Phil 2511: Paradoxes
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR ESSAYS / TERM PAPERS
Assessment of this course is in the form of two 1-hour
quizzes and either a term paper of length 2,000 - 3,000 words, or two essays of
equivalent total length. You should write your term paper on a topic that
interests you. Some possible titles are suggested below, but feel free to
choose a title of your own. Let me know what it is, and I'll suggest relevant
reading. I have marked ** those titles the reading material for which involves
a lot of logic. If you are good at maths/logic, you
might choose to do one of these. For those titles marked *, some of the
suggested reading involves a bit of formal logic, but you can do the essay even
though you ignore the logic.
There will be a prize for the best term paper. It is Nicholas Rescher, Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range and Resolution
1. What counts as a paradox and a solution? [C. Chihara, `The Semantic paradoxes: A Diagnostic Investigation’ Philosophical Review 88 (1979), pp.590-618.]
2. Can there be true contradictions? * [Sainsbury, Paradoxes, Chap.6 and references to Priest, esp. 1993)]
3. Are some propositions true and false? * [Sainsbury, Paradoxes, Chap.6]
4. How can Achilles overtake the tortoise? * [Clark, Paradoxes from A to Z, pp.1-4; Sainsbury, Paradoxes, Chap.1]
5. Are supertasks impossible? ** [`Supertasks’ in Stanford online Encyclopaedia, http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html]
6. What would you do if you found yourself in a prisoner's dilemma?
(pick any variation on the standard dilemma that interests you.) [Clark, Paradoxes from A to Z, pp.150-153; Sainsbury, Paradoxes, Chap.3.2]
7. Sainsbury prefers a 'degrees of truth theory' (which departs trom classical logic) over a supervaluational theory (which preserves the principles of classical logic) for solving the Sorites paradox. Rosanna Keefe defends a supervaluational theory. Do you think that either approach is successful? ** [References in handouts, lectures 4, 5 and 6]
8. Can an Epistemicist solve the 'looks red to Tiffany' version of the Sorites? [References in handouts, lectures 6 and 7]
9. You know that this statement is false. Do you? Is it? * [Clark, Paradoxes from A to Z, pp.94-95; Sainsbury, Paradoxes, Chap.4, esp. 4.4]
10. Is there a sense in which self-reference of some kind should be ruled inadmissible? [Alf Ross, `On self-reference and a puzzle in constitutional law’, Mind 78 (1969), pp.1-24; D. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach]
11. Does the Liar say something apart from what it overtly says, so that, taking account of this, we can unproblematically declare the statement false? [G.E. Hughes, Buridan on Self-Reference (Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp.1-33]
12. Can the Liar be solved satisfactorily via a hierarchy of truth predicates? ** [Sainsbury, Paradoxes, Chap.5, esp.5.5]
13 . What, if anything, is wrong with the claim that the Liar sentence fails to yield a statement or a proposition? Does the claim, if true, provide a route to a solution of the Liar? [L. Goldstein, `A Unified Solution to Some Paradoxes’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (November, 1999), pp.53-74.]
14. Can a Kripkean theory of truth, or a more classical approach, such as that taken by Herzberger or Gupta, help solve the Liar paradox? ** [See the essays by Kripke, Herzberger and Gupta in R.L. Martin (ed.), Recent Essays on Truth and the Liar Paradox (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984).]
15. Is the clue to a correct solution of the Liar that the extension of the truth predicate varies with the context of utterance? Is indexicality responsible for the Liar?* [Sainsbury, Paradoxes, Chap.5, esp.5.7, 5.8; essays by Parsons and Burge in R.L. Martin (ed.), Recent Essays on Truth and the Liar Paradox (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984).]
16. Does the similarity of the Liar to a number of pragmatic paradoxes show that a solution must lie in the area of pragmatics rather than semantics? [George Lakoff, `Performative Antinomies’, Foundations of Language 8 (1972)]
17. Can there be genuinely paradoxical thoughts? [A.N. Prior Objects of Thought (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971). (Edited by Geach, P.T., Kenny, A.J.P.)
18. Is `heterological’ heterological? [L. Goldstein, `Farewell to Grelling’, Analysis 63 (2003), pp.31-32.]
19. What is the solution of Yablo’s
Paradox?
20. Does Timothy Williamson offer a satisfactory solution to the Surprise Examination Paradox in his Knowledge and its Limits (Oxford University Press, 2000), Chapters 5 and 6? **
21. Is Martin Hollis' Paradoxical Train of Thought a variant of the Surprise Examination, and how is it to be solved? [M. Hollis, `A Paradoxical Train of Thought’, Analysis 44 (1984), pp.205-6; id, `More Paradoxical Epistemics', Analysis 46 (1986), pp.217-218.). See also further discussion in Analysis 1986 (Kingham, Olin), 1987 (Rea).
22. Is the question 'What is an example of a question which is not its own answer?' its own answer? [Lawrence Zalcman, 'I'm Glad You Asked Me That Question', Analysis, 1988, p.160.]
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