A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind

Roy Sorensen0195179862, 9780195179866

Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Riddles, paradoxes, conundrums–for millennia the human mind has found such knotty logical problems both perplexing and irresistible. Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing before He made the world, he was told: ”Preparing hell for people who ask questions like that.” A Brief History of the Paradox takes a close look at ”questions like that” and the philosophers who have asked them, beginning with the folk riddles that inspired Anaximander to erect the first metaphysical system and ending with such thinkers as Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into twenty-four chapters, each of which pairs a philosopher with a major paradox, allowing for extended consideration and putting a human face on the strategies that have been taken toward these puzzles. Readers get to follow the minds of Zeno, Socrates, Aquinas, Ockham, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and many other major philosophers deep inside the tangles of paradox, looking for, and sometimes finding, a way out. Filled with illuminating anecdotes and vividly written, A Brief History of the Paradox will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavor.

---

Table of contents :
Cover Page……Page 1
Title Page……Page 4
Copyright © 2003 by Oxford University Press, Inc…….Page 5
Contents……Page 8
List of Figures……Page 10
Preface……Page 12
WHERE DO WE COME FROM?……Page 20
WHAT IS A PARADOX?……Page 22
THE OLDEST RECORDED PARADOX……Page 29
IMPLICATIONS OF THE UNCAUSED CAUSE……Page 31
WHEN DOES A PARADOX BECOME A FALLACY?……Page 32
2 Pythagoras’s Search for the Common Denominator……Page 38
THE MATHEMATICAL SETTING……Page 39
THE PYTHAGOREANS……Page 40
THE RELIGION OF DEDUCTION……Page 44
THE PROBLEM OF NEGATIVE EXISTENTIALS……Page 47
NEGATION AND TIME……Page 50
THE RULE OF REASON……Page 52
REACTION TO PARMENIDES……Page 53
4 Sisyphus’s Rock and Zeno’s Paradoxes……Page 63
ZENO’S PARADOXES OF PLURALITY……Page 64
ZENO’S PARADOXES OF MOTION……Page 68
ARISTOTLE’S SOLUTION……Page 69
ZENO AND THE MILLET SEED……Page 71
REACTION TO ZENO……Page 73
THE SEARCH FOR DEFINITIONS……Page 77
PROTAGOREAN ORIGINS OF SOCRATIC DIALOGUE……Page 80
MENO’S PARADOX OF INQUIRY……Page 82
THE DOCTRINE OF REMINISCENCE……Page 84
FOLLOWING THE ARGUMENT WHEREVER IT LEADS……Page 87
6 The Megarian Identity Crisis……Page 90
THE THEAETETUS FROM A EUCLIDESEAN PERSPECTIVE……Page 91
HERACLITUS AND THE PARADOX OF CHANGE……Page 95
KNOWLEDGE AND IDENTITY……Page 97
THE PARADOX OF ANALYSIS……Page 98
7 Eubulides and the Politics of the Liar……Page 102
WAS ARISTOTLE A SPY?……Page 103
ARISTOTLE’S CONTINUED INFLUENCE……Page 106
CICERO’S TRADITION……Page 107
THE ETHICS OF PARADOX……Page 110
EPIMENIDES AND THE LIAR……Page 112
THE HORNED MAN……Page 114
THE SORITES PARADOX……Page 115
THE TRUTH-TELLER……Page 119
THE PREFACE PARADOX……Page 121
JUMBLE ARGUMENTS……Page 123
THE ELENCHUS PROBLEM……Page 129
IS THE ELENCHUS NEUTRAL?……Page 131
9 Aristotle on Fatalism……Page 135
THE INALTERABILITY OF THE PAST……Page 136
THE MASTER ARGUMENT OF DIODORUS CRONUS……Page 138
VACUOUS FATALISM……Page 141
ARISTOTLE’S COMMON SENSE……Page 142
THE MANY BASES OF FATALISM……Page 146
THE MORAL OBJECTION TO FATALISM……Page 148
THE GROWING ARGUMENT……Page 149
STOIC ORGANICISM……Page 152
DION AND THEON……Page 156
PARADOXES AND PARADOX TYPES……Page 159
11 Sextus Empiricus and the Infinite Regress of Justification……Page 167
THERAPEUTIC PYRRHONISM……Page 168
THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION……Page 173
THE CIRCULARITY OF DIRECT ARGUMENTS……Page 175
THE PARADOX OF DOGMATISM……Page 178
12 Augustine’s Pragmatic Paradoxes……Page 181
A CRITIQUE OF REASON……Page 182
AUGUSTINE’S COGITO……Page 187
AUGUSTINE’S SUBJECTIVE THEORY OF TIME……Page 192
IMMUTABILITY……Page 196
IS GOD ALIVE?……Page 199
TIMELESSNESS AND ETERNITY……Page 201
FLOWING TIME VERSUS STATIC TIME……Page 203
THE DOCTRINAL STORM OF 1277……Page 206
WHAT OCKHAM RAZED……Page 210
OCKHAM’S POLITICS……Page 212
THE INSOLUBLES……Page 213
THE ORIGIN OF THE INSOLUBLES……Page 215
15 Buridan’s Sophisms……Page 219
THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM……Page 220
FORCED ERRORS IN A DEBATING GAME……Page 222
BURIDAN’S BRIDGE……Page 226
THE MEDIEVAL THEORY OF PROPOSITIONS……Page 228
BURIDAN ON THE INSOLUBLES……Page 229
THE DECLINE OF SCHOLASTIC ISM……Page 231
MINDLESS COMPUTATION AND DESCARTES……Page 235
EXPERIMENTS ON NOTHING……Page 240
THE STRUCTURE OF DISORDER……Page 242
THE MONTY HALL PROBLEM……Page 243
THE DIVISION PARADOX……Page 245
PASCAL’S WAGER……Page 247
THE ST. PETERSBURG PARADOX……Page 251
THE TWO ENVELOPE PARADOX……Page 253
17 Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason……Page 256
LEIBNIZ’S PRINCIPLES……Page 257
LEIBNIZ’S PREDICTIONS……Page 261
GEOMETRICAL PROBABILITY……Page 264
BERTRAND’S PARADOX……Page 265
18 Hume’s All-Consuming Ideas……Page 271
LOCKE……Page 274
BERKELEY……Page 278
HUME AGAIN……Page 282
19 The Common Sense of Thomas Reid……Page 287
NATURE OF COMMON SENSE……Page 289
COMMON SENSE AND PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENT……Page 293
FOLLOWING THE ARGUMENT……Page 294
CRITICISMS OF REID’S CONCEPTION OF COMMON SENSE……Page 296
THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF COMMON SENSE……Page 299
20 Kant and the Antinomy of Pure Reason……Page 303
THE FOUR ANTINOMIES OF PURE REASON……Page 306
PROOF……Page 307
ORIGIN OF THE ANTINOMIES……Page 312
KANT’S COPERNICAN REVOLUTION……Page 314
KANT’S CONFLICTING SOLUTIONS……Page 318
21 Hegel’s World of Contradictions……Page 322
22 Russell’s Set……Page 335
THE HEGELIAN HUNT FOR CONTRADICTIONS……Page 336
THE SECOND ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHER……Page 338
LOGICISM AND CANTOR……Page 341
AFTERMATH……Page 350
23 Wittgenstein and the Depth of a Grammatical Joke……Page 352
WITTGENSTEIN’S THERAPY……Page 354
PICTURING WORDS AS NAMES……Page 356
THE RELEVANCE OF LINGUISTIC ODDITY……Page 358
SARTRE AND THE SELF- DECEIVED……Page 362
RULE FOLLOWING……Page 364
24 Quine’s Question Mark……Page 368
CARTER’S DOOMSDAY ARGUMENT……Page 369
VERIDICAL AND FALSIDICAL PARADOXES……Page 370
THE NEW RIDDLE OF INDUCTION……Page 373
THE ANALYTIC/SYNTHETIC DISTINCTION……Page 376
RADICAL TRANSLATION……Page 377
THE ODD UNIVERSE……Page 379
INTERESTING NUMBERS……Page 381
ARE PARADOXES SETS?……Page 383
PARADOXES WITHOUT PREMISES……Page 385
GRADUALISM ABOUT PARADOXES……Page 388
Bibliography……Page 392
A……Page 400
C……Page 401
D……Page 402
E……Page 403
G……Page 404
H,I……Page 405
J,K,L……Page 406
M……Page 407
P……Page 408
Q,R……Page 410
S……Page 411
T……Page 412
X,Z……Page 413
Book Front and Back Flaps……Page 414
Back Cover Page……Page 415