Why are paradoxes considered profound?

@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

oh you really believe I am not acquainted with the expression "deep insights" and what it is suppose to mean ?

Yes. Your response to the relevant post made that a reasonable conclusion.

@Cyracuz,

...I guess you have much to think about what depth of thought points to after all, and its not metaphysics, no matter how profound that might seem to some murky lost souls who would do far better in wall street dealing with commodity´s and such, then they ever would in a philosophy forum...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

I would stop talking now if I were you. You are only embarrassing yourself.
Making mistakes isn't a reason to feel foolish, though rambling to cover them up certainly is.

I seem to have a rare talent to get you huffing and puffing...

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@Cyracuz,

...are you joking ???...man, you are just damn stupid !
I MEANT to unravel his pseudo analogy that much I assure you !!!

Post Scriptum - oh and before you get it wrong again, the wall street thing was not addressed at you...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

...while we are on the matter of clarifying don´t go thinking I have a bad opinion on Robert...it is precisely because I don´t...he just sound young and foolish with his intellectual juggle...
...for that matter I mostly sound young and foolish...but if there is any hope left in this world I like to look at it as a good sign...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

I MEANT to unravel his pseudo analogy

Well, all you did was give the impression of having misunderstood it.

You might wanna practice your obscurantism a bit more, fil. I'm beginning to see through it.

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@Cyracuz,

...yeah yeah...I always had this intuition on you being a talent for astrology and tarot... Wink

(don´t be anoid Cyr just messing with you a little bit)

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@The Pentacle Queen,

The Pentacle Queen wrote:

Why are paradoxes considered profound?

Because apparent paradoxes that do not involve a logical error reveal mistakes in deep-seated assumptions of ours. For example, consider the statement: "What I'm saying right now is false." Is the statement true or false? If it's true, what you were saying just then must have been false. But if the statement is false, what you were saying just then was not false, so it must have been true. And so on ad infinitum. Clearly the statement is paradoxical.

Now, how is it profound? I would argue it's profound because it raises our consciousness to a false, hidden assumption we make at the very core of logic. That assumption is known as the law of the excluded middle, stating that all logical propositions are either true or false. There is no third way for them to be. Alternatively, the also-fundamental law of non-contradiction, stating that a statement and its negation cannot both be true, must be wrong. Either way, classical logic is internally unsound and needs changes to make it sound again. That looks like a pretty profound insight to me. And I'm pretty sure that other genuine paradoxes are profound in a similar way.

The Pentacle Queen wrote:

Can anyone work towards a definition of profundity within text?

Nah, I think I'll pass on that one.

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@Thomas,

yep...you just did pull the most damn mind boggling paradox in the world... the one immediately comes to mind when spoken about paradoxes...it certainly sounds profound enough to me !

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@The Pentacle Queen,

Quote:

Can anyone work towards a definition of profundity within text?

I think that when we say something is profound, that is primarily an emotional evaluation. I do not think we can find a definition on what constitutes something profound, since it is such a subjective experience. What may seem like a deep understanding of a particular subject may seem like trivial information to someone else. The profoundness, I think, doesn't come from penetrating deeply into an idea, but from the rewarding feeling of finally understanding complexities that are harder to express than to consider.
In my experience, some insights I've achieved sometimes seem rather trivial when I try to express them. I might manage to give a detailed and accurate account of them, but somehow the profoundness isn't communicated with the bits of information...

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@The Pentacle Queen,

I guess "logic" amounts to rules for what (or how?) to THINK. "Statutes" tell us what to DO...laws of different kinds (then there are standards, norms, etc.). I think I'll go watch TV, a more sensible activity

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@Fil Albuquerque,

my favourite solution from the wiki:

Quote:

Alfred Tarski

Alfred Tarski diagnosed the paradox as arising only in languages that are "semantically closed", by which he meant a language in which it is possible for one sentence to predicate truth (or falsehood) of another sentence in the same language (or even of itself). To avoid self-contradiction, it is necessary when discussing truth values to envision levels of languages, each of which can predicate truth (or falsehood) only of languages at a lower level. So, when one sentence refers to the truth-value of another, it is semantically higher. The sentence referred to is part of the "object language", while the referring sentence is considered to be a part of a "meta-language" with respect to the object language. It is legitimate for sentences in "languages" higher on the semantic hierarchy to refer to sentences lower in the "language" hierarchy, but not the other way around. This prevents a system from becoming self-referential.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

Now, how is it profound? I would argue it's profound because it raises our consciousness to a false, hidden assumption we make at the very core of logic. That assumption is known as the law of the excluded middle, stating that all logical propositions are either true or false.

One could argue that the statement "What I'm saying right now is false" isn't a logical proposition. Being paradoxical, it clearly isn't logical, which would mean that the law of the excluded middle doesn't apply to that particular proposition.

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@Cyracuz,

...thank god diversity exists because no critic intended I have exactly the opposite idea on profoundness...
...I rather think to be profound then be profound to start thinking...that´s usually how bad poetry starts...

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

For example, consider the statement: "What I'm saying right now is false."

But is that still profound to you, the ten millionth time you read it? Or are you saying that it's no longer a paradox to you at that point and that a paradox inherently implies novelty?

Because profound is in the eye of the beholder, i.e. relative, and to me once the novelty wears off any discovery it doesn't seem as profound to me anymore, but the first time I happen across pretty much any insight it feels profound for a while.

Edit: and for contrast there are some things that seem profound (huge economic models as an example) to me no matter how many times I point my thoughts at it. Things more complex than simple paradoxes, that I still can't wrap my head around the body of. To me those seem truly profound and many such paradoxes like your example nearly gimmicky in comparison when the novelty wears off.

I guess I define "profound" by the degree to which something is intellectually accessible. And find that some paradoxes, despite the insight they lend, to be much more accessible than other things on this spectrum.

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Thomas wrote:
For example, consider the statement: "What I'm saying right now is false."

But is that still profound to you, the ten millionth time you read it? Or are you saying that it's no longer a paradox to you at that point and that a paradox inherently implies novelty?

Yes---at least in the way I use the word "profound", which is analogous to the word "funny". I will not laugh at a joke the ten millionth time I hear it, but the joke as such is still funny.

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@Robert Gentel,

...that is pretty much self centred and capricious...so you mean every time you can´t solve a problem it gets old to you just because you read it a thousand times ? speaking in intellectual consumerism and superficiality...
How about reading it for another thousand till you can come up with something before stating it is not profound...my idea is the opposite the more I seek and the more I learn to think on the problem the more profound it turns to be...I think the charm of the novelty as nothing to do with profoundness, but hey, that´s just my opinion...

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@Thomas,

How would you differentiate that from something that is ____ (whatever we area calling this) the ten millionth time you try to understand it. Are those just different degrees of profound then?

Edit: I liked your "funny" analogy a lot, BTW, it helped me understand how you use the word. In my definition it doesn't work that well in a comparison to "funny".

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

so you mean every time you can´t solve a problem it gets old to you just because you read it a thousand times ?

No, that's pretty much the opposite of what I meant. When I can solve it it gets old, when I can't it doesn't get old.

Quote:

How about reading it for another thousand till you can come up with something before stating it is not profound...my idea is the opposite the more I seek and the more I learn to think on the problem the more profound it turns to be...I think the charm of the novelty as nothing to do with profoundness, but hey, that´s just my opinion...

I certainly do agree that reading something multiple times can have its upsides.

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@Robert Gentel,

I think a joke that makes me laugh on hearing it 10 million times would have to be extremely funny. And a paradox that makes me go "wow" the ten-millionth time I hear it would be extremely profound. That's assuming I understood it every time. If it takes 10 million tries to understand the joke, that's an issue I'll deal with when it happens.

2 Replies

Why are paradoxes considered profound?

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