Paradoxes (Phil 579.01/679.02)

Official Outline and Syllabus

Description

An investigation of paradoxes and their philosophical relevance in areas such as vagueness, sets and properties, rational action, probabilistic and inductive reasoning.  The first half of the course will dealwith a collection of “classic” paradoxes mainly having to do with logic and semantics: the paradox of theheap (aka, the Sorites paradox), semantic paradoxes (such as the Liar Paradox, Grelling’s Paradox, and Yablo’s Paradox), Russell’s Paradox in set theory, and their proposed solutions. In the second half of the course we will look at paradoxes arising in other areas: inductive reasoning (Hempel’s Raven Paradox and Goodman’s Grue Paradox); conditional reasoning and epistemic paradoxes (such as the Surprise Examination Paradox); paradoxes of probabilistic reasoning (the Sleeping Beauty Problem); andparadoxes of decision theory (Newcomb’s Problem and the Two Envelope Paradox).

Prerequisites and preparation

Logic I (PHIL 279) or Elementary Formal Logic (PHIL 377) is a prerequisite for this course.

Syllabus

Week

Topic

Readings

1 Introduction Quine, “Paradoxes”
Bolander, “Self reference”
2 Vagueness :
Sorites Paradox
Hyde, “Sorites paradox”
Dummett, “Wang’s Paradox”
Fine, “Vagueness, truth, and logic”
Fara, “Shifting Sands”
3 Truth :
Liar Paradox
Tarski, “The semantic conception of truth”
Glanzberg and Beall, “The liar paradox”
Yablo, “ Paradox without self-reference”
4 Kripke, “Outline of a Theory of Truth”
5 Sets and Properties :
Russell’s Paradox
Grelling’s Paradox
Berry’s Paradox
Burali-Forti Paradox
Cantini, “Paradoxes and contemporary logic”
Russell, “On some difficulties in the theory of transfinite numbers and order types”
Ramsey, “The Foundations of Mathematics”
6 Assessments of Semantic Paradoxes Parsons, “Liar paradox”
Burge, “Semantical paradox”
Glanzberg, “The liar in context”
Russell, “What is semantic dialetheism?”
7 Induction :
Grue
The Raven
Hempel, “Studies in the Logic of Confirmation”
Goodman, “New Riddle of Induction”
8 Deontic Logic (guest lecture: Gillman Payette)
Conditional Reasoning :
Henry V Paradox
Dreier, “Practical Conditionals”
9 McGee’s Paradoxes
The Surprise Exam
McGee, “A Counterexample to Modus Ponens”
Sorensen, “Epistemic paradoxes”
Scriven, “Paradoxical Announcements”
10 The Dogmatism Paradox Sorensen, “Dogmatism, Junk Knowledge, and Conditionals”
Intro to Probability Theory (guest lecture: Bengt Autzen)
Gillies, “The Logical Theory”, Chapter 3 of Gillies’ Philosophical Theories of Probability, London: Routledge, 2000.
Mikkelson, “Dissolving the wine/water paradox”
11 Self-locating Belief :
Sleeping Beauty
The Shooting Room
Elga, “Self-locating Belief and the Sleepin Beauty Problem”
Leslie, “Testing the Doomsday Argument”
12 Decision Theory :
Newcomb’s Problem
Two Envelope Paradox
Nozick, “Newcomb’s Problem and two principles of choice”
Bar-Hillel and Margalit, “Newcomb’s Paradox Revisited”
Broome, “The Two-Envelope Paradox”
13 Student presentations

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