Now if only I could choose which coin I should use—my largest or smallest?
We've reached the quarter pole of Julian Baggini's one hundred thought experiments and it's been a (mostly) fascinating tour through the history of problems that philosophers have tried to think about. Last week's experiment questioned if God was handcuffed by the rationality of logic, but this week we see if we can put the handcuffs on ourselves.
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Buridan was very hungry indeed. It had all started with his resolution that every decision he made should be completely rational. The problem was that he had run out of food, but lived equidistant between two identical branches of the Kwik-E-Mart. Since he had no more reason to go to one rather than the other, he was caught in a perpetual state of suspension, unable to find any rational grounds for choosing either supermarket.
As his stomach rumbling grew intolerable, he thought he had hit upon a solution. Since it was clearly irrational to starve himself to death, wouldn't it be rational to make a random choice between two Kwik-E-Marts? He should simply toss a coin, or see which direction he felt like heading off in. That was surely more rational than sitting at home and doing nothing.
But would this course of action require him to break his rule about only making decisions that were completely rational? What his argument seemed to suggest is that it would be rational of him to make an irrational decision -- such as one based on the toss of a coin. But is rational irrationality rational at all? Buridan's plummeting blood sugar level made the question impossible to answer.
Source: The paradox of Buridan's Ass, first discussed in the Middle Ages
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 73.
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What do you think? Is there always a rational choice to be made? Do you have to be irrational or have free will to break a perfect deadlock between choices? I'll be back on Friday with my answer.
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Buridan was very hungry indeed. It had all started with his resolution that every decision he made should be completely rational. The problem was that he had run out of food, but lived equidistant between two identical branches of the Kwik-E-Mart. Since he had no more reason to go to one rather than the other, he was caught in a perpetual state of suspension, unable to find any rational grounds for choosing either supermarket.
As his stomach rumbling grew intolerable, he thought he had hit upon a solution. Since it was clearly irrational to starve himself to death, wouldn't it be rational to make a random choice between two Kwik-E-Marts? He should simply toss a coin, or see which direction he felt like heading off in. That was surely more rational than sitting at home and doing nothing.
But would this course of action require him to break his rule about only making decisions that were completely rational? What his argument seemed to suggest is that it would be rational of him to make an irrational decision -- such as one based on the toss of a coin. But is rational irrationality rational at all? Buridan's plummeting blood sugar level made the question impossible to answer.
Source: The paradox of Buridan's Ass, first discussed in the Middle Ages
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 73.
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What do you think? Is there always a rational choice to be made? Do you have to be irrational or have free will to break a perfect deadlock between choices? I'll be back on Friday with my answer.
