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| 6007 | If you know your father, but don't recognise your father veiled, you know and don't know the same person |
| Full Idea: The 'undetected' or 'veiled' paradox of Eubulides says: if you know your father, and don't know the veiled person before you, but that person is your father, you both know and don't know the same person. | |||
| From: report of Eubulides (fragments/reports [c.390 BCE]) by R.M. Dancy - Megarian School | |||
| A reaction: Essentially an uninteresting equivocation on two senses of "know", but this paradox comes into its own when we try to give an account of how linguistic reference works. Frege's distinction of sense and reference tried to sort it out (Idea 4976). |
| 6006 | If you say truly that you are lying, you are lying |
| Full Idea: The liar paradox of Eubulides says 'if you state that you are lying, and state the truth, then you are lying'. | |||
| From: report of Eubulides (fragments/reports [c.390 BCE]) by R.M. Dancy - Megarian School | |||
| A reaction: (also Cic. Acad. 2.95) Don't say it, then. These kind of paradoxes of self-reference eventually lead to Russell's 'barber' paradox and his Theory of Types. |
| 6008 | Removing one grain doesn't destroy a heap, so a heap can't be destroyed |
| Full Idea: The 'sorites' paradox of Eubulides says: if you take one grain of sand from a heap (soros), what is left is still a heap; so no matter how many grains of sand you take one by one, the result is always a heap. | |||
| From: report of Eubulides (fragments/reports [c.390 BCE]) by R.M. Dancy - Megarian School | |||
| A reaction: (also Cic. Acad. 2.49) This is a very nice paradox, which goes to the heart of our bewilderment when we try to fully understand reality. It homes in on problems of identity, as best exemplified in the Ship of Theseus (Ideas 1212 + 1213). |