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Articles

Paradox Lost

Paul Tissier argues that Russell’s Paradox isn’t really a paradox.

Bev and Ali are deep in discussion.

Ali: There can’t be real paradoxes, can there? Those that purport to be paradoxes actually contain ambiguities in meaning, neglected information, hidden assumptions… In short, it’s all smoke and mirrors.

Bev: You might think so. However, Russell’s Paradox in set theory has attracted a lot of serious attention in the literature. In fact, Gottlob Frege, a leading logician and mathematician at the time, felt that this paradox devastated his fundamental work on set theory and the foundations of mathematics.

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