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Zeno's paradoxes are a series of philosophical arguments presented by the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (c. 490–430 BC), [ 1][ 2] primarily known through the works of Plato, Aristotle, and later commentators like Simplicius of Cilicia. [ 2] Zeno devised these paradoxes to support his teacher Parmenides 's philosophy of monism, which ...
Types and examples. Oxymorons in the narrow sense are a rhetorical device used deliberately by the speaker and intended to be understood as such by the listener. In a more extended sense, the term "oxymoron" has also been applied to inadvertent or incidental contradictions, as in the case of "dead metaphors" ("barely clothed" or "terribly good").
A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of ...
e. Circular reasoning ( Latin: circulus in probando, "circle in proving"; [ 1] also known as circular logic) is a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with. [ 2] Circular reasoning is not a formal logical fallacy, but a pragmatic defect in an argument whereby the premises are just as much in need of ...
A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings; such a word is also known as an antagonym, autoantonym, contranym, or Janus word. [1] [2] For example, the word cleave can mean "to cut apart" or "to bind together". This feature is also called enantiosemy, [3] [4] enantionymy (enantio-means "opposite"), antilogy or autoantonymy.
Abilene paradox. The Abilene paradox is a collective fallacy, in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of most or all individuals in the group, while each individual believes it to be aligned with the preferences of most of the others. [ 1][ 2] It involves a breakdown of group ...
The hard problem of consciousness is the question of what consciousness is and why we have consciousness as opposed to being philosophical zombies. The adjective "hard" is to contrast with the "easy" consciousness problems, which seek to explain the mechanisms of consciousness ("why" versus "how", or final cause versus efficient cause ).
For example, some unicellular organisms have genomes much larger than that of humans. Cole's paradox: Even a tiny fecundity advantage of one additional offspring would favor the evolution of semelparity. Gray's paradox: Despite their relatively small muscle mass, dolphins can swim at high speeds and obtain large accelerations.