PHIL 241 Paradoxes

Paradoxes and their resolution have played a significant role in the development of philosophy; they still have an influence on philosophy today. While Zeno's paradoxes of motion where first posed about 2000 years ago there is still not a consensus about what to say about them. Semantic paradoxes such as the liar paradox and the paradoxes of vagueness reveal problems with everyday concepts such as truth and implication. Supertasks reveal problems with our understanding of infinity. What to say about these problems what they show us about how to understand space, time, infinity, truth, and reasoning are some of the issues we will discuss in this class. We will examine various paradoxes, puzzles, and purported paradoxes and discuss different proposed resolutions to them.