Note on paradoxes

I. M. R. Pinheiro1

Abstract: In this research note, we wish to discuss the idea of paradox and actually

exclude the term from the scientific world of terms.

Keywords: Sorites, Liar, Parallax, mistake, paradox, Bloom, taxonomy, science,

standards.

1. Introduction

The inspiration for this note comes from the fact that we have proven, recently, that one

of the best known paradoxes in Philosophy could not, possibly, have been less than an

equivocated interpretation of an allurement to exhibit the beauties of the natural

language.

We have, then, gone through all possible paradox classifications for the Sorites and

proven that, at most, it could be a paradox of communication, never of reference, or

others.

In an even more recent piece of research, we have managed to also prove that the Liar

1 PO Box 12396, A’Beckett st, Melbourne, VIC, AU, 3000, illmrpinheiro@gmail.com

I. M. R. Pinheiro
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Paradox is, once more, not a paradox. The difficulty noticed in human kind, which allows

people to wrongly believe it is a paradox, is that of accepting the flexibility, diversity, and

non-logical allowances that a human being has got on Earth, what actually can only make

the World more perfect, not the opposite, as the people having problems with all that may

think. It is definitely not an intention of Science to ‘box’ human beings in the same

boundaries as an electronic equipment, it is at most using the electronic equipment to

make human beings even more perfect, when they are found dissatisfied with some

aspect of their lives or bodies, for Science has been created to improve the World and

make it more comfortable, as well as acceptable, by human beings, not the opposite.

Anything which confines human reasoning to machines will be limiting, by large, human

pleasure with life and the own World elements. It is not proper that a true scientist tries to

confine any aspect of human normal interaction with the World inside of the machine

world, for Science is there to solve the needs of human kind, not to change human kind:

still the same story, the same difference, between creating a new problem and solving the

originally proposed problems…

Normal things become a puzzle only for those who obviously do not accept human

degrees of freedom, especially in discourse. Trivially, there is no freer place to be at than

the human expression, Arts there as evidence: from songs of only one word, or even

none, to songs with different words from beginning to end, entire sound time taken by

them…

In this paper, we hold only a few sections: development (2), conclusions (3), and

references (4).

I. M. R. Pinheiro
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 2. Development

Paradox is a word appearing defined, for instance, in [1]. In the one of the most popular

dictionaries in current use it reads:

“Main Entry: par·a·dox javascript:popWin('/cgi-

bin/audio.pl?parado02.wav=paradox')Pronunciation: \'per-ə-ˌdäks, 'pa-rə-\ Function:

noun Etymology: Latin paradoxum, from Greek paradoxon, from neuter of paradoxos

contrary to expectation, from para- + dokein to think, seem — more at decent Date:

1540.

1: a tenet contrary to received opinion2 a: a statement that is seemingly contradictory or

opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true b: a self-contradictory statement that at

first seems true c: an argument that apparently derives self-contradictory conclusions by

valid deduction from acceptable premises3: one (as a person, situation, or action) having

seemingly contradictory qualities or phases``.

Therefore, the undeniable characteristic of any event of scientific nature labeled as

paradox, or pointed to as a paradox, by any human being, must be having at least two

possible inferences from the same set of premises, one clearly being the opposite of the

other.

I. M. R. Pinheiro
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The most famous paradox of all, most mentioned in the scientific literature, has to be

what, after studied scientifically, has become the Parallax Mistake: ‘If from one angle of

sight the liquid looks as if it is in the height I wish for in the tube, but from another it

does not, which sight is actually correct?’

The Parallax Mistake is then a paradox of sight, with the same eyes observing the same

image, from different angles, yet reaching opposite conclusions.

Once they noticed that there was one point of sight which was correct, then the problem

was solved. Once the problem is solved, there is no paradox anymore.

Therefore, the word has been used to mean only ‘unsolved problem’ throughout time.

As people solved that paradox of sight, calling it all, after solved, Parallax Mistake, rather

than Parallax Paradox, which would definitely be its name, perpetuated in scientific

literature, if the area involved was something more similar to the language studies, it has

never been considered as a problem anymore.

Therefore, we could now easily remove the name Sorites Paradox from the scientific

literature and call it Sorites Mistake, or Linguists’ Problem, as we have done. Besides,

Liar Paradox could also be replaced with Sanity Judgment, or Truth-value Mistake.

Any scientific process must result in more accuracy, not confusion. Therefore, it would

never be possible that the Sorites Paradox, or the Parallax Paradox, or even the Liar

Paradox, were scientific issues, they would have to be only problems which remained

unsolved by Science.

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Parallax has been found to be a mistake in human observation, or contemplation, of

things which are part of their universe. Because of this, it is actually a paradox referring

to the human part of life, not a paradox in Science, or regarding its objects, only a

paradox for the own human beings, who see themselves as unable to accept they are not

the same as machines, what ought to imply that if they ever wanted to include their own

opinion, observation, referentials, paradigms, in a scientific proposal of something, or

solution, they would need a ‘third eye’ over them, once nothing that they may feel, think,

or observe, may be told to be of scientific nature, all depending on the accuracy and noise

contained in each one of their senses and integrity systems, which they, themselves,

would be fully unable to judge, or even describe. If it is a third human eye, the third eye

will obviously suffer from the same problems and biases the own original human beings

suffered, therefore being as scientifically useless as the original human being posing

obstruction to the scientific observations. The just mentioned third eye has been identified

with the machine for the Parallax Paradox, to be the lexicon theories for the Sorites

Paradox, and the liar detector for the Liar Paradox.

One must notice that the major pre-requisite to solve these problems, regarding

characteristics of the ‘third eye’, is obviously impartiality and detachment from the

problem.

In any hypothesis, the obvious conclusion is that there is no chance for a ‘scientific

paradox’: Any paradox is the initial step in the scientific investigation, which actually

precedes, usually, the own scientific problem, once any scientific problem must follow

our previously mentioned rules for well-posedness in Philosophy, for every single piece

of Science which exists will depend on the philosophical decisions on that level.
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In each one of the just mentioned paradoxes, there is a word which immediately tells us

the proposed problem is not of scientific nature yet, that more refinement is necessary,

observe:

1. In the Sorites Paradox, the word is the own adjective or substantive under

questioning, which depends on personal experience and observation (heap, bald, and

etc.);

1. In the Parallax Paradox, the word is ‘observation’, ‘eyes’, and etc.;

1. In the Liar Paradox, the word is ‘believe’.

Interesting enough, it all matches the studies and applications of Bloom’s taxonomy,

theories usually applied in Education for student evaluation ([2]), in terms of structure

and main theory. In Bloom’s theory, or its applications, one easily finds a list of words

which should tell the person, immediately, where the proposed exam question is located

in the scale.

We could easily add to the theory a list of words which take the exam question away from

the objective share of knowledge and places it on the ‘impossible-to-evaluate-objectively`

side of things, which would then coincide with our list for paradoxes, rather than

scientific problems, trivially including the words just mentioned.

In short, it should not be hard creating a list of words which should never be included in

any scientific proposal, or formal school/university evaluation, which is objective, not

formative.

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Just for starters, all feelings should never appear in those proposals (love, like, etc.). On

top, no verbs attached to human senses (smell, sight, hearing, etc.).

There are still the verbs related to faith, or religious feelings (believe, trust, etc.).

And these are just the basic terms which should never be part of any scientific proposal,

not even statistical.

3. Conclusions

We have, here, explained why the word ‘paradox’ must be simply seen as a synonym of

‘problem sketch’ in what regards Science. In other words, whenever the word ‘paradox’ is

seen in the scientific literature, one must immediately assume it all actually refers to the

sketch of a problem and detach their scientific minds from the original lexicon meaning

for the sake of the own Science and what we all intend with it, which is progression

towards top accurate and universal human reasoning.

Besides, we got to start developing a theory as beautiful and similar in structure as the

Bloom’s taxonomy theory, just for the well-posedness of scientific problems, continuing

our precursor work (or what seems to be precursor work for us so far) on well-posedness

([3]).
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 4. References:

[1] Merriam-Webster dictionary online, ` http://www.m-w.com/’, as accessed in Feb.

2007.

[2] Bloom, B.S. Ed. 1956. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of

Educational Goals. Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain . Longman, White Plains, NY,

2006.

[3] Pinheiro, M. R. Well-posedness in Philosophy. Submitted, 2009.

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