Comment by paganel
15 years ago
> And why exactly are myths, religions or philosophy better at answering questions than science? What’s the justification for that claim?
Science assumes that there is a "justification" (for language, the universe, you name it). A true philosopher always begins by asking himself if there is such a thing as "justification". Just think about it, science has helped us put a man on the Moon and create the Tsar bomb, but it isn't able to answer Epimenides's "All Cretans are liars" paradox, a 2,500 years-old problem.
What’s there to answer? It’s a paradox.
> It’s a paradox.
You take as a given that paradoxes are or at least should be "un-answerable". This Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox#Possible_resolutio...) mentions a list of guys that tried to answer it, but anyway, this problem is way over my head, I should go back to writing Drupal modules before I also start rambling about Solipsism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism#Gorgias_.28of_Leontin...) :)
If you can find a solution it’s no longer a paradox. Paradoxes are defined† as un-answerable. Whoever created the paradox made a mistake and merely created something that looks like a paradox.
“Paradox” is just a word. There is nothing special about something being a paradox (except that paradoxes are cool to think about).
†That’s at least a common definition. That’s where I’m getting such crazy ideas like “paradoxes have no answer.” You are free to define “paradox” some other way. Be assured that it was never my intention to claim that the definition I used is in some sense the true definition. Definitions are all about communication (you need to agree on definitions in order to be able to talk to each other), not tools for finding the truth.
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