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I have become interested in the idea of paradox recently. Not logical paradoxes though, but when philosophical ideas are pursued consistently, and end up arguing against that position. The most basic of course is the relativists denial of truth leads to a truth claim, but let me give you two further examples of what I mean. I am not arguing that these positions should be viewed this way only giving examples of the type of reasoning I would be curious to see an analysis of.

  1. Democracy is a system where divergent viewpoints are allowed to compete for dominance. Everyone active in a democracy is trying to get their viewpoint established as the one that is always dominate though. Thus people active in a democracy are always working for the practical end of it.

  2. Libertarianism is a philosophy where people are free to make choices about their lives free from government coercion. Except they cannot then make the choice to establish a coercive government because that eliminates the idea of a Libertarian society. Thus there has to be some coercive order to prevent people from establishing a coercive order.

Where can I find literature that deals with why this kind of contradiction can occur within philosophies?

J D
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Rageforthemachine
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  • you may be interested in [this answer](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/91585/are-protests-in-a-democracy-ethical/91591#91591) about democracy – Nikos M. Jun 17 '22 at 14:41
  • It is important to make clear that a philosophical position may explicitly state the range of application of this position. Thus edge cases which may result in paradoxes are not promoted per se – Nikos M. Jun 17 '22 at 15:06
  • I'm doubtful that searching for "paradox" is likely to get you what you want without a qualifier like "metaphysical paradox". You might find it fruitful to search for "self-defeating proposition". – David Gudeman Jun 17 '22 at 17:46
  • As both of your examples concern political philosophy, studying that would likely lead you to encounter other examples. – J.G. Jun 17 '22 at 18:26
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    Perhaps the famous *Prisoner's dilemma* in game theory and economics could provide some hint... Most truths you're interested in are *contingent* truths *at best* which always are *not* context-free and thus with strings attached. Just stare at the favicon symbol of Taoism, things morph into its opposite constantly... Borrowing modal logic jargon, the paradox lies in the same problem of *squaring the circle*, and in this case *trying* to square the non-alethic to alethic... – Double Knot Jun 17 '22 at 19:44
  • "Democracy is a system where divergent viewpoints are allowed to compete for dominance" - I don't know where you got that from, but that's not what democracy is as much as it's a side effect if "the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation, or to choose governing officials to do so" (from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy)'s definition of democracy). In any case, allowing competing viewpoints doesn't contradict working towards a specific viewpoint, because the goal is never to ban people from sharing viewpoints opposing the predominant one. – NotThatGuy Jun 17 '22 at 21:26
  • Allowing people to "make choices about their lives" doesn't contradict establishing a "coercive order" (weird way to phrase it) to prevent people from coercing *other people*, i.e. making choices about the lives of others, not about their own lives. And you don't quite seem to understand relativism, but it's not a position I hold, so I won't try to argue for it. – NotThatGuy Jun 17 '22 at 21:29
  • Also a recent post mentioned Popper's [Paradox of tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance) states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant, which you may refer... – Double Knot Jun 17 '22 at 22:01
  • Please keep in mind that I did not give the examples I did to suggest that those political philosophies should be viewed that way, but only to illustrate how ideas can hold self-contradictions. I guess what I am referring to is more along the lines of the "self-refuting idea". The relativist example is probably a more straightforward presentation of it. – Rageforthemachine Jun 17 '22 at 22:47
  • A more precise philosophical term for the sort of paradoxes you describe is "Pragmatic Contradiction". This is when there is not a contradiction in terms of the content of belief, but there is a contradiction in terms of the practicalities of holding certain things to be true while allow acting on the basis of those beliefs. Another example is somebody who in fact believes they are rationally justified in holding the view of total skepticism. The skeptical belief itself may be consistent, but the agent who believes it is pragmatically inconsistent. – Avi C Jun 21 '22 at 17:49
  • Often strict logical paradoxes can be avoided by adopting a stance which leads to a pragmatic contradiction. Graham Priest explores these dynamics in his book Beyond the Limits of Thought. He argues that much of the history of philosophy has been an attempt to shift the paradoxes around from the content of propositional belief to the pragmatic limitations of what is expressible. For example, classical logic is constructed so as to prevent the ability to express propositions like the Liar's Paradox. Arguably when we consider the meta-theory of logic such paradoxes remain pragmatically. – Avi C Jun 21 '22 at 17:54

2 Answers2

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Paradoxes are a huge topic in philosophy given the preoccupation with logic.

  1. It might help to start fishing through entries that are related to paradox. For instance, terms like dialethiesm and self-refuting ideas are related.
  2. You might also want to familiarize yourself with some of the common paradoxes here at Stanford Encyclopedia's list of articles featuring 'paradox' or search of the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  3. Lastly, a Google Book searches might turn up topics that are interest to you like this one, A Brief History of Paradox.
  4. Lastly, there are resources such as PhilPapers.org that can provide you some leads like Paradoxes From a to Z by Michael Clark.
J D
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That's not really a fair description of democracy, afaik the point is that the power remains with the people and IS NOT a quest for dominance over the people. What you describe is rather a "competitive pluralism", but a more fitting example would be "the competitive free market". Which is literally what you describe everyone tries to gain a monopoly but as soon as they would it would seize to be a competitive free market.

And Libertarianism also only becomes a paradox when you straw man that position. Also you could make up a better straw man arguing with a philosophy of "universal, absolute individual freedom". Where an absolute individual freedom of the individual would, if anybody actually exercised it, violate the absolute individual freedom of another individual thus negating the concept (not being universal). So it can only exist if it doesn't actually exist (people don't exercise that freedom), but if it doesn't exist, does it exist (like is the freedom real if you aren't free to use it)?

haxor789
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