4 Unsolved Problems in Philosophy

Philosophy: the questions no one needed to ask. While we accept that there are certain universal truths to life there are people who, right now, are coming up with implausible scenarios just so they can come up with answers that somehow undermine half of what we know about everything.

The primary purpose of philosophy is to discover problems that relate to knowledge and to solve them as a means of gaining a better understand of our own existence and how we operate. However, there are several problems in philosophy that have yet to be solved for various reasons.

Also, will he be able to play piano?

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What’s the problem? A man who is born blind is taught to distinguish between the shape of a sphere and the shape of a cube by feeling them with his hands and fingertips. Then, the two objects are placed next to one another on a table. The man is then sat at the table and his vision returned. Will he be able to distinguish between the sphere and the cube before touching them, just with sight?

The question was posed to notable philosopher John Locke by William Molyneux. It should be noted that Molyneux was actually married to a blind woman and while it can’t be confirmed that he owned both a globe and a cube it can be safely assumed that he spent the better part of his day totally messing with her. In the name of philosophy, of course.

What’s the Answer? Both men believed that the objects couldn’t immediately be identified by sight alone, since seeing them gauged the objects height, width, weight, and shape differently than touching them, creating two separate realities for the blind man. It was further speculated that the missing piece that links the two worlds together is experience, and that the ultimate reality is combination of the senses and experience.

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What’s the problem? Language uses many poorly defined predicates. A fine example is measurement; assume that you define a heap of sand as having one-million grains. You then establish that taking away a single grain doesn’t unmake the heap and it is still defined as being heap. If you accept both of these as fact then what does your definition of a heap actually mean? When does it stop being a heap?

By not giving the heap an precise definition you are simply stating that the heap does or does not exist in some form. Meanwhile, you realize you’ve been sitting and counting individual grains of sand for the sake of a hypothetical question.

What’s the answer? Defining a change in the object require you to set specific boundaries. If you can say that a heap of sand is only a pile of sand if it contains nine-thousand or fewer grains then you can say that a pile is only a heap when it contains more than nine-thousand grains.

At least, that’s one answer. Sorites paradox is what’s referred to as an unsolved problem in philosophy, meaning there is no one method of approaching the question as to solve it universally. Because it’s hinged on definition and perception, the answer is going to vary from individual to individual without a commonly accepted answer overlapping.

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What’s the problem? Another unresolved problem in philosophy is the unexpected hanging paradox. In this heart-warming scenario, a judge sentences a prisoner to death by hanging but tells him that the date of the hanging will be a surprise. All he tells him is that it will be on a weekday next week and will occur at noon. The prisoner will only know when his time is up when the executioner comes for him at noon. In an effort to deduce when exactly he’s going to hang the prisoner puts on his thinking cap and comes to the conclusion that he can’t be hanged on Friday because it wouldn’t be a surprise; if he isn’t hanged by Thursday afternoon then he would logically have to die on Friday, but that wouldn’t be a surprise at all. Using the same logic he soon realizes that he can’t be hanged at all during the week, since surviving one day removes the next day out of the realm of possibility. The prisoner realizes that he can’t be hanged at all since it wouldn’t be a genuine surprise and that the judge secretly has a heart of gold.

The executioner then comes for him on Wednesday because no one likes a smart-ass.

What’s the solution? The judge’s contradiction (telling the prisoner the date will be a surprise while telling him it will occur next week) creates the paradox. The prisoner knows that next week he will die. However, he doesn’t know the exact date. The argument is based on whether or not he can truly be surprised as a result.

Though no direct solution has been reached, there are two schools of though on the subject. The first states that the prisoner would be unable to accurately deduce the day of his execution because eliminating the possibility of the execution happening on the last day would thus make such an occurrence surprising, given the lose definition of the word.

The second school of thought reduces the problem to a state of Moore’s paradox, essentially stating that it isn’t possible to say that the prisoner knows he will die but will be surprised to die. Moore’s paradox revolves around simple contradictory statements that can’t readily be disproved. Using Moore’s paradox the judges sentence becomes, in essence, “you are going to die, but you don’t know that,” or put another way, “you are going to die and I really, really hope you forget, because I’m sadistic like that.”

Totally trustworthy.

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What’s the problem? Similar to the well known liar’s paradox (“the following statement is true: the previous statement is false”) the crocodile dilemma tells the tale of a crocodile abducting a small child. The crocodile promises the child’s parent that he will return the child under the sole condition that the parent can predict what the crocodile will do next. The only “correct” answer is to guess that the child will be returned, assuming the crocodile being dealt with isn’t a total d**k.

However, the crocodile’s condition creates its own paradox. If the crocodile intends to take the child and the parent can predict that, then he is in violation of his own terms since he won’t be returning the child even though his condition has successfully been met. It also becomes impossible for him to return the child if this is the correct answer, making him a liar in the process. Regardless, lawyers are probably going to get involved at some point.

What’s the solution? There is none. There is no logical choice for the crocodile to make in this situation. The the crocodile choosing to keep the child or return undermines his previous statement completely, rendering the exercise itself pointless and presumably rendering the crocodile into a striking pair of boots or a belt.

Author: Ben Dennison — Copyrighted © roadtickle.com