Do paradoxes actually exist....like the paradox of schrodinger's cat for example...

OR are paradoxes simply an illusion...and what seems like a paradox only seems that way because of a lack of evidence?

I accept the possibility of paradoxes but I don't know much about the concept...and currently it just doesn't compute for me.

Schrödinger's cat is a paradox in Quantum mechanics. It is meant to be a practice of thought, not a reality. Certainly no paradox can possibly exist without having a natural explanation and resolution, therefore not being a paradox after all.

Many paradoxs are mental constructs

One of the oldest paradoxes ever formed is quoted in the Bible in Titus 1:12

Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: "All Cretans are liars."
You consider the statement thinking, OK, he himself was from Crete. He said "All Cretans are liars" if he is telling the truth, then all Cretans ARE liars, except he's Cretan so he must be lying, but if he's lying, then what he said was true so ......

I find it very revealing the way the paradox is quoted in Titus. The writer has completely missed the point, made a generalised insult out of what was an intellectual exercise and then added to it by misquoting with the stuff about evil, laziness and gluttony.

(October 5, 2008 at 10:49 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Schrödinger's cat is a paradox in Quantum mechanics. It is meant to be a practice of thought, not a reality. Certainly no paradox can possibly exist without having a natural explanation and resolution, therefore not being a paradox after all.

That's what I believe - but I wasn't entirely sure....so thanks for confirming that for me so clearly.

But I guess we can't rule out the POSSIBILITY of paradoxes in reality....because we can't rule out the possibility that the rules of physics might change....because you can't rule out any possibilites..you can't proof or disprove anything. As I'm sure you know .

But this possibility sounds as unlikely as the possibility of God...so it's so unlikely we can PRETTY MUCH rule it out entirely.

Quote:Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: "All Cretans are liars."
You consider the statement thinking, OK, he himself was from Crete. He said "All Cretans are liars" if he is telling the truth, then all Cretans ARE liars, except he's Cretan so he must be lying, but if he's lying, then what he said was true so ......

The problem with this paradox is that it assumes that to be a liar you must lie all the time. If this is true then the word "liar" simply loses all meaning as there is not a single person on Earth who lies about every single thing they say.

This of course is elegantly used by evangelicals to scare people. They will say "Have you ever told a lie?", to which I respond "Yes". They ask "What does that make you?" and expect me to call myself a liar, which I do not do because they use that admission to say "Oooooh, well you're going to burn in Hell!".

I think liars are people who are known for lying about a large number of things. In the paradox, the word "liar" takes on new meaning that is useless to 100% of everyone who might use it. A more correct paradox would be:

Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: "All Cretans lie ALL the time."

In fact the whole paradox wasn't the work of Epimenides but was taken from a quote of his:

Quote:They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,
For in thee we live and move and have our being.

If ALL Cretans lie ALL the time and he's a Creten...and he can't possibly lie all the time....then what he said is just one of his lies...doesn't mean he lies all the time and obviously doesn't mean he tells the truth all the time.

Have I missed a paradox here? I can't see one.

But if he was lying (coz he's a Cretan) when he said Cretans always lie, that means Cretans DON'T always lie, so maybe he WASN'T lying, which means.....

from wikipedia:

Quote:In philosophy and logic, the liar paradox, known to the ancients as the pseudomenon, encompasses paradoxical statements such as "This sentence is false." or "The next sentence is false. The previous sentence is true." These statements are paradoxical because there is no way to assign them a consistent truth value. If "This statement is false" is true, then what it says is the case; but what it says is that it is false, hence it is false. On the other hand, if it is false, then what it says is not the case; thus, since it says that it is false, it must be true.

So I guess he might be lying...but he might not?

It hinges around the dificulty in deciding if what he has said is true, or not.

if the statement is true then....unending cycle of but thens

but if the statement is false then .....unending cycle of but thens

To get back to your original topic, I think most paradoxes are mental constructs, exercises in logic, riddles. I don't know if there is such a thing as a physical paradox. Quantum mechanics has already been mentioned, light being a particle and a wave at the same time, but then all that stuff is just weird.

A paradox is literally two contradictory things happening at the same time. I'll try and explain the "liar" thing a bit better.

A Cretan says "All Cretans lie all the time"

This statement has no truth value until you give it one, so let's do that. Let's assume that the statement "All Cretans lie all the time" is the truth. However, since this statement (which is true) is said by a Cretan, it must be a lie, and so it must actually be false. So Cretans do not lie all the time. However, since the statement is now false, and still said by a Cretan, it means it could be true. (Repeat forever).

The statement is both true and false at the same time, and therefore a paradox.