Customer Reviews

Paradoxes

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Philosophy begins in wonderment. Sometimes it ends there, too.

Good paradoxes aren't just for entertainment (although they _are_ vastly entertaining; check out any of Raymond Smullyan's books for proof of that assertion). Each of them opens a door to all sorts of fascinating issues of tremendous philosophical importance.

Mark Sainsbury's fine introduction, in its heavily revised second edition, is a set of keys to those doors. For example, his discussion of Zeno's famous paradoxes doesn't just inform the lay reader what they are; it explains why they're important even today: because they call into question whether the now-standard mathematical analyses of the paradoxes adequately capture our ordinary understanding of space. That is, the paradoxes can be resolved in the ideal space of mathematicians, but that doesn't _necessarily_ mean they can be resolved in the space in which we really live.

In difficulty, the exposition is about one notch higher than in William Poundstone's _Labyrinths of Reason_, so you may want to read Poundstone first if you're new to this subject altogether. But do get around to this one. It's a solid account, from a more or less "analytic" outlook (though that term probably suffers from all the "vagueness" problems discussed in Sainsbury's second chapter).

Sainsbury will also introduce some topics Poundstone doesn't cover -- notably, and perhaps most interestingly, Graham Priest's "dialethism" -- a logic in which, Priest claims, it's possible for some contradictions to be true[!]. Sainsbury doesn't agree but nevertheless concludes that he doesn't have a knockdown argument against it. (Be aware that Sainsbury's account has been criticized by other philosophers, including Priest. Follow up with Priest's own books if you get interested in this subject.)

Sainsbury also doesn't hesitate to offer his own resolutions of the paradoxes, but he warns the reader not to accept his resolutions blindly. In fact there are several about which I continue to disagree with him (not an unusual phenomenon when the subject is paradoxes), but he's changed my mind on a couple.

Overall, then, this is a well-written and cogently argued presentation, highly recommended to anyone interested in paradoxes and their relevance to philosophy.

I read this book and William Poundstone's "Labyrinths of Reason" at about the same time and found each to compliment the other very nicely. I strongly recommend reading Poundstone first, especially if you're like me and have very little or no formal training in logic. The two books cover much the same territory but in different ways. Poundstone is the better writer and does a wonderful job explaining the paradoxes and their interesting implications. Sainsbury is also a very good writer. His presentation is more matter-of-fact and rigorous though never overly technical. Sainsbury's chapters on the paradoxes of Zeno, Newcomb, Hempel, and Goodman are outstanding - extremely interesting, insightful, and fun. The going starts to get a bit rough in Chapter 5 with the Liar Paradox. Sainsbury digs into this paradox that at first seems simple but turns out to be perhaps the most difficult of all. This chapter occasionally threatens to degenerate into the sort of tedious detail and terminology that makes so many college logic courses so dreadfully awful but fortunately this never happens. The final chapter is also a challenge but one worth tackling: I suggest ibuprofen for the headache you'll get trying to understand why, to a logician, the three statements "This sentence if false" and "This sentence is not true" and "This sentence is untrue" are apparently three entirely different things! Even if it all doesn't stick the first time through, the great thing is that you'll find yourself thinking about things just a little bit differently.

If you want to learn or teach about Logical Paradoxes, this is the book you must raed. I have read many books on this topic, and to my opinion, this book is the best. The paradoxes and their solution (or dissolutions) are presented very clearly.

While the topic of the book is paradoxes, this book can easily be used for a 20th century analytic metaphysics course. Sainsbury is easy to understand and lays out the various issues clearly and concisely. My only problem with the book is his last chapter on dialetheism. His exposition is clear, but it is not as accurate as it could be. Anyone reading this chapter would be advised to read some of Priest's original works, and Priest's response to Sainsbury given to the Aristotelian Society.

The book is required reading for U London Logic course in the BA Philosophy. It makes for easyt reading and covers most of the basics of paradoxes. I recommend it as a good first look at the subject.

As a beginner in the study of philosophy, I have frequently read that the study of paradoxes is a waste of time, that paradoxes add little to the appreciation of philosophy as a whole. Perhaps that's true. Prof. Sainsbury in his introduction even warns us that the study of paradoxes is said to have led to the premature death of Philetas of Cos back in the old days.

I made the mistake of thinking that as a beginning student of philosophy I would be capable of fully appreciating this book and absorbing its contents. In fact, I am not, and could not. However, I can say without hesitation that it wasn't Professor Sainsbury's fault. He writes very clearly and without affectation, presenting the material as well as anyone could. Perhaps he makes some errors in his analysis of the paradoxes, but others will have to judge that, not I.

In addition to the "fun" of paradoxes, he also relates them to more general problems of philosophy, which I was better able to absorb. For example, in discussing Newcomb's paradox and rational behavior, he has this to say:

"A clear perception of the advantages of being a one-boxer cannot give you a REASON for becoming one - even if that were in your power. Atheists might clearly perceive the comfort to be derived from theism, but this does not give them a REASON for believing that God exists. The light of reason cannot direct one toward what one perceives as irrational. To adopt a position one regards as irrational one needs to rely on something other than reason: drugs, fasting, chanting, dancing, or whatever."

This is one of the better and more succinct descriptions of the relationship between reason and religious belief that I have read, even though I don't completely agree with it. Reason can take one part-way toward a belief in God, even if total belief is ultimately irrational. But at least one understands what Prof. Sainsbury has to say on the subject, and it's a minor point, anyway.

Highly recommended, for those who can handle it.

This is an important book that permits people to look at relationships that rest on flimsy causation. There are a good deal of what ifs in this book. Despite the tedious digressions into fantasy land, the exercises in inquiry need to be evaluated and practiced.

Students and communities need to move from seeing contradictions and states of mutually exclusivity as something beyond the juvenile "Oxymoron." This book can help.

Chapter 2, Moral Paradoxes is a good exploration into moral issues but it is hardly conclusive or exhaustive. Chapter 5, Believing Rationally is equally good in its discussion of seeking reason but that chapter also fails to quite soar.

Nevertheless, this book is recommended because it encourages readers to challenge their assumptions and follow an argument back to its root premise. If you cannot buy the first cause, nothing follows.

This book would make a good companion text to a course in logic or critical thinking.

I am now using this text for a Problem Solving course.

I came across this text as a graduate student some years ago. Indeed, the problems presented in this text literally left me unsafe to drive on more than one occasion. The problems raised are philosophically intoxicating. The author should be commended for his clarity and ability to bring the issues to the forefront of discussion and thought.

The text is well written for both student and teacher alike.

Paradoxes are surprising conclusions drawn from seemingly reasonable premises. And for the past twenty five centuries paradoxes have driven the most interesting developments in philosophy.

Take two paradoxes from Zeno of Elea for example:

In one, Zeno asserted that a runner attempting to catch a tortoise in a race could never do so because the runner would first have to traverse half the distance between himself and the tortoise, then the remaining half and so forth before actually catching the tortoise. Since an infinite number of divisions could arguably be made in the distance between the two, the travel time would infinite and therefore arguably unbreachable.

In another, related paradox, Zeno argued that an arrow in flight never actually moved because at each discrete step along its trajectory, the arrow was actually in one place. Since it was stationary at each position it was therefore stationary.

Though each of these paradoxes are surprising, they follow naturally from their premises.

That's why I probably would've preferred it if this book had been called paradoxes and fallacies because just because some things may be logically true doesn't make them factually true. Or, as Roger Penrose so wisely observed in his masterwork The Road to Reality, our mathematics (or structured thinking) are only good to the extent that they track observable evidence.

In the case of the first paradox, the tortoise and the runner, the fallacy comes from confusing the theoretical inifinity of potential space divisions with the real distance and how quickly it can actually be traversed.

In the case of the second fallacy, however, the genuine paradox says some important things about the nature of motion and how we choose to denote it. In this regard, the paradox of the stationary arrow becomes a natural segueway to modern thinking on block time and indeed even time itself.

However, the point is that in some cases more and in some cases less, the paradoxes discussed in this book are great intellectual fodder and indeed in some cases precursers to significant mathematical or scientific advances.

I heartily recommend this book to the mathematician, scientifically inclined or even those just interested in philosophy.

The logically true is a fertile ground for both the real and possible as well as the fanciful and fallacious alike.

This book is certainly not worth the price. I have never seen such an interesting topic turned into something so dull. Certainly not what I had expected. Look at a preview online before buying.