Paradox

1) Paradox-“When two contradictory processes exist in the same reality” (Kane, Paradox Lecture Video). An example of a paradox might apply when it comes to a doctor providing medicine for his/her patients with the intention of treating a certain ailment, however side effects from the medication might arise. As we know there are many people in the United States that take medication for certain medical conditions. However, in the process of the medication treating one ailment, the medication that was proscribed to the patient creates a whole new ailment separate from the one that was being treated by the doctor originally. As a result, the patient has to take another type of medication to treat the ailment that arose from the medication being…

the abyss gazes into you.” An excerpt from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, talks of how one can become what one can fear most, by likening the abyss to a struggle or a mishap, one can understand that people in general will allow their fears and agonies to consume them. In the poem The Soul unto itself, Emily Dickinson portrays the soul as a being open to interpretation, in the poem she describes the soul as both a spy and an imperial friend, creating a paradox as one must think an, “imperial…

think and have to choose their own way of interpreting the Tao. One of the paradoxes in the Tao that makes a reader think is the idea of letting things go to move forward. This paradox is used to show the necessity of letting objects and ideas go to try and move ahead in life. Not all of the answers or solutions to this paradox are right and this is why trying to let go is harder than expected. Letting things go though, will ultimately make a person less possessive of objects, impartial to what…

Othello’s alleged affair with his wife, Emelia. Honest to a fault, Iago embodies the paradox of a truthful man who is an even more cunning manipulator because of it, which contradicts a core human idea that honest people are the most righteous or virtuous. Iago rightfully earns his reputation for honesty by being honest in the face of consequences…

In this paper I will argue that trying to maximize happiness actually decreases the amount of happiness one experiences, and I will show why one should satisfice rather than maximize. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz presents the pitfalls of maximizing, with one being counterfactual thinking. Schwartz also introduces the concept of hedonic adaptation, which provides reasoning to why there is little importance to the choice that maximizers spend much time and energy with. To further show…

First and foremost, I want to clarify that a paradox has two separate meanings. Firstly, a paradox can be a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true; and secondly, it is something, such as a situation, that is made up of two opposite things and that seems impossible but is true or possible. Both definitions, although close to each other are much different upon closer look. I argue that the gray zone is more in line with the second definition…

If even one “organ” of the body politic is to fail, the entire system is at risk for losing its freedom. This supports Wempel’s argument that it is impossible to speak of freedom without some form of paradox, in part because humanity is often so content to remain in their metaphorical chains. It is the enforceable general will that binds a community together so that a state of greater moral freedom can be reached…

As such, all rational creatures, including God, are limited to knowing if a proposition is true or false if a truth-value can be assigned at all. Yet, despite this, several paradoxes exist where the truth-value of a statement cannot be assigned or the truth-value may be both true and false, and even with omniscience, God cannot know the solution. These two conditions are satisfied in the liar and barber paradoxes. The first paradox that God cannot resolve is the liar paradox. Put simply, the…

In the beginning of the poem, Jeffers illustrates a majestic yet chaotic image of “the deer… bounding like blown leaves,” escaping the fire as “the smaller lives… were caught,”(Jeffers 1-3) in the fire. Using metaphor, imagery and paradox, the deer are being compared to “leaves” being “blown” through the air. The comparison of “blow[ing] leaves” illustrates the desperation of the deer scrambling to get away from the fire. Used as a paradox, blowing leaves have a positive connotation, suggesting…

While describing his vision through the binoculars, the speaker states how "things are far away and close with you still in the same place.” This paradox is specifically applied because it conveys the idea that although death is conventionally portrayed as distant, it can and will happen eventually; however, we live our everyday lives thinking it is far away, putting us into this "same place" that is described within the literary device (Hempel, 53). Moreover, while remembering the accident, the…