Well, my blog about the “ultimate paradox” had a good number of responses. The responses argued on different philosophical fronts. I will be writing them about them later. In this blog, I would like to list down a few good paradoxes.
The Grandfather Paradox
This paradox usually turns out to be first paradox which most people hit upon while contemplating on time travel. The paradox is also portrayed in the “Back to the Future” series of movies. I am reproducing the paradox from Wikipedia here…
“Suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveller’s grandmother. As a result, one of the traveller’s parents (and by extension, the traveller himself) would never have been conceived. This would imply that he could not have travelled back in time after all, which in turn implies the grandfather would still be alive, and the traveller would have been conceived, allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather.”
A related paradox is the pre-destination paradox which attempts to explain on how history need to be changed by one’s modification of the past in time travel…
“A man travels back in time to discover the cause of a famous fire. While in the building where the fire started, he accidentally knocks over a kerosene lantern and causes a fire, the same fire that would inspire him, years later, to travel back in time.”
The film “Minority Report” dealt with the pre-destination paradox.
Omnipotence Paradox
This is one of those paradoxes which make you scratch your head once you have read it. It deals with this question: “Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even that being could not lift it?” If so, then it seems that the being could cease to be omnipotent; if not, it seems that the being was not omnipotent to begin with.”
Mathematicians, theologians and philosophers have attempted to answer this paradox. Quoting from Wikipedia…
“This problem led in the High Middle Ages to developing the concept of mathematical infinity, and laid the basis for infinitesimal calculus. Combining omnipotence with omniscience can yield the difficulty of whether or not God can pose a question to which he would not know the answer.”
And theologians and philosophers have answered this questions from various fronts.
Theseus’ Paradox
The paradox goes like this: “The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.”
There is a related argument in Artificial Intelligence which deals with human consciousnesses. Let us assume that neurophysiology has grown to a point that the behaviour of neurons(in the brain) is fully understood to create electronic replicas which behave exactly in the same way as neurons. Let us also assume that surgery had advanced to a point by which a neuron could be replaced by its electronic counter-part without affecting any function of the brain. After repeated surgeries, the entire brain has now been replaced by electronics. Will this brain contain the human quality of consciousness?
Have a great day.
