Paradox

Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2021

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ever want to have your cake and eat it too? Maybe you can! In episode 34, join Ellie and David (and the Olsen twins) in an investigation into paradox. Paradox refers to a self-contradictory statement that nonetheless rests on seemingly logically sound premises. From Meno to Zeno and his tortoises and arrows, from Christian theologians trying to uncover the nature of God and faith to Zen Buddhists exploring the origins of consciousness, paradox has a long history of keeping people stumped, but also of driving human innovation and creativity to new heights. However, we often still wonder: can paradoxes ever truly be solved, or are they just doomed as contradictions? Let’s find out!

Works Discussed

Zeno, Fragments
David M. Peña-Guzman, “Bergson’s philosophical method: At the edge of phenomenology and mathematics”
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript; Philosophical Fragments; Fear and Trembling
Sartre, Being and Nothingness
Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality and “Faith and Knowledge”
Plato, Meno
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Marcel Mauss, “The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies”
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Holiday in the Sun
Aristotle, Metaphysics
Diamond Sutra

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm David Pena Guzman.
0:08.6	And I'm Ellie Anderson.
0:10.2	Welcome to Overthink.
0:12.0	The podcast where two friends, who are also professors, put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.
0:18.6	Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.
0:30.4	I think we generally take it for granted that it's good to be able to consider different
0:34.8	perspectives, right?
0:36.3	But being able to consider different perspectives at the same time
0:39.7	and hold them in one's mind is somewhat different.
0:43.6	And I've recently heard, David, that researchers call this the paradox mindset,
0:49.1	starting with the Harvard psychiatrist Albert Rothenberg in the 1990s.
0:53.2	And so is the idea that those people who are able to think about paradoxes or recognize
1:01.0	the paradoxical nature of different things are somehow smarter or more advanced?
1:07.8	I'm imagining that meme with like the little light in the head and then the bigger light
1:12.5	and then illumination complete. Oh my gosh. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, more creative, smarter,
1:19.5	happier. No, I don't think they went that far. More likely to win a Nobel Prize. Oh my God.
1:24.2	I'm going to win a bunch of Nobel's. You love paradox?
1:29.2	I am a paradox. No, actually, that's so pompous to say.
1:32.9	I actually think we're all paradoxes, which maybe we'll have a chance to come back.
1:35.9	We're all Nobel winners inside.
1:39.9	Yeah, I wouldn't go that far.
1:41.9	But the basic idea is that those people who are able to hold
	...

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