A procedural solution to the unexpected hanging and sorites paradoxes
Mind 107 (428):751-762 (1998)
| Abstract | The paradox of the Unexpected Hanging, related prediction paradoxes, and the Sorites paradoxes all involve reasoning about ordered collections of entities: days ordered by date in the case of the Unexpected Hanging; men ordered by the number of hairs on their heads the case of the bald man version of the Sorites. The reasoning then assigns each entity a value that depends on the previously assigned value of one of the neighboring entities. The final result is paradoxical because it conflicts with the obviously correct, commonsensical value. The paradox is due to the serial procedure of assigning a value based on the newly assigned value of the neighbor. An alternative procedure is to assign each value based only on the original values of neighbors - a parallel procedure. That procedure does not give paradoxical answers. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,653 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesJack M. Holtzman (1987). An Undecidable Aspect of the Unexpected Hanging Problem. Philosophia 17 (2):195-198.
Gabriella Pigozzi (2005). Two Aggregation Paradoxes in Social Decision Making: The Ostrogorski Paradox and the Discursive Dilemma. Episteme 2 (2):119-128.
Igor Douven (2002). A New Solution to the Paradoxes of Rational Acceptability. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (3):391-410.
Elia Zardini (2008). Living on the Slippery Slope : The Nature, Sources and Logic of Vagueness. Dissertation, University of St Andrews
Richard DeWitt (1992). Remarks on the Current Status of the Sorites Paradox. Journal of Philosophical Research 17 (1):93.
Alex Byrne (2004). How Hard Are the Sceptical Paradoxes? Noûs 38 (2):299–325.
Jack M. Holtzman (1988). A Note on Schrödinger's Cat and the Unexpected Hanging Paradox. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (3):397-401.
Rosanna Keefe (2011). Phenomenal Sorites Paradoxes and Looking the Same. Dialectica 65 (3):327-344.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads7 ( #133,343 of 548,984 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,327 of 548,984 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
