Download or read book Paradox Lost written by Michael Huemer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paradox Lost covers ten of philosophy’s most fascinating paradoxes, in which seemingly compelling reasoning leads to absurd conclusions. The following paradoxes are included: The Liar Paradox, in which a sentence says of itself that it is false. Is the sentence true or false? The Sorites Paradox, in which we imagine removing grains of sand one at a time from a heap of sand. Is there a particular grain whose removal converts the heap to a non-heap? The Puzzle of the Self-Torturer, in which a series of seemingly rational choices has us accepting a life of excruciating pain, in exchange for millions of dollars. Newcomb’s Problem, in which we seemingly maximize our expected profit by taking an unknown sum of money, rather than taking the same sum plus $1000. The Surprise Quiz Paradox, in which a professor finds that it is impossible to give a surprise quiz on any particular day of the week . . . but also that if this is so, then a surprise quiz can be given on any day. The Two Envelope Paradox, in which we are asked to choose between two indistinguishable envelopes, and it is seemingly shown that each envelope is preferable to the other. The Ravens Paradox, in which observing a purple shoe provides evidence that all ravens are black. The Shooting Room Paradox, in which a deadly game kills 90% of all who play, yet each individual’s survival turns on the flip of a fair coin. Each paradox is clearly described, common mistakes are explored, and a clear, logical solution offered. Paradox Lost will appeal to professional philosophers, students of philosophy, and all who love intellectual puzzles.

Download or read book Epistemology 50 Puzzles Paradoxes and Thought Experiments written by Kevin McCain and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-26 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new kind of entrée to contemporary epistemology, Kevin McCain presents fifty of the field’s most important puzzles, paradoxes, and thought experiments. Assuming no familiarity with epistemology from the reader, McCain titles each case with a memorable name, describes the details of the case, explains the issue(s) to which the case is relevant, and assesses its significance. McCain also briefly reviews the key responses to the case that have been put forward, and provides a helpful list of suggested readings on the topic. Each entry is accessible, succinct, and self-contained. Epistemology: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments is a fantastic learning tool as well as a handy resource for anyone interested in epistemological issues. Key Features: Though concise overall, offers broad coverage of the key areas of epistemology. Describes each imaginative case directly and in a memorable way, making the cases accessible and easy to remember. Provides a list of Suggested Readings for each case, divided into General Overviews, Seminal Presentations, and Other Important Discussions.

Download or read book Free Will and Human Agency 50 Puzzles Paradoxes and Thought Experiments written by Garrett Pendergraft and published by Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments in Philosophy. This book was released on 2022-06-15 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new kind of entrée to discussions of free will and human agency, Pendergraft illuminates 50 puzzles, paradoxes, and thought experiments. Assuming no familiarity with the topic, each chapter describes a case, explains the questions that it raises, summarizes some of the key responses, and provides suggested readings.

Download or read book Philosophies Puzzles and Paradoxes written by Yudi Pawitan and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mathematics is focused on formal manipulation of abstract concepts, while statistics deals with real-world data and involves a higher degree of subjectivity due to the role of interpretation. Interpretation is shaped by context as well as the knowledge, biases, assumptions or preconceptions of the interpreter, leading to a variety of potential interpretations of concepts as well as results. This book thoroughly examines the distinct philosophical approaches to statistics - Bayesian, frequentist, and likelihood - arising from different interpretations of probability and uncertainty. These differences are highlighted through a variety of puzzles and paradoxes. Features: Exploration of the philosophy of knowledge and truth and how they relate to deductive and inductive reasoning, and ultimately scientific and statistical thinking. Discussion of the philosophical theories of probability that are wider than the standard Bayesian and frequentist views. Exposition and examination of Savage's axioms as the basis of subjective probability and Bayesian statistics. Explanation of likelihood and likelihood-based inference, including the controversy surrounding the likelihood principle. Discussion of fiducial probability and its evolution to confidence procedure. Introduction of extended and hierarchical likelihood for handling random parameters, with the recognition of confidence as extended likelihood, leading to epistemic confidence as an objective measure of uncertainty for single events. Detailed analyses and new variations of classic paradoxes, such as the Monty Hall puzzle, the paradox of the ravens, the exchange paradox, etc. Substantive yet non-technical, catering to readers with only introductory exposure to the theory probability and statistics. This book primarily targets statisticians, including both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers interested in the philosophical basis of probability and statistics. It is also suitable for philosophers of science and general readers intrigued by puzzles and paradoxes.

Download or read book Philosophies Puzzles and Paradoxes written by Yudi Pawitan and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2024-03-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike mathematics, statistics deals with real-world data and involves a higher degree of subjectivity due to the role of interpretation. Interpretation is shaped by context as well as the knowledge, preferences, assumptions and preconceptions of the interpreter, leading to a variety of interpretations of concepts as well as results. Philosophies, Puzzles and Paradoxes: A Statistician’s Search for Truth thoroughly examines the distinct philosophical approaches to statistics – Bayesian, frequentist and likelihood – arising from different interpretations of probability and uncertainty. These differences are highlighted through numerous puzzles and paradoxes and illuminated by extensive discussions of the background philosophy of science. Features: Exploration of the philosophy of knowledge and truth and how they relate to deductive and inductive reasoning, and ultimately scientific and statistical thinking Discussion of the philosophical theories of probability that are wider than the standard Bayesian and frequentist views Exposition and examination of Savage’s axioms as the basis of subjective probability and Bayesian statistics Explanation of likelihood and likelihood-based inference, including the controversy surrounding the likelihood principle Discussion of fiducial probability and its evolution to confidence procedure Introduction of extended and hierarchical likelihood for random parameters, with the recognition of confidence as extended likelihood, leading to epistemic confidence as an objective measure of uncertainty for single events Detailed analyses and new variations of classic paradoxes, such as the Monty Hall puzzle, the paradox of the ravens, the exchange paradox, and more Substantive yet non-technical, catering to readers with only introductory exposure to the theory of probability and statistics This book primarily targets statisticians in general, including both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers interested in the philosophical basis of probability and statistics. It is also suitable for philosophers of science and general readers intrigued by puzzles and paradoxes.

Download or read book The Philosophy Foundation written by Peter Worley and published by Crown House Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-30 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The name 'Thoughtings' was inspired by a 5-year old who, when asked to explain what thinking is without using the word 'think' said 'It's when you're thoughting'. Children love pondering big philosophical questions like 'Does the universe end?', 'Where is my mind?' and 'Can something be true and false at the same time?'. These verses capture that impulse in the growing mind and feed it further. These are not poems or, at least, not in the traditional sense of the word... They are a kind of poem specifically designed around a particular puzzle or problem that might be thought more philosophy than poetry. Here's to the joy of puzzlement!

Download or read book Paradoxes from A to Z written by Michael Clark and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This sentence is false'. Is it? If a hotel with an infinite number of rooms is fully occupied, can it still accommodate a new guest? How can we have emotional responses to fiction, when we know that the objects of our emotions do not exist?

Download or read book A Cabinet of Philosophical Curiosities written by Roy A. Sorensen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cabinet of Philosophical Curiosities is a collection of puzzles, paradoxes, riddles, and miscellaneous logic problems. Depending on taste, one can partake of a puzzle, a poem, a proof, or a pun.

Download or read book A Brief History of the Paradox written by Roy Sorensen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-12-04 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Labyrinths of Reason written by William Poundstone and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sharply intelligent, consistently provocative book takes the reader on an astonishing, thought-provoking voyage into the realm of delightful uncertainty--a world of paradox in which logical argument leads to contradiction and common sense is seemingly rendered irrelevant.

Download or read book Oppositions and Paradoxes written by John L. Bell and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2016-04-18 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since antiquity, opposed concepts such as the One and the Many, the Finite and the Infinite, and the Absolute and the Relative, have been a driving force in philosophical, scientific, and mathematical thought. Yet they have also given rise to perplexing problems and conceptual paradoxes which continue to haunt scientists and philosophers. In Oppositions and Paradoxes, John L. Bell explains and investigates the paradoxes and puzzles that arise out of conceptual oppositions in physics and mathematics. In the process, Bell not only motivates abstract conceptual thinking about the paradoxes at issue, but he also offers a compelling introduction to central ideas in such otherwise-difficult topics as non-Euclidean geometry, relativity, and quantum physics. These paradoxes are often as fun as they are flabbergasting. Consider, for example, the famous Tristram Shandy paradox: an immortal man composing an autobiography so slowly as to require a year of writing to describe each day of his life — he would, if he had infinite time, presumably never complete the work, although no individual part of it would remain unwritten. Or think of an office mailbox labelled “mail for those with no mailbox”—if this is a person’s mailbox, how can they possibly have “no mailbox”? These and many other paradoxes straddle the boundary between physics and metaphysics, and demonstrate the hidden difficulty in many of our most basic concepts.

Download or read book Paradoxes written by R. M. Sainsbury and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A paradox can be defined as an unacceptable conclusion derived by apparently acceptable reasoning from apparently acceptable premises. Many paradoxes raise serious philosophical problems, and they are associated with crises of thought and revolutionary advances. The expanded and revised third edition of this intriguing book considers a range of knotty paradoxes including Zeno's paradoxical claim that the runner can never overtake the tortoise, a new chapter on paradoxes about morals, paradoxes about belief, and hardest of all, paradoxes about truth. The discussion uses a minimum of technicality but also grapples with complicated and difficult considerations, and is accompanied by helpful questions designed to engage the reader with the arguments. The result is not only an explanation of paradoxes but also an excellent introduction to philosophical thinking.

Download or read book Puzzles Paradoxes and Problems written by Peter A. French and published by St Martins Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Philosophy of Mind written by Torin Alter and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-02-12 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imaginative cases, or what might be called puzzles and other thought experiments, play a central role in philosophy of mind. The real world also furnishes philosophers with an ample supply of such puzzles. This volume collects 50 of the most important historical and contemporary cases in philosophy of mind and describes their significance. The authors divide them into five sections: consciousness and dualism; physicalist theories and the metaphysics of mind; content, intentionality, and representation; perception, imagination, and attention; and persons, personal identity, and the self. Each chapter provides background, describes a central case or cases, discusses the relevant literature, and suggests further readings. Philosophy of Mind: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments promises to be a useful teaching tool as well as a handy resource for anyone interested in the area. Key Features: Offers stand-alone chapters, each presented in an identical format: - Background - The Case - Discussion - Recommended Reading Each chapter is self-contained, allowing students to quickly understand an issue and giving instructors flexibility in assigning readings to match the themes of the course. Additional pedagogical features include a general volume introduction as well as smaller introductions to each of the five sections and a glossary at the end of the book.

Download or read book Paradox written by Doris Olin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paradoxes are more than just intellectual puzzles - they raise substantive philosophical issues and offer the promise of increased philosophical knowledge. In this introduction to paradox and paradoxes, Doris Olin shows how seductive paradoxes can be, why they confuse and confound, and why they continue to fascinate. Olin examines the nature of paradox, outlining a rigorous definition and providing a clear and incisive statement of what does and does not count as a resolution of a paradox. The view that a statement can be both true and false, that contradictions can be true, is seen to provide a challenge to the account of paradox resolution, and is explored. With this framework in place, the book then turns to an in-depth treatment of the Prediction Paradox, versions of the Preface/Fallibility Paradox, the Lottery Paradox, Newcomb's Problem, the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Sorites Paradox. Each of these paradoxes is shown to have considerable philosophical punch. Olin unpacks the central arguments in a clear and systematic fashion, offers original analyses and solutions, and exposes further unsettling implications for some of our most deep-seated principles and convictions.

Download or read book This Sentence is False written by Peter Cave and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-07-12 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entertaining introduction to logic and reasoning, packed with puzzles and thought experiments for the reader to try "Peter Cave takes us on an edifying tour through the world of paradoxes, and there is much to be learned, as well as much enjoyment to be had, in the process." -Adrian W. Moore, University of Oxford, UK "'This sentence is false' is a sentence printed on the cover of this book. A sentence is not a name. So what is the name of the book? This book (whatever its name) is full of intriguing philosophical puzzles ... Paradoxes may seem trivial at first glance, but further thought reveals them to be challenges to some of our most fundamental beliefs and preconceptions. Peter Cave entertainingly escorts the reader through a great variety of these fascinating puzzles, shining light that is fresh and bright." -Laurence Goldstein, University of Kent, UK "This is a truly wonderful book. The topic is tough, but Peter Cave brings it to life. He manages to give new insights on old topics, which is itself remarkable, and he also brings in plenty of less familiar topics ... All in all, it is a joy to see such cleverness and clarity of thought coexisting with such an easy (and light and amusing) writing style." -Professor Imre Leader, Cambridge University, UK Put your neurons through their paces with this lively and engaging introduction to paradoxes. From "Buridan's Ass" and the "Surprise Examination" to "The Liar" and "Sleeping Beauty," This Sentence is False introduces all the key philosophical paradoxes. This fascinating guide to logic and reasoning is packed with puzzles and thought experiments to actively engage the reader in critical thinking. As well as paradoxes that occur in our everyday lives, topics also include God, ethics, political philosophy, space, and time. This Sentence is False will put your mind to the test, challenge what you think you know, and lead you on a fascinating journey through logical reasoning.

Download or read book Paradoxes written by Gareth Southwell and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: