Preface

As part of a Philosophy paper (Phil 310 - Logic) I sat at the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand), I had the pleasure of being intorduced to the paradox. The textbook for the course was Paradoxes (Sainsbury, Mark - 1997, 2nd Ed, Cambridge University Press). Upon reading the book, I decided that at least half of the so-called "paradoxes" were not paradoxes at all - they were merely poorly reasoned arguments.

Armed with this belief, I searched the web for any discussion of paradoxes. The results where somewhat disappointing. There are plenty of pages dedicated to paradoxes but unfortunately, they rarely go past the explanation of the paradox.

It is for this reason that I have taken it upon myself to create a discussion on paradox, with the goal being to detirmine what is paradox and what is fallacy.

Introduction

A paradox can be defined as a contradiction derived from seemingly valid reasoning and true premises. All reasoning is built upon the assumption that all contradictions are unacceptable. Therefore, to hold a paradox as being acceptable is irrational.

A fallacy is an misleading argument or one that contains faulty reasoning. If an argument can be reduced to a contradiction then it suggests that either one of the premises is at fault or that the reasoning is suspect. I suspect all of the "paradoxes" on this site to fall into this category.

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