AS.050.234: Puzzles, Paradoxes and Reasoning Fallacies: Insights from Philosophy, Language, and Psychology

I designed and taught this class to undergraduates at Johns Hopkins University during Intersession 2021. Here’s a condensed version of the syllabus:

Overview

Puzzles and paradoxes have played a pivotal role in the development of philosophy, mathematics, and logic due to their ability to cast new light on familiar concepts and to reveal inconsistencies in seemingly rigorous formal systems. Many of these puzzles date back to ancient times, but they are far from being a matter of history: the questions we will explore in this class are actively debated by researchers today. These questions include: Can something be true and false at the same time? Is omniscience possible? Why can we understand a sentence without a determinate meaning? Is someone tall if their height is 5’7’’? Are humans rational agents?

We will see that the answers vary not only depending on how we approach these fundamental questions, but who approaches them. While most of the puzzles and paradoxes presented in this course are rooted in philosophical tradition, they have inspired scientific inquiry across many disciplines — including linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science. The goal of this course is both to see how one question can be re-interpreted through the lens of different scientific fields, and how these fields can be brought together to reach a deeper understanding of the original question. 

Class format

This class will consist of lectures and in-class discussions. 

The first 75 minutes of the class will focus on the discussion of the assigned readings. The discussions will be based on the questions and/or comments submitted by students before class (see “Requirements” for more information).

The discussion part will be followed by a 15-minute break, and the class will resume with a 75-minute lecture to introduce the material for the next session. The lectures will serve to frame the topic, highlight its interdisciplinary character, and familiarize students with formal or technical parts of the assigned papers. 

Textbook

Sainsbury, Richard Mark. Paradoxes (3rd edition). Cambridge University Press, 2009 (~$22.93 new).

All other readings will be made available via Blackboard.

Lecture Slides

1/4 – Introduction + Zeno’s Paradoxes

1/5 – Time Travel

1/6 – Effect of Language on Time Perception

1/7 – The Liar Paradox, The Sorites Paradox

1/8 – The King of France

1/11 – The Comparative Illusion

1/12 – Newcomb's Paradox & The Prisoner's Dilemma

1/13 – Monty Hall Problem

1/14 – Heuristics and Biases

Schedule

Bibliography

Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought?: Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time. Cognitive psychology, 43(1), 1-22

Lewis, D. (1976). The paradoxes of time travel. American Philosophical Quarterly, 13(2), 145-152

von Fintel, K. (2004). Would you believe it? The King of France is back! (Presuppositions and truth-value intuitions) (pp. 315-341)

Krauss, S., & Wang, X. T. (2003). The psychology of the Monty Hall problem: Discovering psychological mechanisms for solving a tenacious brain teaser. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132(1), 3

Pullum, G. K. (1989). The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 275-281.

Russell, B. (1957). Mr. Strawson on referring. Mind, 66(263), 385-389.

Sainsbury, R. M. (2009). Paradoxes. Cambridge University Press

Strawson, P. F. (1950). On referring. Mind, 59(235), 320-344

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131

Wellwood, A., Pancheva, R., Hacquard, V., & Phillips, C. (2018). The anatomy of a comparative illusion. Journal of Semantics, 35(3), 543-583