Affiliation:
1. University of St. Andrews
Abstract
It is usually supposed that, with his dichotomy paradox, Zeno gave birth to the modern so-called supertask debate – the debate of whether carrying out an infinite sequence of actions or operations in a finite interval of time is physically or even logically possible. I argue that in fact this is not a problem raised by Zeno's dichotomy paradox, and that an account of the dichotomy paradox as a supertask (often implicitly offered also by scholars of ancient philosophy) seriously misconstrues the problems Zeno raises therein. However, comparing Zeno's paradox with a paradigmatic supertask can nevertheless be instructive, since it forces us to make explicit the pre-conditions on which the supertask debate rests and to examine whether these conditions do indeed obtain in the case of a continuous run. I will suggest in the end that the requirements for supertasks and for continuous finite runs are genuinely different.
Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Cited by
15 articles.
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1. Zeno’s Paradoxes and the Viscous Friction Force;Foundations of Physics;2022-06
2. Index Locorum;The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought;2020-09-30
3. General Index;The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought;2020-09-30
4. Bibliography;The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought;2020-09-30
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