Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Since Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Western philosophers and logicians have, with few exceptions, viewed contradictions as unacceptable, simply incapable of being true. But certain logical paradoxes demonstrate that some contradictions aren’t so easily dismissed as merely false, an idea that some Eastern philosophical traditions have grappled with more successfully. In this instalment of Aeon’s In Sight series, the US-based British philosopher Graham Priest explains how the Liar Paradox – debated since antiquity – can upend the traditional Western view that all contradictions must be false.
Interviewer: Nigel Warburton
Producer: Kellen Quinn
Editor: Adam D’Arpino
Assistant Editor: Alyssa Pagano
video
Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes
video
Beauty and aesthetics
Can you see music in this painting? How synaesthesia fuelled Kandinsky’s art
10 minutes
video
Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
video
Political philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes
video
Human rights and justice
Can providing humanitarian aid be illegal? A troubling case from the US-Mexico border
17 minutes
video
Information and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
17 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Wander through the English countryside with two teens trying to make sense of the world
10 minutes
video
Personality
A ‘dumpster archeologist’ reconstructs strangers’ stories via what they’ve discarded
14 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
A Japanese religious community makes an unlikely home in the mountains of Colorado
9 minutes