Abstract

Copi, Quine and van Heijenoort have each claimed that there are two fundamentally different kinds of logical paradox; namely, genuine paradoxes like Russell's and pseudo-paradoxes like the Barber of Seville. I want to contest this claim and will present my case in three stages. Firstly, I will characterize the logical paradoxes; state standard versions of three of them; and demonstrate that a symbolic formulation of each leads to a formal contradiction. Secondly, I will discuss the reasons Copi, Quine and van Heijenoort have given for the distinction between genuine and pseudo-paradoxes. Thirdly, I will attempt to explain why there is no such class as the class of all and only those classes which are not members of themselves