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The Surprise Exam Paradox: Disentangling Two Reductios, John N. Williams
The Surprise Exam Paradox: Disentangling Two Reductios, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
One tradition of solving the surprise exam paradox, started by Robert Binkley and continued by Doris Olin, Roy Sorensen and Jelle Gerbrandy, construes surprise epistemically and relies upon the oddity of propositions akin to G. E. Moore's paradoxical 'p and I don't believe that p.' Here I argue for an analysis that evolves from Olin's. My analysis is different from hers or indeed any of those in the tradition because it explicitly recognizes that there are two distinct reductios at work in the student's paradoxical argument against the teacher. The weak reductio is easy to fault. Its invalidity determines the …
Moore's Paradoxes And Iterated Belief, John N. Williams
Moore's Paradoxes And Iterated Belief, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
I give an account of the absurdity of Moorean beliefs of the omissive form (om) p and I don’t believe that p, and the commissive form (com) p and I believe that not-p, from which I extract a definition of Moorean absurdity. I then argue for an account of the absurdity of Moorean assertion. After neutralizing two objections to my whole account, I show that Roy Sorensen’s own account of the absurdity of his ‘iterated cases’ (om1) p and I don’t believe that I believe that p, and (com1) p and I believe that I believe that not-p, is unsatisfactory. …
Merleau-Ponty On Human Motility And Libet's Paradox, T. Brian Mooney, Damien Norris
Merleau-Ponty On Human Motility And Libet's Paradox, T. Brian Mooney, Damien Norris
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In 1979, neuroscientists Libet, Wright, Feinstein and Pearl introduced the delay-and-antedating hypothesis/paradox based on the results of an on-going series of experiments dating back to 1964 that measured the neural adequacy [brain wave activity] of conscious sensory experience. What is fascinating about the results of this experiment is the implication, especially when considered in the light of Merleau-Ponty’s notions of intentionality and the pre-reflective life of human motility, that the body, and hence not solely the mind, is a thinking thing. The experiments and conclusions of Libet et al. have attracted considerable academic attention and have been used in the …