The Philosopher's Arms: Sorites' Heap
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2012
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fuzzy logic and baldness: what's the connection? According to the Sorites' Paradox, it's impossible to go bald. If you lose one hair you don't move from being hirsute to being bald: one hair can't make any difference - and the same must be true if you lose a second hair, then a third... So it seems that nobody can ever go bald. That's the paradox addressed, with the help of some fuzzy logic, in this edition of The Philosopher's Arms.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
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| 0:36.0 | Thank you for downloading this BBC podcast. |
| 0:39.0 | Analysis is off air at the moment, so we thought you might enjoy this program recorded in everyone's favorite |
| 0:45.2 | abstract pub. Matthew Sweet returns to the philosopher's arms. Hello and questions like is free will an illusion? Of course as we're a conceptual |
| 1:04.8 | drinking establishment we can move anywhere we choose so tonight we're at the |
| 1:09.4 | Water Rats Theatre Bar in London which is intimately connected with two major |
| 1:14.4 | thinkers. Carl Marx used to drink here in the 1870s and in 1962 |
| 1:19.7 | Bob Dylan performed his first British gig in this space. |
| 1:24.0 | Now each week on this show a gang of professional philosophers and barroom philosophers meet to discuss |
| 1:30.1 | a key philosophical question suggested by something that happened to me on the way to the pub. |
| 1:36.3 | I'm here tonight on a kind of romantic quest for a friend who has quite specialized tastes. |
| 1:44.0 | She's called Meg. I've known her for years and there's never been anything between us because, well, there's something about me that makes her recoil. |
| 1:52.0 | Yes, you've guessed it. something about me that makes her recoil. |
| 1:52.8 | Yes, you've guessed it. |
| 1:54.5 | Meg only likes bald men. |
| 1:57.2 | It's all due to a bad experience she once had |
| 1:59.9 | in a mattress stuffing factory, |
... |
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