Buridan's ass is a paradoxical illustration in philosophy in the concept of free will. This refers to a hypothetical situation where an equally hungry and thirsty donkey is placed right in the middle between a haystack and a bucket of water. Since the paradox assumes that the ass will always go whichever is closer, it will die of hunger and thirst because it can not make any rational decision between hay and water. A common variant of the paradox replaces two equal haystacks for straw and water; butt, can not choose between the two, starving to death.
This paradox is named after the 14th-century French philosopher Jean Buridan, whose philosophy of moral determinism excludes. Although the illustration is named after Buridan, the philosophers have discussed the concept before him, especially Aristotle using the example of a man who is equally hungry and thirsty, and Al-Ghazali who uses a man faced with an equally good choice of date.
The version of this situation appears as metastability in digital electronics, when a circuit must decide between two states when there is an input that changes the value. The problem can be managed because the probability of the remaining circuit in a metastable state longer than a few nanoseconds is very small, but it is theoretically possible for the computer circuit to remain in this "doubtless" state indefinitely, such as Buridan's ass.
Video Buridan's ass
History
The paradox precedes Buridan; it dates to ancient times, found in Aristotle In Heaven . Aristotle, in mocking Sophis's idea that the Earth is silent only because of the circle and every force on it must be equal in all directions, saying it is ridiculous to say that
... a man, who is as thirsty, and placed between food and drink, must necessarily remain in his place and die of starvation.
However, the Greeks only use this paradox as an analogy in the context of a physical balance of power .
The 12th-century Persian scientist and philosopher al-Ghazali discussed the application of this paradox to human decision-making, asking whether it is possible to make a choice between equally good programs for no reason for preference. He takes the attitude that free will can break the deadlock.
Suppose the two dates are the same in front of a man, who has a strong desire for them but who can not take both. Surely he will take one of them, through his inner qualities, whose nature is to distinguish between two similar things.
The Moorish philosopher Averroes (1126-1198), in his commentary on Ghazali, takes the opposite view.
Although Buridan does not address this specific issue, its relevance is that it advocates moral determinism in which, with the exception of ignorance or obstacles, a human being faced by alternative actions must always choose a greater good. In the face of an equally good alternative, Buridan believes that a rational choice can not be made.
If two courses are equal, the will can not break the deadlock, all it can do is delay the judgment until circumstances change, and the exact action is clear.
The authors then insinuate this view in the form of a donkey who, confronted by food and water, must necessarily die of hunger and thirst while contemplating decisions.
Maps Buridan's ass
Discussion
Some supporters of hard determinism have granted inconvenience scenarios, but have denied that this portrays a true paradox, because one does not contradict itself in asserting that a man may die between two equally plausible acts of action. For example, in his book Ethics , Benedikt de Spinoza shows that someone who sees two options as truly equally attractive can not be completely rational:
[I] may object, if man does not act from free will, what would happen if the incentive to act equally well, as in the case of Buridan's ass? [In return,] I am quite prepared to admit, that a man placed in equilibrium is described (ie, because he feels nothing but hunger and thirst, certain foods and certain drinks, which are equally away from him) will die of hunger and thirst. If I were asked whether such a person should not be considered as a donkey than a man; I replied that I did not know, nor did I know how a man should be considered, who hung himself, or how we should consider children, fools, crazies, & c.
Other authors chose to deny the validity of the illustrations. A typical counter-argument is that the rationality described in the paradox is so limited that it becomes the straw man version of the real thing, which allows the meta-argument consideration. In other words, it makes sense to acknowledge that both options are equally good and arbitrary (randomly) choose one rather than starvation; although the decision that they are quite the same is also subject to Buridan's ass. The idea that random decisions can be made is sometimes used as an attempt to justify a belief or intuition (called by Aristotle noetic or noesis). The argument is that, like a hungry ass, we must make the choice to not freeze endlessly. Other counter arguments exist.
According to Edward Lauzinger, Buridan's ass fails to incorporate the latent bias that humans always take when making decisions.
Buridan's Principle
Buridan's ass situation was given mathematically in a 1984 paper by American computer scientist Leslie Lamport, in which Lamport presents the argument that, given certain assumptions about continuity in the simple mathematical model of Buridan's ass problem, there are always early conditions in which the dark is starving to death, no matter what strategy is required.
Lamport calls this result the "Buridan principle":
- Discrete decisions based on inputs that have a continuous value range can not be done for a limited time.
Application to digital logic: metastability
Buridan's principle version really takes place in electrical engineering. Specifically, the input to the digital logic gate must convert the value of the continuous voltage to 0 or 1, which is usually sampled and then processed. If the input is changed and at the intermediate value when sampled, the input stage acts like a comparator. The voltage values ​​can then be equated with the butt position, and the values ​​0 and 1 represent the bales of hay. Like a hungry donkey situation, there is an input where the converter can not make the right decision, and the output stays balanced in a metastable state between two stable states for an unspecified period, until a random noise in the circuit makes it converge to one of the stable states.
The "Arbiter" circuit is used to solve this problem, by detecting when the comparator is in a metastable state and making random output choices. But no circuit can really solve the problem, because the boundary between ambiguous and unambiguous states introduces another binary decision in the arbitrator, with its own metastable state.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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