Questions tagged [zeno-of-elea]
Zeno of Elea (commonly known as Zeno) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He is well-known for Zeno's paradoxes. Not to be confused with Zeno of Citium, a lesser-known Hellenistic philosopher.
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Final Steps and Zeno's Paradox
In the SEP article on supertasks, it states that:
Max Black (1950) argued that it is nevertheless impossible to complete the Zeno task, since there is no final step in the infinite sequence. The ...
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Philosophical question about space, time, space-time and the arrow of time
I realize this question is going to come off as extremely physical (as in physics) and might even be subjected to being closed but I think it is better for me to voice it here because I realize there ...
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Is there a distance so small it can't be further divided?
If I shoot an arrow at a target, at some point it will reach one half of the distance to the target. Then it will reach one half of that distance. It will continue to reach the half of the previous ...
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Is special relativity immune to the paradox of Achilles?
According to the entry "Proper Time" in Wikipedia, for an object in a SR spacetime traveling with velocity v for a time interval Δ T
c2Δ T 2 = c2 Δτ2 + v 2 Δ T2,
where Δ T is the coordinate ...
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Why is Diogenes the Cynic's solution to Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox insufficient?
According to Wikipedia's discussion of Zeno's Dichotomy paradox (emphasis mine),
According to Simplicius, Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno's arguments, but stood up and walked, in ...
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A new challenge to physical reality
So recently I was thinking about Zeno's paradox (of infinite sum of 1/2^n in motion). Although I love calculus, I still don't get how it could possibly solve the paradox in Physical world, because ...
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What is the difference between Zeno's "Dichotomy" and Richardson's "Coast of England" paradox?
We assume, though I believe it can be debated, that Zeno's "Dichotomy" paradox is apparently "unreal." We can treat any given distance as the sum of an infinite regress of smaller ...
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Experiencing and sensing time dilation when a person dies and the logic of
It is well known that when a person goes to sleep, there are instances when we do not experience time which has phenomenological implications. There is a temporal discontinuity. It is also known that ...
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Is this a solution to one of Zeno's paradoxes?
I was inspired by this wikipedia article invoking a notion of a "Supertask" (informally, an infinite sequence of operations performed in a finite amount of time) to pose Zeno's paradox.
To ...
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Zeno's stadium paradox: If space is not continuous or discrete, what is it?
Zeno's paradoxes are paradoxical because they show that in a world of continuous time and space, there cannot be any motion, thus all motion that we see are some kind of illusion. His paradoxes then ...
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Russell's Response to Zeno's Paradox
I understand that Bertrand Russell, in repsonse to Zeno's Paradox, uses his concept of motion: an object being at a different time at different places, instead of the "from-to" notion of motion.
I ...
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A Classical Notion of Dividing Travel Up into Infinite Divisions
1) A man wants me to go from a to b in a straight line.
2) Suppose he can, first he needs to go to (a-b)/2.
3) Suppose he can, secondly he needs to go to (a-b)/4.
4) There are infinitely many integers....
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Who said 'You can't step into the same river once'?
Heraclitus traditionally said 'You can't step into the same river twice'
Who, in response, said 'You can't step in the same river once'?
I would like to attribute it to Parmenides or one the ...
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How can one explain this conflict between philosophy and classical physics? [duplicate]
Consider two moving objects along X-axis direction with different speeds and different initial starting points. Let the initial distance of the objects be d0 and v1 is greater than v2 i.e v1>v2.
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Papers on the history of the answers to Parmenides
I'd like to ask if any of you know of a paper which talks about the history of the answers to Parmenides and Zeno(from Plato and Aristotle to more recent works such as Russell's and )
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Does the uncertainty principle resolve Zeno’s arrow paradox?
Zeno’s arrow paradox says that motion is impossible. Does quantum mechanics say that the underlying assumption is wrong?
Assumption: in any given moment, an arrow in flight is motionless. Then it ...
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Which ancient Greeks are known to have commentated on Zeno's Paradoxes?
The Stanford Encycl. of Philosophy mentions that we know of Zeno's work only through various secondary sources, "principally through Aristotle and his commentators."
I was wondering, which other ...
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What is Aristotle's argument to Zeno's Achilles and the tortoise paradox?
What is Aristotle's refutation/objection/solution to Zeno's paradoxes?
The following is all I could find in around in the Internet:
Why is Aristotle's objection not considered a resolution to ...
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Do Hume’s Problem and Zeno’s Arrow Paradox have the same solution?
Both Hume’s Problem and Zeno’s Arrow Paradox freeze an observation in time. Do they have the same solution?
To show that the future may not be predicted from the past, the test that David Hume ...
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What are possible resolutions of the length unit paradox stemming from Zeno's Paradoxes?
The paradox in question: If every unit of length is made up of smaller units of length, it seems that you need to have units of length before a unit of length can come into existence. But this is ...
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What importance, if any, do infinitesimals still have for philosophers?
What importance, if any, do infinitesimals still have to philosophers? It seems like many people are baffled by them. E.g., there's a slew of questions relating to Zeno on this site (not least by ...
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Zeno's “Stadium” with the same metaphysical assumptions as his other paradoxes
“The Stadium” paradox is described by Aristotle as follows:
The fourth argument is that concerning the two rows of bodies, each row being composed of an equal number of bodies of equal size, ...
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Formulation and clarification of Zeno's arrow paradox
Is it correct to formulate Zeno's arrow paradox as follows?
1) If the arrow is still, it is not moving.
2) The flight of an arrow can be broken into instances, in all of which the arrow is still.
3)...
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What resolves Zeno's argument for the non-existence of place?
Aristotle discusses six dialectical arguments for the non-existence of place in Physics bk. Δ On Place, ch. 1 (209a); Zeno's argument is #5:
if everything that exists has a place, place too will ...
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How do empiricists explain zeno's paradox(es)?
If Zeno seemed to prove our perceptions cannot be trusted, how, then, can/does an Empiricist justify faith in their perceptions? I'm looking for various solutions (or justifications in the face of the ...
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Can there be momentum in an atomic moment of time?
Nagarjuna, a buddhist philsopher around 200 AD, in India, wrote on the impossibility of motion in the context of justifying Buddhist ontology (lack of svabhava); this is the content of the second ...
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Is Aristotle's resolution of Zeno's paradoxes vindicated by motion in the intuitionistic continuum?
In Physics VIII.8, Aristotle refers to his usual resolution of Zeno's paradox of motion:
We should make the same response to anyone who uses Zeno's argument to ask whether it is always necessary to ...
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Why is Aristotle's objection not considered a resolution to Zeno's paradox?
It seems to me, perhaps naïvely, that Aristotle resolved Zenos' famous paradoxes well, when he said that,
Time is not composed of indivisible nows any more than any other magnitude is composed of ...
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In what sense are a brown horse and a dark ox "three together"?
Confuzius started the fight against the sophists back then. After his death other sophists like Kung-sun Lung came and stated things like:
"The shadow of a flying bird doesn't move."
Ok, this ...
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Did anyone in Zeno time, use the idea of discrete space/time to propose a solution to his paradoxes?
Zeno famously stated a number of paradoxes of space, time & motion to argue for parmenides unity & changelessness of being.
Infinite divisiblity of space & time seemed to be a commonly ...
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Does thermal time hypothesis finally resolve Zeno's paradox?
Is Time Just A Trick Of The Mind? (read article)
Carlo Rovelli, one of the founder of Loop Quantum Gravity theory likes to think so. Furthermore wikipedia entry highlights:
This position has lead ...
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