Buridan’s ass: Another dilemma?

When I was writing about dilemmas, I had to think of Buridan’s ass. Maybe you remember that I wrote about this animal before. If not, you can find it here, but for your convenience I’ll repeat the essence of the case: A rational hungry donkey is placed between two equidistant and identical haystacks. The surrounding environments on both sides are also identical. The donkey cannot choose between the two haystacks and so dies of hunger, which is simply irrational.
The case is usually referred to as Buridan’s ass, after the French philosopher Jean Buridan (1295-1363), but actually, it’s not correct, for philosophers before him – including Aristotle – had already examined it, although often in another version. Also after Buridan, the case has been discussed again and again, for instance by Leibniz. Usually, it is seen as a paradox, which it is, but is it also a dilemma?
Let’s see when we call a case a dilemma (cf. my blog last week). In the first place the agent must face a situation in which he or she has to choose and, indeed, Buridan’s ass (donkey) must choose between two possible actions: eating the left haystack or eating the right haystack. However, the need to make a choice doesn’t as such place the agent in a dilemma. A choice is only a dilemma, if by making a choice you break a moral rule, say rule MR1. It is possible to avoid breaking MR1 by making another choice, but only by breaking another moral rule MR2. In other words, any choice leads to breaking a moral rule, so that, whatever you do, you’ll do something wrong. However, for Buridan’s ass, any choice is good, unless, for instance, by eating from these haystacks, the animal steals hay from the owner of the stacks. In that case, the ass is in the dilemma to steal or to eat. (When by eating only from one haystack, the ass steals hay, which one to eat is obvious, of course)
This brings me to Montaigne. In his very short essay “How our mind hinders ourself” (Essays, Book II-14), Montaigne tells us:
“’T is a pleasant imagination to fancy a mind exactly balanced betwixt two equal desires: for, doubtless, it can never pitch upon either, forasmuch as the choice and application would manifest an inequality of esteem; and were we set betwixt the bottle and the ham, with an equal appetite to drink and eat, there would doubtless be no remedy but we must die of thirst and hunger.” This is the situation Buridan’s ass faces: The ass cannot choose, since the animal has no criterion to choose and so the ass will die. However, according to Montaigne, such a situation is unreal and it cannot happen: “Nothing presents itself to us wherein there is not some difference, how little soever; and that, either by the sight or touch, there is always some choice that, though it be imperceptibly, tempts and attracts us.” Applied to the case of Buridan’s ass: How equal the two haystacks may seem to be, they always are a little bit different, which makes that the ass prefers either the left one or the right one.
What must the ass do in case the animal would steal when eating from the haystacks? Also then the solution of the problem is easy, I think: It's better to steal than to die.
According to Markus Gabriel, there are no dilemmas: When one must choose, there is always a better choice and a less good choice. If not, then we are in a tragedy, he says. However, as I showed last week, even in a tragedy we can face a dilemma. It’s not Gabriel but Montaigne who has explained why, actually, there are no dilemmas: In a dilemma there is always one lemma that is to be preferred. The problem then is to determine which one it is. If Montaigne is right, there may not be dilemmas, but there still are difficult choices.