Voices of the Will

Abstract

Human beings, unlike animals, will sometimes be in conflict with themselves. An animal may, of course, be torn in opposite directions by its desires. The classical case in point is Buridan’s ass, but I am not sure whether Buridan’s thought experiment provides a realistic picture of asinine behaviour. For a different example, we might think about a dog hesitating about jumping across a fire in order to get to its master. Here, our only ground for speaking about a conflict between its fear of the fire and its desire to join its master is the fact that it hesitates. The conflict, we might say, is the hesitation.