The ancient sorites paradox is traditionally attributed to Eubulides, a contemporary of Aristotle and a member of the Megarian school, who is also credited with inventing the liar paradox. The sorites paradox figures centrally in most discussions of vagueness in philosophy and in logic. In my view, it has profound implications for metaphysics and semantics, as well as for logic. In this paper I...

This paper shows that within-country happiness inequality has fallen in the majority of countries that have experienced positive income growth over the last forty years, in particular in developed countries. This new stylized fact comes as an addition to the Easterlin paradox, which states that the time trend in average happiness is flat during episodes of long-run income growth. This mean-pres...

For domains Ω with piecewise smooth boundaries the generalized solution u ∈ W 2 2 (Ω) of the equation ∆xu = f with the boundary conditions u = ∆xu = 0 in general cannot be obtained by solving iteratively a system of two Poisson equations under homogeneous Dirichlet conditions. Such a system is obtained by setting v = −∆u. In the two-dimensional case this fact is known as the Sapongyan paradox i...

The spectroscopic and kinetic features of the radiolytic intermediates produced in gamma irradiated sulfafurazole (SFZ) were investigated at different temperatures in the dose range 5 – 50 kGy using EPR and IR techniques. The imodiation produced two species (A, B) in SFZ. The heights of the peaks were used to monitor the temperature, time dependent and kinetic features of the radical species co...

The “doctrinal paradox” or “discursive dilemma” shows that propositionwise majority voting over the judgments held by multiple individuals on some interconnected propositions can lead to inconsistent collective judgments on these propositions. List and Pettit (2002) have proved that this paradox illustrates a more general impossibility theorem showing that there exists no aggregation procedure ...

This paper develops a qualitative, logical, theory of induction. It begins with Hempel’s attempt to produce a “purely syntactical” theory of confirmation and the demise of this attempt as a result of Goodman’s paradox. Ideas from the informal, pragmatic, solutions to this paradox proposed by Goodman and Quine are then adopted, adapted and extended in order to produce a formal, pragmatic theory ...

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We study the merger paradox, a relative of Harsanyi’s bargaining paradox, in an experiment. We examine bilateral mergers in experimental Cournot markets with initially three or four firms. Standard Cournot-Nash equilibrium predicts total outputs well. However, merged firms produce significantly more output than their competitors. As a result, mergers are not unprofitable. By analysing control t...

Adam Smith’s farmworker paradox reflects the fact that those who do the most essential work in society earn the least, just as his diamonds and water paradox revolves around the low valuation that markets place on essential resources. This article explores the perverse economic logic that leaves markets to run roughshod over both humanity and nature. It also explores how economists either attem...