Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Buttered cat paradox: Humorous example of a paradox from contradicting proverbs. Intentionally blank page: Many documents contain pages on which the text "This page intentionally left blank" is printed, thereby making the page not blank. Metabasis paradox: Conflicting definitions of what is the best kind of tragedy in Aristotle's Poetics.
In literature, the paradox is an anomalous juxtaposition of incongruous ideas for the sake of striking exposition or unexpected insight. It functions as a method of literary composition and analysis that involves examining apparently contradictory statements and drawing conclusions either to reconcile them or to explain their presence.
One example occurs in the liar paradox, which is commonly formulated as the self-referential statement "This statement is false". [16] Another example occurs in the barber paradox, which poses the question of whether a barber who shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves will shave himself. In this paradox, the barber is a self ...
This paradox challenges conventional understandings of cause and effect, as the events involved are both the origin and the result of each other. A notable example is found in the TV series Doctor Who, where a character saves her father in the past, fulfilling a memory he had shared with her as a child about a strange woman having saved his ...
The sorites paradox: If a heap is reduced by a single grain at a time, the question is at what exact point it ceases to be considered a heap. The sorites paradox (/ s oʊ ˈ r aɪ t iː z /), [1] sometimes known as the paradox of the heap, is a paradox that results from vague predicates. [2]
However, while Moore's paradox remains a philosophical curiosity, Moorean-type sentences are used by logicians, computer scientists, and those working with artificial intelligence as examples of cases in which a knowledge, belief, or information system is not modified in response to new data. [6]
Zeno's arguments may then be early examples of a method of proof called reductio ad absurdum, also known as proof by contradiction. Thus Plato has Zeno say the purpose of the paradoxes "is to show that their hypothesis that existences are many, if properly followed up, leads to still more absurd results than the hypothesis that they are one."
The raven paradox, also known as Hempel's paradox, Hempel's ravens or, rarely, the paradox of indoor ornithology, [1] [2] is a paradox arising from the question of what constitutes evidence for the truth of a statement. Observing objects that are neither black nor ravens may formally increase the likelihood that all ravens are black even though ...