Margaret Cuonzo

Stroll through any office party, social gathering, or school cafeteria, and you are likely to hear people engaging in what you would quickly and accurately label “gossip,” perhaps by noticing that someone who is not present is being discussed in a way that you imagine the person who is the subject of the discussion wouldn’t appreciate. You will often hear, in similar contexts, rumors being spread using a standard, “I heard that…” as a kind of disclaimer regarding the truth of the statement that was heard. Gossip has a “behind the back” quality that other types of conversation do not. A rumor, on the other hand, isn’t itself an activity, but a claim that gets passed from person to person with no one taking responsibility for the truth of the claim. “I heard that...” or even, “I’m not certain about this, but I heard…” are often said before someone transmits a rumor to another person. Taking something passed “through the grapevine” of multiple speakers as true has well-known perils. This piece discusses the natures of rumor and gossip, how they function, and what their consequences are. Two main concerns are (a) the extent to which we have the epistemic justification to believe rumors and gossip, and (b) the ethical implications of spreading rumors and engaging in gossip. I’ll argue that, with respect to epistemological justification, gossip is on better footing than rumor. One of the reasons for this is that gossip often functions as a way of spreading truths that the subject of the gossip would not want spread. Rumors, on the other hand, are prefaced with a disclaimer that indicates that the claim being spread is not first-hand information, thus making its truth inherently questionable. Lastly, with respect to their ethical implications, I’ll argue that the “behind the back” quality of gossip makes it inherently unethical, but that spreading rumors is sometimes ethically justified, or even required, as when one hears of a dangerous situation and warns others “just in case.”

In this essay I will examine the role that intuition plays in Russell's paradox; showing how different approaches to intuition will license different treatments of the paradox. In addition, I will argue for a specific approach to the paradox, one that follows from the most plausible account of intuition. On this account, intuitions, though fallible, have epistemic import. In addition, the intuitions involved in paradoxes point to something wrong with concept that leads to paradox. In the case of Russell's paradox, this is an ambiguity in the notion of a class.

I argue against a prominent type of solution to the sorites paradox, what Stephen Schiffer calls "happy-face solutions" and in favor of what he dubs "unhappy-face solutions". A happy-face solution to a paradox does two things: first, it points to the mistake made in the formulation of a paradox; and second, it removes the air of plausibility from the mistake. An unhappy-face solution, on the other hand, claims that the paradox cannot be given a happy-face solution, and seeks to explain what about the relevant notions involved in the paradox causes the paradox to arise. It may or may not propose an alternative, replacement notion to the one which generates the paradox. ;In Part One, I show that the correct solution to the sorites paradox will be an unhappy-faced one. In Chapter One, I claim that all approaches that respect the central features of vagueness have as a consequence that the sorites is a genuine paradox, which is unsolvable in the traditional happy-faced sense. In Chapter Two, I survey the most prominent happy-face solutions to the paradox and argue against them. ;In Part Two, I assess the major unhappy-face solutions in an attempt to find the most plausible of these. In Chapter Three, I examine the solutions of Wright and Dummett. Dummett's position, the more thoroughly unhappy-faced one is shown to be more plausible, although there are problems with his claim that the rules which govern the use of vague terms are incoherent. In Chapter Four, I examine Terence Horgan's unhappy-faced contextualist position, comparing it with Diana Raffman's happy-faced one. I claim that Horgan's position is more successful than Raffman's but that the success of his account turns on Dummett's incoherence thesis. In Chapter Five, I claim that it is better for the unhappy-face solution to avoid claiming, as Dummett claims, that the use of vague terms is governed by incoherent rules. A far more plausible claim is that the sorites arises due to an indeterminacy inherent in vague terms. Stephen Schiffer's position, the only one which makes such a claim, is thus the most successful of the proposed unhappy-face solutions. However, it remains an open question whether other plausible unhappy-face solutions which appeal to the indeterminacy of vague terms could be given. ;In Part Three, I try to answer two main questions: must the successful solution to each genuine philosophical paradox be an unhappy-faced one? and if so, must this unhappy-face solution take the form of the kind that I argued was the successful solution to the sorites paradox? I focus on the skeptical paradox and the liar and try to extrapolate from these and the sorites paradox, to an account of paradoxes in general.

Quine's and Duhem's problem regarding the «laying of blame» that occurs when an experimental result conflicts with a scientific hypothesis can be put in the form of a standard philosophical paradox. According to one definition, a philosophical paradox is an argument with seemingly true premises, employing apparently correct reasoning, with an obviously false or contradictory conclusion. The Quine/Duhem problem, put in the form of a paradox, is a special case of the skeptical paradox. I argue that both the Quine/Duhem paradox and the skeptical paradox enjoy the same type of solution. Both paradoxes have the kind of restricted solution that Stephen Schiffer calls «mildly unhappy-face» solutions. Although there can be no solution to these two paradoxes that gives an accurate account of the relevant notions, replacement notions are given for the ones that lead to the paradoxes.

Thinkers have been fascinated by paradox since long before Aristotle grappled with Zeno's. In this volume in The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Margaret Cuonzo explores paradoxes and the strategies used to solve them. She finds that paradoxes are more than mere puzzles but can prompt new ways of thinking. A paradox can be defined as a set of mutually inconsistent claims, each of which seems true. Paradoxes emerge not just in salons and ivory towers but in everyday life. (An Internet search for "paradox" brings forth a picture of an ashtray with a "no smoking" symbol inscribed on it.) Proposing solutions, Cuonzo writes, is a natural response to paradoxes. She invites us to rethink paradoxes by focusing on strategies for solving them, arguing that there is much to be learned from this, regardless of whether any of the more powerful paradoxes is even capable of solution. Cuonzo offers a catalog of paradox-solving strategies -- including the Preemptive-Strike (questioning the paradox itself), the Odd-Guy-Out (calling one of the assumptions into question), and the You-Can't-Get-There-from-Here (denying the validity of the reasoning). She argues that certain types of solutions work better in some contexts than others, and that as paradoxicality increases, the success of certain strategies grows more unlikely. Cuonzo shows that the processes of paradox generation and solution proposal are interesting and important ones. Discovering a paradox leads to advances in knowledge: new science often stems from attempts to solve paradoxes, and the concepts used in the new sciences lead to new paradoxes. As Niels Bohr wrote, "How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."