- Title
- Buridan's ass and reducible intentions
- Creator
- Mintoff, Joe
- Relation
- Journal of Philosophical Research Vol. 26, p. 207-221
- Relation
- http://www.pdcnet.org/jprtoc.html
- Publisher
- Philosophy Documentation Center
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2001
- Description
- Unlike Buridan's ass, most of us have the capacity to deal with situations in which there is more than one maximally preferable option. According to supporters of a prominent conception of intention, making a decision in this type of case involves coming to prefer, or judge preferable, one of the relevant options over the other. The purpose of this paper is to argue that accounts that reduce intentions to preferences or preferability judgements cannot explain how it is possible to rationally form and to reason from such intentions in Buridan cases. Such accounts commit us to rejecting long-standing philosophical commitments to the relation between: judgement and evidence; reconsideration and new information; preference and judgements of preferability; and (in some versions) commit us to attributing overly complex forms of motivation.
- Subject
- Buridan's ass; decision making; preferability judgements
- Identifier
- uon:1143
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/26806
- Identifier
- ISSN:1053-8364
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