Bhartrhari's Paradox: Why the Unnameable Cannot Be Named
The fifth-century Indian grammarian and philosopher Bhartrhari identified a paradox about unnameable things: any attempt to prove that something is unnameable requires naming it, thereby contradicting the claim. Philosophers Hans and Radhika Herzberger explored this paradox in a 1981 paper, noting that every argument for unnameability drives one deeper into the contradiction, as it inevitably refers to the very things it seeks to establish as unnameable.
Every argument advanced to support any instance of the unnameability thesis drives one still more firmly into the paradox, for they naturally tend to involve repeated reference to the very things whose unnameability they undertake to establish.
- dredmorbius
[delayed]
- ngvrnd
„Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen“
but if the thing can be interacted with, it can usually be mapped and defined and then named. But there will always be things which do not have names, at least in mathematics -- think of the real numbers.
- BiraIgnacio
sounds like the paradox that _could_ illustrate Gödel's incompleteness theorems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_th...
- GPerson
If we assume the real numbers exist, then perhaps the paradox resolves because there are uncountably many reals and only countably many nameable things, but then perhaps the paradox does not resolve because we assume ZFC is true and we can well order the reals, hence name the first unnameable real.
- lordnacho
This reminds me of the 6 degrees of separation thing.
People tell you that you can connect more or less everyone by 6 degrees. But what struck me was, for anyone you try this with, you know their names, so you've already restricted yourself in how far out someone can be.