Paradox

Many paradoxes fit the pattern offered by Mark Sainsbury, for whom a paradox is ‘an apparently unacceptable conclusion derived by apparently acceptable reasoning from apparently acceptable premisses’ (Paradoxes, p. 1). For example, take The Heap:

Here both the premisses are apparently acceptable but the conclusion that apparently follows from them seems obviously false. Etymologically the paradoxical is what is contrary to (para) received opinion or belief (doxa). On Sainsbury’s construal it would be the conclusion of the argument that would be contrary to received belief.