Questions tagged [paradox]
This tag is for arguments that produce an inconsistency with intuitions and either create formal contradictions or bring about a sense of intuition that two opposite meanings are true.
26 questions from the last 365 days
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Solving William James' Squirrel Problem
I'm currently reading James' book on Pragmatism. He opens the second lecture with a squirrel example:
The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel—a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a ...
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Could reality exist without logic? Could reality be illogical?
My question is that theoretically could a reality exist in such a way that it is illogical. By that I mean not following "logicism" or a consistent set of rules. Could a reality ...
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Is there a logical fallacy for confusing means with ends? [closed]
COUNTING SHEEP
Patient: I’m unable to sleep at night.
Doctor: Count to 2000, and you should fall asleep.
Next Day…
Patient: I’m still unable to sleep.
Doctor: Did you count to 2000 like I asked?
...
- 105
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Is this a possible solution to the unexpected hanging paradox?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox
A judge tells a condemned prisoner that he will be hanged at noon on one weekday in the following week but that the execution will be a ...
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What, if any, conceptual relationship exists between paradox and esotericism?
Paradoxes appear in logic, metaphysics, and language as statements that seem self-contradictory yet reveal deeper structures of reasoning. Esotericism, on the other hand, often involves hidden ...
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Is a statement false, if and only if, its negation is true?
Suppose that for all statements p , it holds that "p" is false, if and only if , it is not the case that p
Consider the following statement:
(1) (1) is false
Consider the following argument:
...
user110411
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Is the statement "a basketball is a physical object" a contradiction?
All of us would presumably agree that the statement "the basketball on Fred's table is a physical object" is true, assuming that there's a basketball on Fred's table. This statement is about ...
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Proving that the human mind is not a machine?
Kurt Gödel believed that a solution to the intensional paradoxes was necessary to prove that the human mind is not a machine.
How would a solution to the intensional paradoxes prove that the human ...
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Is the statement “Nothing is perfect” self-contradictory because it implies perfection through imperfection?
The common saying is that “Nothing is perfect.” But if everything in the universe is imperfect, then imperfection itself applies universally without exception. In that case, imperfection is consistent ...
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Did Eubulides discuss the paradox of the Liar?
It is repeated here and there that Eubulides of Miletus, a contemporary of Aristotle, said:
A man says that he is lying. Is what he says true or false?
Yet, I could not find any reference to any ...
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Doubt regarding the paradox about non-self-descriptive Adjective? [duplicate]
I am reading The Anatomy of Mathematics (Page 11, Last Paragraph) and came about following example under discussions of Paradox:
Let us call an Adjective Self-Descriptive if it describes itself; ...
- 1,682
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What kind of paradox (if it is a paradox) is "I am the most modest person who ever lived in the history of mankind"?
A modest person would never say this sentence, and saying it automatically excludes a modest speaker from the category of modest people; but a very modest person would be justified in claiming that, ...
- 1,604
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Can the sorites paradox be one the keys to understand free will?
The sorites paradox is perhaps the greatest paradox of our universe. Things exist. Different things. Things are themselves, and they are different from what they are not (principle of identity). This ...
- 1,604
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Close to a resolution to the unexpected hanging paradox?
The unexpected hanging paradox goes as follows:
A prisoner is told that he will be hanged on some day between Monday and Friday, but that he will not know on which day the hanging will occur before ...
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Could one choose/decide not to have (or to give up their) free will?
The question is inspired in part by Sartre's writing in "Being and Nothingness" [Hazel E. Barnes's 1957 translation, my highlights], specifically
I am condemned to exist forever beyond my ...
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