewhere between them, where the function is equal to zero).

After reading this article, you learned meaning of Buridan's donkey, origin, and you won't get there again

Who is called "Buridan's donkey"? This expression came into modern Russian from an ancient parable. Everyone who has a basic understanding of the philosophy of the Middle Ages knows about the meaning of this phraseological unit. When using the expression “Buridan's donkey”, many people have the following picture before their eyes: a hungry animal stands between two haystacks and cannot choose which one to approach in order to eat.

Traditionally, in the Russian language, a stubborn, self-willed, capricious person is called a donkey. However, in the parable the image of a donkey is used as an example of indecision, lack of will, and unwillingness to make a choice. Of course, any other herbivore (for example, a goat, cow or horse) could have taken the place of the donkey. But the French philosopher Jacques Buridan (c. 1300 - c. 1358) decided to use the donkey in his parable as a symbol of stupidity and short-sightedness.

Buridanov's donkey in philosophy

Buridan in one of his treatises wrote that a person is deprived of freedom of choice, and illustrated this is a clear example from the life of animals.

Further, Buridan writes that people sometimes do the same thing. When a person cannot make a choice, this leads to degradation and death. It is worth noting that this philosophical paradox, named after Buridan, was found in the works of Aristotle.

The origin and meaning of the phraseological unit “Buridan’s donkey”

Many phrases and expressions of philosophers have become popular, flying around the whole world. The same can be said about the phrase “Buridan’s donkey.” This phraseological unit came into the Russian language along with translations scientific works medieval authors. In modern Russian, it is used infrequently, since the word “donkey”, used in relation to a person, carries a pronounced negative emotional connotation and can be perceived as a personal insult. However, in writing the phraseological unit “Buridan’s donkey” is used quite often, for example, when:

IN Everyday life People quite often encounter Buridan's ass paradox. In order to successfully get out of such a difficult situation, you need to show courage, willpower, and the ability to correctly assess the situation. Not everyone is capable of this. Sometimes a person who is unable to make a choice reaches a dead end and does not know what to do next. In such cases, it is best to take the advice of family and friends, or rely on your own intuition.

The problem of Buridan's donkey is especially typical for people who are soft, weak-willed, and spineless. On the contrary, strong, courageous, determined people usually quickly make a choice, even if both options are approximately equal.

Examples of using phraseological units

IN oral speech in Russian this phraseological unit practically not used, since calling a person a donkey is not customary in Russia. The donkey in Russian folklore is traditionally considered a symbol of stupidity, so this expression can be found mainly in fiction. It is used to describe the suffering of people who cannot do right choice, For example:

• “Maria had two suitors, and the girl felt great affection for both. She was in the position of Buridan’s ass.”
• “He could not make a choice and in despair compared himself to Buridan’s donkey.”
• “Her husband was torn between his wife and his mistress like Buridan’s donkey.”

In modern Russian there are several phraseological units that are a little close in meaning to the expression “Buridan’s donkey”, for example: “throw between two fires”, “out of the frying pan and into the fire”.

But these expressions have a slightly different meaning: they are used not when it is difficult to make a choice, but when both choices lead to problems and difficulties. IN English language there is a similar expression: between the devil and the deep blue sea.

The phraseological unit "Buridan's donkey" is also often found in scientific texts related to ancient and medieval literature and philosophy. For everyday speech, this expression is considered too bookish.

The problem of Buridan's donkey has been relevant in any time - from antiquity to the present day. People who cannot make the right choice are common in any society. This expression refers precisely to them. However, it should be used with caution, because for most Russian speakers, the word “donkey” used in relation to a person can cause an ambiguous reaction. It is better to replace this phraseological unit with more neutral synonyms: “weak-willed person”, “spineless person”, “doubting personality”.