A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to expectations. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true or apparently true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion. A paradox usually involves contradictory-yet-interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time. They result in "persistent contradiction between interdependent elements" leading to a lasting "unity of opposites".
In logic, many paradoxes exist that are invalid arguments, yet are nevertheless valuable in promoting critical thinking, while other paradoxes have revealed errors in definitions that were assumed to be rigorous, and have caused axioms of mathematics and logic to be re-examined. One example is Russell's paradox, which questions whether a "list of all lists that do not contain themselves" would include itself and showed that attempts to found set theory on the identification of sets with properties or predicates were flawed. Others, such as Curry's paradox, cannot be easily resolved by making foundational changes in a logical system.
Examples outside logic include the ship of Theseus from philosophy, a paradox that questions whether a ship repaired over time by replacing each and all of its wooden parts one at a time would remain the same ship. Paradoxes can also take the form of images or other media. For example, M. C. Escher featured perspective-based paradoxes in many of his drawings, with walls that are regarded as floors from other points of view, and staircases that appear to climb endlessly.
The term paradox is often used to describe a counterintuitive result, which may be termed a veridical paradox.
Common elements
<!-- This Anchor tag serves to provide a permanent target for incoming section links. Please do not remove it, nor modify it, except to add another appropriate anchor. If you modify the section title, please anchor the old title. It is always best to anchor an old section header that has been changed so that links to it will not be broken. See Template:Anchor for details. This template is -->Self-reference, contradiction and infinite regress are core elements of many paradoxes. Other common elements include circular definitions, and confusion or equivocation between different levels of abstraction.
Self-reference
Self-reference occurs when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. Although statements can be self referential without being paradoxical ("This statement is written in English" is a true and non-paradoxical self-referential statement), self-reference is a common element of paradoxes. One example occurs in the liar paradox, which is commonly formulated as the self-referential statement "This statement is false". Another example occurs in the barber paradox, which poses the question of whether a barber who shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves will shave himself. In this paradox, the barber is a self-referential concept.
Contradiction
Contradiction, along with self-reference, is a core feature of many paradoxes. The barber paradox is contradictory because it implies that the barber shaves himself if and only if the barber does not shave himself.
As with self-reference, a statement can contain a contradiction without being a paradox. "This statement is written in French" is an example of a contradictory self-referential statement that is not a paradox and is instead false.
The barber paradox also exemplifies vicious circularity: The barber shaves those who do not shave themselves, so if the barber does not shave himself, then he shaves himself, then he does not shave himself, and so on.
Other elements
Other paradoxes involve false statements and half-truths or rely on hasty assumptions (A father and his son are in a car crash; the father is killed and the boy is rushed to the hospital. The doctor says, "I can't operate on this boy. He's my son." There is no contradiction, the doctor is the boy's mother.).
Paradoxes that are not based on a hidden error generally occur at the fringes of context or language, and require extending the context or language in order to lose their paradoxical quality. Paradoxes that arise from apparently intelligible uses of language are often of interest to logicians and philosophers. "This sentence is false" is an example of the well-known liar paradox: it is a sentence that cannot be consistently interpreted as either true or false, because if it is known to be false, then it can be inferred that it must be true, and if it is known to be true, then it can be inferred that it must be false. Russell's paradox, which shows that the notion of the set of all those sets that do not contain themselves leads to a contradiction, was instrumental in the development of modern logic and set theory.
Veridical paradox
A veridical paradox produces a result that appears counter to intuition, but is demonstrated to be true nonetheless:
- Condorcet's paradox demonstrates the surprising result that majority rule can be self-contradictory, i.e. it is possible for a majority of voters to support some outcome other than the one chosen (regardless of the outcome itself).
- The Monty Hall paradox (or equivalently three prisoners problem) demonstrates that a decision that has an intuitive fifty–fifty chance can instead have a provably different probable outcome. Another veridical paradox with a concise mathematical proof is the birthday paradox.
- In 20th-century science, Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel is an example of a theory being taken to a logical but paradoxical end.
Falsidical paradox
A falsidical paradox establishes a result that appears false and actually is false, due to a fallacy in the demonstration. Therefore, falsidical paradoxes can be classified as fallacious arguments.
Antinomy
An antinomy is a paradox which reaches a self-contradictory result by properly applying accepted ways of reasoning. For example, the Grelling–Nelson paradox points out genuine problems in our understanding of the ideas of truth and description.
Sometimes described since Quine's work, a dialetheia is a paradox that is both true and false at the same time. It may be regarded as a fourth kind, or alternatively as a special case of antinomy. In logic, it is often assumed, following Aristotle, that no dialetheia exist, but they are allowed in some paraconsistent logics.
Ramsey's classification
Frank Ramsey drew a distinction between logical paradoxes and semantic paradoxes, with Russell's paradox belonging to the former category, and the liar paradox and Grelling's paradoxes to the latter. Ramsey introduced the by-now standard distinction between logical and semantical contradictions. Logical contradictions involve mathematical or logical terms like class and number, and hence show that our logic or mathematics is problematic. Semantical contradictions involve, besides purely logical terms, notions like thought, language, and symbolism, which, according to Ramsey, are empirical (not formal) terms. Hence these contradictions are due to faulty ideas about thought or language, and they properly belong to epistemology.
In medicine
A paradoxical reaction to a drug is the opposite of what one would expect, such as becoming agitated by a sedative or sedated by a stimulant. Some are common and are used regularly in medicine, such as the use of stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (also known as ADHD), while others are rare and can be dangerous as they are not expected, such as severe agitation from a benzodiazepine.
The actions of antibodies on antigens can rarely take paradoxical turns in certain ways. One example is antibody-dependent enhancement (immune enhancement) of a disease's virulence; another is the hook effect (prozone effect), of which there are several types. However, neither of these problems is common, and overall, antibodies are crucial to health, as most of the time they do their protective job quite well.<!--Acknowledging here for the reader to comprehend these facts within the proper framework of perspective; see the comment nearby below for another example of the same kind of helping the reader with critical thinking.-->
In the smoker's paradox, cigarette smoking, despite its proven harms, has a surprising inverse correlation with the epidemiological incidence of certain diseases.
In the negative outcome penalty paradox, the use of artificial intelligence in medical decision-making increases the risk of being penalized by juries whether the AI recommendations are followed or rejected.
As an aspect of reality
Carl Jung stated: "the paradox reflects a higher level of intellect and, by not forcibly representing the unknowable as known, gives a more faithful picture of the real state of affairs." Søren Kierkegaard posited that any true understanding of reality requires one to abandon rationalism and take a "leap of faith" into paradoxical thinking. Some have observed that the fundamental nature of reality is difficult to grasp or express in words because it is innately paradoxical and contradictory.
Teaching tool
Paradoxes can be used in management education.
Paradoxical questions, known as koan, are used as a teaching device in Zen Buddhism.