Brain Games: 8 Philosophical Puzzles and Paradoxes
Plato and Aristotle both held that philosophy begins in wonder, by which they meant puzzlement or perplexity, and many philosophers after them have agreed. Ludwig Wittgenstein considered the aim of philosophy to be “to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle”—to liberate ourselves from the puzzles and paradoxes created by our own misunderstanding of language. His teacher, Bertrand Russell, remarked in a joking mood that “The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.”
Whether paradox is the beginning or the end of philosophy, it has certainly stimulated a great deal of philosophical thinking, and many paradoxes have served to encapsulate important philosophical problems (many others have been exposed as fallacies).
The following list presents eight influential philosophical puzzles and paradoxes dating from ancient times to the present. Take a look and be perplexed.