Your favorite paradox?

[quatona]

It requires intelligence to judge intelligence.

 

[quatona]

I agree. An omnipotent being is a nonsensical concept, unless you redefine "omnipotent" to mean "able to do any physical/material/whatever thing that's logically possible".

Agreed.

So maybe, before man, there was no language, therefore no concept of the illogical?

I think a concept doesn´t require language. Communicating it does.

So God may be omnipotent, as far as Truth goes, but not as far as human talk can take it.

In a realm without logic god was omnipotent and not omnipotent simultaneously.

 

[Exist]

"I think a concept doesn´t require language. Communicating it does."

Maybe most concepts, but I believe that the "illogical" is a complete creation of language, and has absolutely no basis in reality.

"In a realm without logic god was omnipotent and not omnipotent simultaneously."

I agree, to say that God is above logic doesn't make much sense. Logic has existed forever (God has forever been God, therefore logic has existed for as long as God has), but the illogical hasn't existed forever....if it is, in fact, a creation of language.

 

[quatona]

"I think a concept doesn´t require language. Communicating it does."

Maybe most concepts, but I believe that the "illogical" is a complete creation of language, and has absolutely no basis in reality.

Thanks! This seems to be absolutely true and the short explanation I have been looking for for a long time without being able to nail it.

 

[Fallschirmjägergewehr]

Mine is the grandfather paradox.

 

[freespirit2001]

Freedom And Joy!!!

 

[freespirit2001]

Rollo May, a 60's behavior scientist ( psychoanalyst ) wrote a few books about paradoxes of our basic human survival needs: of love and will, freedom and destiny, power, our age of innocence, and the paradoxes of joy and happiness and freedom....

His books are all titled after paradoxes:

"FREEDOM AND DESTINY"
"POWER AND INNOCENCE"
"LOVE AND WILL"....

About the paradoxes of freedom and destiny he writes:

"This personal freedom to think and feel and speak authentically and to be conscious of doing so is the quality that distinguishes us as human. Always a paradox with one's destiny, this freedom is the foundation of human values such as love, courage and honesty. Freedom is how we relate to destiny, and destiny is only significant because we have freedom. In the struggle of our freedom against and with destiny, our creativity and our civilizations themselves are born."

The nature of happiness always appears to be a paradox with the nature of true joy, according to Rollo May:

"Happiness is a fulfillment of past patterns, hopes, aims...
Happiness is mediated, so far as we can tell, by the parasympathetic nervous system, which has to do with eating, contentment, resting, placidity.
Joy is mediated by the opposite system, the sympathetic, which does not make one want to eat, but stimulates one for exploration.
Happiness relaxes one; joy challenges one with new levels of experience.
Happiness depends generally on one's outer state;
Joy is an over flowing of inner energies and leads to awe and wonder.
Joy is a release, an opening up; it is what comes when one is able to genuinely to
"let go."
Happiness is associated with contentment;
Joy with freedom and an abundance of human spirit.
In sexual love joy is the thrill of the two persons moving together towards [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]; happiness is the contentment when one relaxes after [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse].
Joy is new possibilities; it points towards the future.
Joy is living on the razor's edge; happiness promises satisfaction of one's present state, a fulfillment of old longings.
Joy is the thrill of new continents to explore; it is the unfolding of life.
Happiness is related to security, to being reassured, to doing things as one is used to and as our fathers did them.
Joy is a revelation of what was unknown before.
Happiness often ends up on the edge of boredom.
Happiness is success.
But joy is stimulating, it is the discovery of new continents emerging within oneself.
Happiness is the absense of discord;
Joy is the welcoming of discord as the basis of higher harmonies.
Happiness is finding a system of rules which solves our problems;
Joy is taking the risk that is necessary to break new frontiers...

The good life, obviously, includes both joy and happiness at different times...

Rollo May, from
"Freedom and Destiny:The Nature of Joy" Ch.XIII

I also likes both Freud's paradoxal view of science and religion, in his
"The Future As an Illusion", and Einstein's views of the paradoxes of science and religion:

"Science without religion is lame;
Religion without science is blind."

 

[TricksterWolf]

this statment is false.

According to set theorists, your statement is neither false nor true. This isn't immediately a paradox because another category of "truthness" can be created to contain it.

At higher levels this becomes a problem, however.

Trickster

 

[TricksterWolf]

Sort of a paradox... but fun:

1. Epimenides is a Cretan
2. Epimenides says "A Cretan always lies"

Did Epimenides tell the truth?

No. What he told was neither "truth" nor "falsehood", so therefore it wasn't "truth". Again, not paradoxical at this level.

Trickster

 

[TricksterWolf]

At higher levels this becomes a problem, however.

So I suppose I should provide an example. One classic paradox--of which there are many variants--comes from set theory (the foundation of mathematics) and thus is central to computer science. Here's one version of it.

There is a town where a barber shaves every man who does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself?

Obviously this is just an extension of the "this is a lie" problem, but it becomes more troublesome when you consider it is a problem of recursive classification. Consider a version of this same problem with library books...

In a certain city, there are many libraries and one master library. Each library has a catalogue, and some of these catalogues list themselves. You are required to create a master catalogue of catalogues, and it is critical to know where each book is listed (total classification). So you create a catalogue of catalogues that list themselves, and a catalogue of catalogues that do not list themselves.

Where do you list the catalogue of catalogues that do not list themselves? You could create another catalogue of catalogues of catalogues that do not list themselves, but then there would be no place to list that one.

Ultimately, what this means is that there are certain mathematical sets that cannot be classified; they are inherently paradoxical. Yet, they can be easily envisioned and defined.

One such practical example is the set of all cardinals. Assuming that all possible cardinals exist, the set of all cardinals is larger than any of its constituents, which is automatically impossible... This isn't unexpected, though, because large cardinal theory breaks more and more rules of set theory the "bigger" you go.

Trickster

 

[Luminaire]

I used to like paradoxes until I realized that a lot of them are just semantic nonsense.

The "this statement is false" paradox is just a compilation of words that do not actually communicate anything. Language is not a cosmic force, it's a method of trying to convey ideas between two minds (and a poor one at that). The omnipotence paradox I think is a misunderstanding of how "omnipotence" is defined. Usually people think of it as "can do anything". I would think of it more as "having infinite power" meaning God could create a rock of infinite mass, and then move a rock of infinite mass. Although concepts of infinity probably make little sense to us.

Also, as to the ass. A rational animal presumably would not sit around and starve.

 

[Exist]

"Also, as to the ass. A rational animal presumably would not sit around and starve."

I made a thread about random numbers that came from me thinking about this ass. Is a closed, perfectly logical system capable of creating random numbers? I think that's what the paradox is all about. It assumes that it cannot, thus, the ass would not be able to have formula to overcome its problem.

 

[The Nihilist]

"I am talking now." It's only weird once you write it down.

 

[variant]

My favoret is the Russel Paradox.

Some sets, such as the set of all teacups, are not members of themselves. Other sets, such as the set of all non-teacups, are members of themselves. Call the set of all sets that are not members of themselves "R." If R is a member of itself, then by definition it must not be a member of itself. Similarly, if R is not a member of itself, then by definition it must be a member of itself. Discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, the paradox has prompted much work in logic, set theory and the philosophy and foundations of mathematics.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/

 

[TricksterWolf]

My favoret is the Russel Paradox.



http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/

I already did that one.

Trickster

 

[variant]

I already did that one.

Trickster

Sorry, I must have missed it when reading the thread.

It is my favorite though.

 

[TricksterWolf]

Sorry, I must have missed it when reading the thread.

It is my favorite though.

I didn't name it but I gave an example of it. It is a nice one.

I'm rather partial to Banach-Tarski, even though it's not really a paradox.

Trickster

 

[TheBellman]

On the first of the month, the judge convicts the man on trial and says "You will be punished by being executed. You will be executed at six in the morning on one day of this month, but you will never know which day until the day comes."

The convicted man thinks for a moment and says "Great. Then I can't be executed."

The judge thinks, agrees, and the crook goes free.

If he can't know in advance, then obviously he can't possibly be executed on the last day of the month - because then when the second-last day came and he wasn't executed, he'd know in advance that he would be executed on the last day.

But if he can't possibly be executed on the last day of the month...then he can't possibly be executed on the second-last day of the month, either. Because then when the third-last day came and he wasn't executed, he'd know in advance he was going to be executed on the second-last day (since he can't possibly be executed on the last day). And so on back to the first day of the month.

Yet, obviously, he can be executed on almost every day in the month without knowing it in advance.

 

[dlamberth]

God Created Creation in order to know Himself.

.

 

[HarmOnicWispurz]

i dunno if someone has already said this but, my fav paradox is the paradox of a stone " if God is all powerful, could he make a stone so heavy he cannot lift" i have many others but this one will always be my fav ( i dnt give my personal responses)