Which philosopher is famous for his paradoxes, most notably Achilles and the tortoise?
What the Tortoise Said to Achilles What the Tortoise Said to Achilles "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", written by Lewis Carroll in 1895 for the philosophical journal "Mind", is a brief allegorical dialogue on the foundations of logic. The title alludes to one of Zeno's paradoxes of motion, in which Achilles could never overtake the tortoise in a race. In Carroll's dialogue, the tortoise challenges Achilles to use the force of logic to make him accept the conclusion of a simple deductive argument. Ultimately, Achilles fails, because the clever tortoise leads him into an infinite regression. The discussion begins by considering the following logical argument:
What the Tortoise Said to Achilles "B", and "Z" in his notebook, Achilles asks the Tortoise to accept the hypothetical: The Tortoise agrees to accept "C", if Achilles will write down what it has to accept in his notebook, making the new argument: But now that the Tortoise accepts premise "C", it still refuses to accept the expanded argument. When Achilles demands that "If you accept "A" and "B" and "C", you must accept "Z"," the Tortoise remarks that that's "another" hypothetical proposition, and suggests even if it accepts "C", it could still fail to conclude "Z" if it did not see the truth of: The