Les paradoxes i la filosofia: tres visions contemporànies

Habitualment les paradoxes són caracteritzades com a enunciats aparentment falsos recolzats per arguments aparentment bons que parteixen de premisses que la majoria de la gent consideraria trivialment vertaderes. Aquest article ofereix una visió panoràmica de tres perspectives contemporànies de les paradoxes. Segons la concepció epistèmica, les paradoxes juguen un paper crucial en el desenvolupament de la ciència i mai no constitueixen proves correctes d’enunciats falsos. D’acord amb la concepció dialetheista, la conclusió d’alguns raonaments paradoxals és alhora vertadera i falsa, havent-hi, per tant, algunes contradiccions vertaderes (i falses). Finalment, la concepció mística entén les paradoxes recalcitrants (antinòmies) com a problemes irresolubles que mostren els límits del pensament humà. La darrera secció de l’article discuteix les paradoxes d’autoreferència, una família de paradoxes que comparteixen certs trets estructurals i que han tingut un impacte profund en el desenvolupament de la ciència al llarg del segle xx.Paraules clau: paradoxa, paradoxa verídica, paradoxa falsídica, antinòmia, dialetheisme, autoreferència, circularitat, inclosure. A paradox is usually described as an apparently false statement supported by an apparently good argument which departs from premises that most people would find trivially true. This survey article presents a brief overview of three different contemporary perspectives on paradoxes. According to the epistemic view, paradoxes play a crucial role in the progress of science and cannot be regarded as sound proofs of a false statement. According to the dialetheist view, the conclusion of some paradoxical reasonings is both, true and false, what means that there must be some true (and false) contradictions. Finally, the mystic view understands recalcitrant paradoxes (antinomies) as unsolvable problems which show the limits of human thought and cognition. The last section of this paper focuses on the paradoxes of self-reference, a family of paradoxes (sharing some structural features) which have had a deep impact in the development of science during the twentieth century.Keywords: paradox, veridic paradox, falsidic paradox, antinomy, dialetheism, selfreference, circularity, inclosure schema

Book review: Questioning secularism: Islam, sovereignty, and the rule of law in modern Egypt

"Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, And The Rule Of Law In Modern Egypt." Hussein Ali Agrama. University of Chicago Press. November 2012. --- The central questions of the Arab uprisings—what is the appropriate relationship between religion and politics and what is the function of the national security state —have developed into a vigorous debate amongst actors from across the political spectrum. But what, exactly, is secularism? What is its relationship to the ‘deep state’ in Egypt? In Questioning Secularism, Hussein Ali Agrama focuses on the Fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, to argue that secularism is a historically contingent phenomenon that works through a series of paradoxes that it creates. He probes the meaning of secularism and the ambiguities that lie at its heart. Reviewed by Corinna Mullin

Williamson on Wittgenstein’s “Family Resemblances” and the Sorites Paradox

In a short section of his book Vagueness, Timothy Williamson attempts to resolve a paradox regarding the expansion of Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ concepts, as they are described in his Philosophical Investigations. Williamson contends that certain ‘family resemblance’ concepts such as “game” seem to have the capability to expand through a network of resemblances to become applicable to everything – an undesirable and perhaps paradoxical conclusion. In short, if Wittgenstein’s theory is to be plausible, argues Williamson, there must be some sort of block, conceptual or otherwise, to extensions of concepts that are susceptible to sorites paradoxes. Williamson finds the best such block to be that the negation of a family resemblance concept expands in tandem with that family resemblance concept, eliminating the possibility of paradox through a sort of tension between assertion and denial. This paper argues that this solution, along with Williamson’s framing of the problem, is untenable because it misunderstands the nature of Wittgenstein’s investigations and provides no relief from the problem it sets out to correct. An alternative solution is presented through an exegesis of Wittgenstein’s text, which, while not addressing the problem directly, gives guidance on how to approach paradoxes like Williamson’s

The path to paradoxical management - what impacts the way managers deal with paradox

Extensive literature has focused on the way organizations cope with paradoxes. The purpose of this research is to assess the different aspects that affect the way managers deal with paradoxes at an individual level. This knowledge provides organizations with the tools to promote paradoxical management, while nurturing their employees to the best of their managing abilities. Twenty-five managers were interviewed, of which thirteen were Dutch and twelve Portuguese. The analysis resulted in five great impactors: professional skills, coping mechanisms, reflexive self-management, experience and reflexivity processes. Cultural differences were found only when considering the role of family as a stress reliever

Higgs Pain? Take a Preon!

The Higgs mechanism is the favourite cure for the main problem with electroweak unification, namely how to reconcile a gauge theory with the need for massive gauge bosons. This problem does not exist in preon models for quark and lepton substructure with composite $Z^0$ and $W$s, which, consequently, also avoid all other theoretical complications and paradoxes with the Higgs mechanism. We present a new, minimal preon model, which explains the family structure, and predicts several new, heavy quarks, leptons and vector bosons. Our preons obey a phenomenological supersymmetry, but without so-called squarks and sleptons, since this SUSY is effective only on the composite scale.Comment: The preon contents of some quarks and leptons have been changed in order to achieve a more consistent scheme. A few new comments have been added. 13 pages, LaTeX, no figures. To be published in Proc. of the Meeting on 'The Fundamental Structure of Matter' and 'Tests of the Electroweak Symmetry Breaking', Ouranoupolis, Greece, May 199

The Skeptical Paradox And Positive Epistemological Theory

Philosophers throughout the ages have had a great deal to say about philosophical skepticism, but have generally spent very little time clarifying what exactly they mean by it. Nor have they given much attention to the basic origin and structure of this problem, of which they so frequently and glibly speak. In this thesis I argue that the problem of skepticism can be best understood as a family of reflective, deductive paradoxes centering around the apparent deductive closure of the concept of knowledge. That is, I argue that there are apparently reasonable assumptions which we make regarding the knowledge predicate, each supported by independent plausible considerations, which when taken together in their reflective, deductive consequences entail explicit contradictions. This group of reflective paradoxes, I call the family of skeptical paradoxes, or, for simplicity, the skeptical paradox. The crucial assumptions employed in the formulation of this family of paradoxes are (i) the principle of evidential underdetermination, (ii) the common-sense assumption that the knowledge predicate does have a real extension, and (iii) the principle of minimum epistemic rationality, Em. This last, Em, is an invention unique to this writing. It is a principle based on the simple idea that we can learn through reasoning, and, furthermore, specify the conditions under which such learning occurs. Although it is not closed strictly under any known form of logical implication, nevertheless, under appropriately specified conditions the knowledge operator can exhibit epistemic, and skeptically significant closure-like properties.;The first four chapters of this writing are devoted to the analysis of the problem of skepticism described above. The first two chapters are preliminary. The fifth chapter is an attempt to give some coherent direction to any further discussion as to how to solve or resolve the skeptical paradox, either positively or negatively. In it, I also entertain the suggestion that the skeptical paradox is the result of systematic semantic misconception regarding the extent and nature of the concept of knowledge

FAMILY FIRMS AND FAMILY BUSINESS: A CONCEPTUAL APPROACH ABOUT THE AMBIGUITIES, PARADOXES AND UNIQUENESS OF FAMILY BUSINESSES

Family businesses are and have been vital in the European’s socioeconomic contexts. Notwithstanding their relevance and growing interest in academy, as well as in the institutional rationale, the study of family businesses is still a field that lacks autonomy and finds itself embedded in ambiguities, paradoxes and inconsistencies. This lack of systematisation not only compromises the process of data collection and research but consequently a better understanding of this phenomenon. Our purpose here is to discuss the constructs of family firm and family business. Based on the assumption that family firms are usually conceptualised as owned, totally or partially, by members of a family and are potentially intergenerational systems, with a perimeter of variable geometry, but usually rooted in a location, we aim to distinguish between the constructs of family firm and family business. We do this by discussing the concept(s) of family and then move on to the family businesses. Methodologically we carried out a literature analysis or review, based on Bourdieu’s (1972) “Theory of Practice”, understood as an approach that aims to overcome dichotomies in social theory, such as micro/macro, material/symbolic, empirical/theoretical, objective/subjective, public/private, structure/agency, and focuses on the understanding the practical logic of everyday life and understand relations of power. Enabling us to overcome the ambiguities and paradoxes that academically and institutionally surround the use of these constructs – family firms and family business. Our findings allowed us to sustain that the family business emerges as conceptual “leap forward”, i.e., the family firm becomes a family business when it becomes more strategically business-oriented. As an open system, the firm has a flow of inputs and outputs of members, which generate its unique configurations over time and potentiates intra and inter-clan conflicts and political and power struggles between family members and or among family members and their relatives and tends to create formal organisational structures (boards of directors) to assure its continuity and growth. In this context, when the above-mentioned criterion is met, the family business only exists from the second generation onwards.  Article visualizations

There is no need to shout to be heard!:The paradoxical nature of CSR reporting in a Latin American family SME

Drawing on the paradox and reciprocal stewardship theory, this study focuses on tensions in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting experienced by a family small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) in a developing Latin American country. Prior literature has suggested a prescriptive, tension-free process, led by family members and driven by an interest to protect and enhance the reputation of both the family and the firm. Relying on an in-depth qualitative approach, this study unveils that CSR reporting is not immune to contradictions between familial and external expectations. The findings reveal that religious beliefs can emerge as a strong source of tensions. A reciprocal stewardship perspective allows an understanding of how and why family and non-family members work together and handle paradoxes. A conceptual model is proposed which is based on multiple sources of emergence (family-related, business-related and external sources) and management/avoidance of tensions in CSR reporting, mediated by the types of relationships among family members and between family and non-family members. Implications and opportunities for further research are subsequently presented

Consistent Resolution of Some Relativistic Quantum Paradoxes

A relativistic version of the (consistent or decoherent) histories approach to quantum theory is developed on the basis of earlier work by Hartle, and used to discuss relativistic forms of the paradoxes of spherical wave packet collapse, Bohm's formulation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen, and Hardy's paradox. It is argued that wave function collapse is not needed for introducing probabilities into relativistic quantum mechanics, and in any case should never be thought of as a physical process. Alternative approaches to stochastic time dependence can be used to construct a physical picture of the measurement process that is less misleading than collapse models. In particular, one can employ a coarse-grained but fully quantum mechanical description in which particles move along trajectories, with behavior under Lorentz transformations the same as in classical relativistic physics, and detectors are triggered by particles reaching them along such trajectories. States entangled between spacelike separate regions are also legitimate quantum descriptions, and can be consistently handled by the formalism presented here. The paradoxes in question arise because of using modes of reasoning which, while correct for classical physics, are inconsistent with the mathematical structure of quantum theory, and are resolved (or tamed) by using a proper quantum analysis. In particular, there is no need to invoke, nor any evidence for, mysterious long-range superluminal influences, and thus no incompatibility, at least from this source, between relativity theory and quantum mechanics.Comment: Latex 42 pages, 7 figures in text using PSTrick