Paradoxes

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Tensions in our understanding of our concepts and the world can often give rise to paradoxes: situations where we are led from considerations we accept and may even find obvious to conclusions which we find very surprising or even ridiculous. This course examines a variety of paradoxes, both ancient and contemporary, with a view to working out how to deal with them. As well as the interest of the paradoxes themselves, we will also think a bit about the issues that come up for dealing with puzzling arguments: when should we follow an argument where it leads, and when should we think the argument must have a mistake in it?