A Solution for Buridan’s Ass

Ethics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 126 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene Chislenko
Keyword(s):  
Buridan’S Ass

scholarly journals Emergency front-of-neck access: scalpel or cannula'and the parable of Buridan's ass †

2017 ◽  
Vol 118 (6) ◽  
pp. 811-814 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.B. Greenland ◽  
W.P.L. Bradley ◽  
G.A. Chapman ◽  
G Goulding ◽  
M.G. Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Buridan’S Ass

Buridan's ass

1885 ◽  
Vol s6-XI (273) ◽  
pp. 235-235
Author(s):  
Ed. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Buridan’S Ass

Organic Synthesis and the Unification of Chemistry—A Reappraisal

1971 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hedley Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Address ◽  
Intimate Relationship ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Molecular Asymmetry ◽  
Buridan’S Ass ◽  
Wilhelm Ostwald ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Right ◽  
Chemical Section

Proclaiming Louis Pasteur as the “Founder of Stereochemistry”, the distinguished Scottish chemist, Crum Brown, addressing a late nineteenth-century audience of Edinburgh savants, drew attention—as Pasteur had incessantly done—to the intimate relationship between living organisms and the optical activity of compounds sustaining them. It seemed to Crum Brown “that we must go very much further down in the scale of animate existence than Buridan's ass, before we come to a being incapable of giving practical expression to a distinct preference for one of two objects differing only in being one to the right and the other to the left”. Crum Brown's lecture must have been entertaining, but it was also motivated by a serious desire to do justice to a particular assertion of Pasteur—an assertion which had, moreover, been misunderstood and dismissed by no less a chemical genius than Wilhelm Ostwald. Writing at a time when the majority of his colleagues were stressing the resemblances between inorganic and organic compounds, Pasteur had insisted that he “could not point out the existence of any more profound distinction between the products formed under the influence of life and all others” than that “artificial products have … no molecular asymmetry”. Pasteur was obliged to concede that the chemist might produce enantiomorphic pairs of isomers, but without resorting to a manual separation of crystals he was powerless to imitate Nature's performance, powerless to fabricate by chemical means a separate optical isomer, divorced from its partner. Now it was not only Crum Brown who felt that chemists had brushed aside this proposition of Pasteur. In his 1898 Presidential Address to the chemical section of the British Association, Professor F. R. Japp also complained that the possible vitalistic implications of Pasteur's distinction between natural and artificial products had been misapprehended or tacitly ignored.

What can we Learn from Buridan's Ass?

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 281-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
RUTH WEINTRAUB
Keyword(s):  
Buridan’S Ass

scholarly journals The Beliefs and Intentions of Buridan's Ass

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-226
Author(s):  
FINNUR DELLSÉN ◽  
NATHANIEL SHARADIN
Keyword(s):  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Buridan’S Ass ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Rational Actions ◽  
Do So

ABSTRACT:The moral of Buridan's ass is that it can sometimes be rational to perform one action rather than another even though one lacks stronger reason to do so. Yet, it is also commonly believed that it cannot ever be rational to believe one proposition rather than another if one lacks stronger reason to do so. This asymmetry has been taken to indicate a deep difference between epistemic and practical rationality. According to the view articulated here, the asymmetry should instead be explained by the difference between rational intentions and rational actions. Thus, it turns out, cases such as Buridan's ass do not indicate an asymmetry between epistemic and practical rationality as such.

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