Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:41:33.381Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Another Look at Some of Zeno's Paradoxes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Extract

When I was first introduced to Zeno's paradoxes I thought how wonderful it is that the philosophers can prove things that are obviously not the case. The paradoxes of Zeno are particularly engaging for they, unlike such paradoxes as the set theoretic paradoxes of Russell and Löwenheim and Skolem, are straightforward and untechnical arguments about straightforward and untechnical concepts. Unquestionably, the most elegant refutation of any ‘proof’ that there is no motion was that of Diogenes of Sinope who, as Diogenes Laertius relates, simply walked about. Ingenious and incontestable as Diogenes’ response was, it does little to quell our intellectual uneasiness that something is gravely amiss about logic - it should not be possible to prove absurdities. I believe that logic is, for the present anyway, secure: that Zeno's paradoxes are in fact pseudo-paradoxical confusions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The Works of Aristotle Translated into English, edited by W. D. Ross.