Buridan's Ass
A donkey stands exactly halfway between two identical bales of hay. With no reason on earth to prefer either, does it starve?
c. 1340 (the attribution; the example is far older)14 min read
Islamic theology and philosophy, Ashʿarite kalām
Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī
1058 – 1111
Persian theologian, jurist and philosopher. In The Incoherence of the Philosophers (c. 1095) he argued against the Avicennan claim that a will can never choose between indistinguishable alternatives, using the case of a man who must take one of two identical dates. The example predates Buridan by two and a half centuries and reaches the opposite conclusion.