5 famous philosophical paradoxes and their meaning for each of us

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

There is an opinion that philosophy is a very complex field of knowledge that is divorced from real life. In fact, this is absolutely not the case. There are some really useful lessons to be learned from this science.

Visitors to "Wikipedia" somehow noticed that if you click on the first link in each article, then sooner or later you will still run into one of the articles on philosophy. The explanation for this phenomenon is very simple: almost all the achievements of modern culture, science and technology are created on the basis of philosophical theories and paradoxes, invented in time immemorial.

In this article, we have collected for you some interesting examples and stories that philosophers have used to illustrate their ideas. Many of them are more than two thousand years old, but they still do not lose their relevance.

Buridan donkey

Buridan's donkey is a philosophical paradox named after Jean Buridan, despite the fact that it was known from the works of Aristotle.

The donkey stands between two identical haystacks. Unable to choose any of them, he wastes time evaluating each of the options. As a result of procrastination, the donkey becomes hungrier, and the cost of the decision increases. Having failed to choose any of the equivalent options, the donkey eventually dies of hunger.

This example is, of course, brought to the point of absurdity, but it perfectly illustrates that sometimes freedom of choice turns out to be a complete absence of any freedom. If you try to weigh similar options as rationally as possible, you can lose both. In this case, any step is better than an endless search for the optimal solution.

Cave myth

The cave myth is a famous allegory used by Plato in the dialogue "State" to explain his doctrine of ideas. It is considered the cornerstone of Platonism and objective idealism in general.

Imagine a tribe condemned to live in a deep cave. On the legs and arms of his members are fetters that impede movement. Several generations have already been born in this cave, the only source of knowledge for which are faint reflections of light and muffled sounds reaching their senses from the surface.

Now imagine what these people know about life outside?

And so one of them took off his shackles and reached the entrance to the cave. He saw the sun, trees, amazing animals, birds soaring in the sky. Then he returned to his fellow tribesmen and told them about what he had seen. Will they believe him? Or will they consider more reliable the gloomy picture of the underworld that they have seen with their own eyes all their lives?

Never discard ideas just because they seem absurd to you and do not fit into the usual picture of the world. Maybe all your experience is just dim reflections on the cave wall.

The paradox of omnipotence

This paradox lies in trying to understand whether a being that is able to perform any action can do anything that would limit its ability to perform actions.

Can an omnipotent being create a stone that it cannot lift by itself?

Perhaps it will seem to you that this philosophical problem is purely speculative self-indulgence, completely divorced from life and practice. However, it is not. The paradox of omnipotence is of paramount importance to religion, politics and public life.

While this paradox remains unresolved. We can only assume that absolute omnipotence does not exist. This means that we still always have a chance to win.

The chicken and egg paradox

Everyone has probably heard of this paradox. For the first time, a discussion of this problem appeared in the writings of the classical philosophers of Ancient Greece.

What came before: chicken or egg?

At first glance, the task seems insoluble, since the appearance of one element is impossible without the existence of another. However, the complexity of this paradox lies in the vague wording. The solution to the problem depends on what is embedded in the concept of "chicken egg". If a hen's egg is an egg laid by a hen, then the first was, of course, the hen that did not hatch from a hen's egg. If the hen's egg is the egg from which the hen hatches, then the first was the hen's egg that was not laid by the hen.

Every time you are faced with an unsolvable problem, carefully read its condition. Sometimes this is where the answer lies.

Achilles and the turtle

This paradox is attributed to Zeno of Elea, an ancient Greek philosopher, a famous representative of the Elea school. With his help, he tried to prove the inconsistency of the concepts of motion, space and multitude.

Let's say Achilles runs 10 times faster than a turtle and is 1,000 paces behind it. While Achilles runs this distance, the turtle will crawl 100 steps in the same direction. When Achilles runs 100 steps, the turtle crawls another 10 steps, and so on. The process will continue indefinitely, Achilles will never catch up with the turtle.

Despite the obvious absurdity of this statement, it is not so easy to refute it. In search of a solution, serious debates are being conducted, various physical and mathematical models are being built, articles are being written and dissertations are being defended.

For us, the conclusion from this problem is very simple. Even if all the scientific luminaries stubbornly claim that you will never catch up with the turtle, you should not give up. Just try it.