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. (shrink)

The primary narrative problem of the analyst is, then, not how to tell a normative chronological life history; rather, it is how to tell the several histories of each analysis. From this vantage point, the event with which to start the model analytic narration is not the first occasion of thought—Freud's wish-fulfilling hallucination of the absent breast; instead, one should start from a narrative account of the psychoanalyst's retelling of something told by an analysand and the analysand's response to that (...) narrative transformation. In the narration of this moment of dialogue lies the structure of the analytic past, present, and future. It is from this beginning that the accounts of early infantile development are constructed. Those traditional developmental accounts, over which analysts labored so hard, may now be seen in a new light: less as positivistic sets of factual findings about mental development and more as hermeneutically filled-in narrative structures. The narrative structures that have been adopted control the telling of the events of the analysis, including the many tellings and retellings of the analysand's life history. The time is always present. The event is always an outgoing dialogue. Roy Schafer is clinical professor of psychology and psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College, adjunct professor of psychology at New York University, and a supervising and training analyst at Columbia University's Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He is the author of A New Language for Psychoanalysis, Language and Insight, and Narrative Actions in Psychoanalysis: Narratives of Space and Narratives of Time. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show how thought experiments help us learn about laws. After providing examples of this kind of nomic illumination in the first section, I canvass explanations of our modal knowledge and opt for an evolutionary account. The basic application is that the laws of nature have led us to develop rough and ready intuitions of physical possibility which are then exploited by thought experimenters to reveal some of the very laws responsible for those intuitions. (...) The good news is that natural selection ensures a degree of reliability for the intuitions. The bad news is that the evolutionary account seems to limit the range of reliable thought experiment to highly practical and concrete contexts. In the fifth section, I provide reasons for thinking that we are not as slavishly limited as a pessimistic construal of natural selection suggests. Nevertheless, I promote the idea that biology is a promising source of predictions and diagnoses of thought experiment failures. (shrink)

Questions about the meaning of life have traditionally been regarded as being of particular concern to philosophers. It is sometimes complained that contemporary analytic philosophy fails to address such questions, but there do exist illuminating recent discussions of these questions by analytic philosophers.1Perhaps what lurks behind the complaint is a feeling that these discussions are insufficiently close to actual living situations and hence often seem rather thin and bland compared with the vivid portrayals of such situations in autobiography or fiction. (...) I therefore want to focus on two works by Tolstoy—one autobiographical, one fictional—and try to see what philosophical lessons can be learned from them, particularly with regard to questions about the relation of death to the meaning of life. (shrink)

In ‘Epistemic Modals’ (2007), Seth Yalcin proposes Stalnaker-style semantics for epistemic possibility. He is inspired by John MacFarlane’s ingenious defence of relativism, in which claims of epistemic possibility are made rigidly from the perspective of the assessor’s actual stock of information (rather than from the speaker’s knowledge base or that of his audience or community). The innovations of MacFarlane and Yalcin independently reinforce the modal collapse espoused by Jaakko Hintikka in his 1962 epistemic logic (which relied on the implausible KK (...) principle and heavy idealizations). I respond to this new challenge with fresh objections to the underlying S4 equivalence: p p . I also propose counter-analyses of the intriguing data which Yalcin cites in support of his new semantics. A key collateral motivation for this defence of irredundant iterations is to ward off a threat to higher order vagueness. (shrink)

(1984). Conditional blindspots and the knowledge squeeze: A solution to the prediction paradox. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 62, No. 2, pp. 126-135.

In the twentieth century, philosophers tackled many of the philosophical problems of previous generations by dissolving them--attacking them as linguistic illusions and showing that the problems, when closely inspected, were not problems at all. Roy A. Sorensen takes the most important and interesting examples from one hundred years of analytic philosophy to consolidate a different theory of dissolution. Pseudo-Problems offers a fascinating alternative history of twentieth century analytic philosophy. It seeks to outline a unified account of dissolution that can consolidate (...) the piecemeal insights of analytic philosophers. An accessible account of questionable questions, the book represents an important contribution to the debates about creativity and problem solving. (shrink)

Islamic building codes require mosques to face Mecca. The further Islam spreads, the more apt are believers to fall into a quandary. X faces Y only when the front of X is closer to Y than any other side of X. So the front of the mosque should be oriented along a shortest path to Mecca. Which way is that? Does the path to Mecca tunnel through the earth? Or does the path follow the surface of the earth?

Over the last few decades Mark Siderits has established himself as a leading philosophical interpreter of Indian Buddhist philosophy. He has published widely in this field, but three of his books are particularly well known: his Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy, a self-styled "essay in fusion philosophy"; his introductory textbook Buddhism as Philosophy ; and–with Shōryū Katsura–his translation and commentary, Nāgārjuna's Middle Way: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Taken together, these three books offer a fuller sense of Siderits' philosophical concerns with Buddhism. The concern (...) with "fusion philosophy" is focused primarily on philosophical problem-solving and energetically quarries Buddhist... (shrink)

Positive thinkers love Watty Piper's The little engine that could. The story features a train laden with toys for deserving children on the other side of the mountain. After the locomotive breaks down, a sequence of snooty locomotives come up the track. Each engine refuses to pull the train up the mountain. They are followed by a weary old locomotive that declines, saying "I cannot. I cannot. I cannot." But then a bright blue engine comes up the track. He manages (...) to chug over the mountain by averring "I think I can. I think I can. I think can.". (shrink)

The emerging discipline of complexity science, applied to the social sciences, seeks to study the rise of human civilization as a part of a natural, evolving biological system that exploits energy resources to fuel its growth into a complex social system. In order to understand the whole system, the reductionist approach, typical to Western science, must be supplanted. The atomistic study of various scientific fields as separate mechanical parts of the system must be broadened, creating a more holistic view of (...) human culture as an integral part of larger universal process of evolution and creation. In this article I wish to integrate the various scientific fields, including physics, chronobiology, biology, evolutionary psychology, and the social sciences, to achieve a unified understanding of our cultural evolution. (shrink)

The poster boy for my paper is the King's Messenger in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Recall that since the White Queen lives backwards, her memory works forwards. She pities Alice who can only remember things after they happen. Alice asks which things the Queen remembers best: `Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a careless tone. `For instance, . . . there's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial (...) doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.' (Chapter V) Is the King's Messenger being treated unjustly? Why not prepunish people for their future crimes? True, it is generally easier to have knowledge about past crimes than future crimes. But is unpredictability the only problem with prepunishment? (shrink)

Sooner or later, every paradox is accused of equivocation. Usually sooner. For equivocation is a simple, well understood fallacy. People first try to explain a mystery in terms of what is familiar. If postulating a simple ambiguity fails, more subtle ambiguities will be postulated. Those who persist with this diagnosis elaborate the charge of equivocation into an esoteric form.

An ill-informed reading of Adam Ferguson 's epitaph has given me an idea for securing posthumous recognition. Consider philosophers in the year 2201 who read my epitaph: ‘Here lies Roy Sorensen who will be long remembered for his paradoxes’. If these future scholars remember me, then well and good. If they do not remember me, my epitaph will appear to be rendered false by their failure to recall me. Suppose the poignancy of this self-defeat leads my epitaph to be widely (...) repeated. I thereby acquire ignominy as the forgotten philosopher. But wait! Eventually someone will notice that no one can remember that Roy Sorensen is forgotten. For if someone did remember that Roy Sorensen is forgotten, then he would be forgotten—not remembered. After all, memory implies truth. Thus the self-defeating aspect of my epitaph is itself self-defeating! The happy ending is that my epitaph becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy by a curious kind of double-negation. (shrink)

Lake Tanganiyka has lefty and righty cichlid fish that show there can be natural selection for a trait over its mirror image counterpart.This raises the question Can there be biological selection of a whole organism over its mirror image counterpart? That is, could the fitness of a fish be altered by simply changing it into its own enantaniomorph? My answer is no. I present Flatlander thought experiment to demonstrate that mirror imagecounterparts are duplicates because they only differ in how they (...) happen to be oriented in space. The counterparts have the same intrinsic properties and are in the same environment,so there can be no difference in fitness. (shrink)

Peter Slezak and William Boos have independently advanced a novel interpretation of Descartes's "cogito". The interpretation portrays the "cogito" as a diagonal deduction and emphasizes its resemblance to Godel's theorem and the Liar. I object that this approach is flawed by the fact that it assigns 'Buridan sentences' a legitimate role in Descartes's philosophy. The paradoxical nature of these sentences would have the peculiar result of undermining Descartes's "cogito" while enabling him to "disprove" God's existence.

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes -- ah, that is where the art resides." -- Artur Schabel..

ObjectivePatient involvement is used to describe the inclusion of patients as active participants in healthcare decision-making and research. This study aimed to investigate incoming year 1 medical (MBChB) students’ attitudes and opinions regarding patient involvement in this context.MethodsWe established a staff–student partnership to formulate the design of an online research survey, which included Likert scale questions and three short vignette scenarios designed to probe student attitudes towards patient involvement linked to existing legal precedent. Incoming year 1 medical students (n=333) were (...) invited to participate in the survey before formal teaching commenced.ResultsSurvey data (49 participants) indicate that students were broadly familiar with, and supportive of, patient involvement in medical treatment. There was least support for patient involvement in conducting (23.9%), contributing to (37.0%) or communicating research (32.6%), whereas there was unanimous support for patients choosing treatment from a selection of options (100%).ConclusionIncoming members of the medical profession demonstrate awareness of the need to actively involve patients in healthcare decision-making but are unfamiliar with the utility and value of such involvement in research. Further empirical studies are required to examine attitudes to patient involvement in healthcare. (shrink)

We disagree with Almaatouq et al. that no realistic alternative exists to the “one-at-a-time” paradigm. Seventy years ago, Egon Brunswik introduced representative design, which offers a clear path to commensurability and generality. Almaatouq et al.'s integrative design cannot guarantee the external validity and generalizability of results which is sorely needed, while representative design tackles the problem head on.

The principle of charity says that all agents are rational. The principle of meta‐charity says that all agents believe all agents are rational. My thesis is that the arguments which are used to support charity also support meta‐charity. Meta‐charity implies meta‐meta‐charity. By recursion, the principle of charity implies that it is common knowledge. But there appears to be intelligent, well‐informed disagreement with the principle of charity. So if the entailment thesis holds, opponents of the principle of charity have a new (...) objection to the principle. Defenders of the principle of charity must either refute the entailment thesis or accept much stronger consequences than they expected.“As I am, so I see.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson. (shrink)

This paper is intended to show how epistemologists can profit from the study of ways in which 'know' is vague. Topics include the kk thesis, Incorrigibility of sense data, A resemblance between infinity and vagueness, Common knowledge, Naive holism, Question-Begging, Epistemic universalizability, The prediction paradox, The completability of epistemology, And harman's social knowledge cases.

When Bertrand Russell alerted Gottlob Frege to an inconsistency in his Grundgesetze, Frege relinquished deep commitments. When Edward Evans-Pritchard alerted the Azande to an inconsistency in their beliefs about witchcraft inheritance, they did not revise their beliefs. Nor did they engage in the defensive maneuvers depicted in Plato’s dialogues. Evans-Pritchard characterized their indifference to contradiction as irrational. My historical thesis is that the ensuing anthropological debate mirrors the debate about the sorites paradox. I favor a simple explanation of this parallelism: (...) Evans-Pritchard’s witchcraft inheritance argument is a sorites argument—albeit in a form masked by the different ontologies of the Azande and Evans-Pritchard. Evans-Pritchard failed to recognize his witchcraft inheritance argument as a sorites paradox because he was witchcraft nihilist in a community of witchcraft realists. My general conjecture is that many of the irrationalities that seem distinctive of alien cultures are actually paradoxes that are universal. The irrationality of the aliens is real and profound; it is just not distinctive of those aliens or their cultures. The universality of the irrationality helps to explain Evans-Pritchard’s surprising success at understanding the Azande. Since he shares their core irrationality, Evans-Pritchard could simulate Azande thinking. Although I am attributing an anthropological illusion to Evans-Pritchard, I think it is one that coheres nicely with his compelling account of Azande. I am a conservative follower of Evans-Pritchard, trying to debug his research programme. I endorse all of his central doctrines and I rely on his insights. (shrink)

By integrating the entire body of research in human sexual dynamics, immune responses, and sociocultural behavior, we can conclude that the mass hysteria our society is currently experiencing originates in our evolved psychological adaptations to pandemic conditions [i]. A lack of hormonal balance [ii], due to a collapse in testosterone levels, may cause a disproportionate immune response that leads to the destruction of our cherished sociopolitical institutions—the very institutions that are design to protect human liberty and prosperity. What is playing (...) out at a societal level is similar to an excessive immune response that causes the body to attack itself: decreased testosterone causing the kind of auto-immune response that is more prevalent in females. [i] Barzilai, R.. Low Solar Activity, Winter Flu Conditions, Pandemics and Sex Wars: A Holistic View of Human Evolution. Science & Philosophy, 8. Doi: 10.23756/sp.v8i1.514 [ii] Barzilai, R.. Solar cycles, light, sex hormones and the life cycles of civilization: Toward integrated chronobiology. Science & Philosophy, 7. doi: 10.23756/sp.v7i2.483. (shrink)

The current spread of coronavirus has caught our modern world by surprise, which leads to widespread panic, fear and confusion. However, if we view the unfolding of these events from a scientific historical perspective of past human evolution, we may discover the reoccurring patterns of the environmental conditions that give rise to such epidemics. Hence, we can figure out better methods to prepare and react to the infectious agents that spread diseases that have shaped the course of human history before. (...) Here, I propose a holistic view of human evolution, with an interdisciplinary approach that studies how cyclic variation in solar UV energy affects the evolution of viruses and shapes the symbiotic dynamics of human life on earth. (shrink)