Paradoxes

ISBN-13: 9789400736382 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 196 str.

Piotr Ukowski; Marek Gensler

Opis

This book, provides a critical approach to all major logical paradoxes: from ancient to contemporary ones. There are four key aims of the book: 1. Providing systematic and historical survey of different approaches solutions of the most prominent paradoxes discussed in the logical and philosophical literature. 2. Introducing original solutions of major paradoxes like: Liar paradox, Protagoras paradox, an unexpected examination paradox, stone paradox, crocodile, Newcomb paradox. 3. Explaining the far-reaching significance of paradoxes of vagueness and change for philosophy and ontology. 4. Proposing a novel, well justified and, as it seems, natural classification of paradoxes. "

Recenzje

From the reviews:

"Piotr Lukowski's Paradoxes is an abridged, revised and translated version of a book written in Polish ... . As a source of paradoxes and arguments related to them, the book is highly valuable. ... Lukowski often develops his analyses carefully. In his book he not only gathers the paradoxes ... but also presents a rather unified and interesting view on them. It is definitely a good read." (Rafal Urbaniak, Studia Logica, Vol. 101, 2013)

Spis treści

Preface.- Introduction.- 1. Sophisms and paralogisms (paradoxes of: horses, Newcomb, Fitch).- 2. Wrong intuition’s paradoxes (paradoxes of: common birthday, approximation, Stevenson’s bottle, Hempel, infinity).- 3. Paradoxes coming from ambiguity (paradoxes of Protagoras, Elektra, horn-headed man, the club without a name, God’s omnipotence, stone) .- 4. Paradoxes of self-reference (Möbius ribbon (band), Klein’s bottle, liar paradox, Buridan, barber, Richard, Berry, Grelling and Nelson, unexpected examination, crocodile).- 5. Ontological paradoxes.- 6. Epilogue.- Bibliography.- Subject index.- Name index.

O autorze

Piotr Lukowski is the Head of the Department of Cognitive Science at the Institute of Psychology, University of Lodz. He was visiting scholar in the Imperial College of London (1993), at the University of Warwick in Coventry (1993), Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) (1995-97, Japan), Université de Nantes (1998-1999, France). In 1993-94 and between 1998 and 2007, Piotr Lukowski was the editor of the journal ''Bulletin of the Section of Logic''.

Blurb

The book is a monograph devoted to paradoxes of reasoning in the European tradition of philosophical logic. For each paradox, it analyses important attempts at its solution.The content is arranged according to the new classification of paradoxes presented by the author. The paradoxes discussed in the first three chapters can be called intra-linguistic ones. The first chapter analyzes paradoxes resulting from a clash between a logically correct reasoning and previously accepted opinions. The second one is devoted to paradoxes resulting from the error of ambiguity. The third one analyzes reasonings, whose paradoxical character originates in self-referent language constructions. Chapter four discusses paradoxes which are called ontological ones, whose existence results from a confrontation between the language description of reality and that reality itself.

The book is written in a clear way and does not require advanced knowledge of logic. It is addressed to readers with either humanist or scientific educational background and deals with important problems of language, cognition and reasoning in an accessible way.