an example used to illustrate the difficulty of making decisions based solely on the relative desirability of alternatives. The unfortunate ass in the example starves to death while standing equidistant between two equally appealing haystacks. This image is named for French philosopher Jean Buridan (c. 1300–c. 1358), although he was not the originator of the example. The term may have reference to Buridan’s attempt to find a philosophical middle ground in action theory between strict voluntarism and strict rationalism.