Argument
Grim Reaper paradox
Overview
The Grim Reaper paradox is a philosophical argument involving an infinite sequence of Grim Reapers, each tasked with killing a person if no reaper has already killed them. The paradox raises questions about the possibility of continuous time and the infinite past (temporal finitism).
It is inspired by J. A. Benardete's paradoxes from the 1964 book Infinity: An Essay in Metaphysics. Various formulations of paradoxes involving beginningless sets, whose members perform a function only if no previous member performs it, are all labelled "Benardete Paradoxes". These are examples of supertasks.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The objections, then, of critics start with faults of five kinds: the allegation is always that something in either (1) impossible, (2) improbable, (3) corrupting, (4) contradictory, or (5) against technical correctness. The answers to these objections must be sought under one or other of the above-mentioned heads, which are twelve in number.
Aristotle, Aristotle on the art of poetry
The author is tied to Grim Reaper paradox in the knowledge graph.
Thus in the Oedipus, the messenger comes to cheer Oedipus and free him from his alarms about his mother, but by revealing who he is, he produces the opposite effect. Again in the Lynceus, Lynceus is being led away to his death, and Danaus goes with him, meaning, to slay him; but the outcome of the preceding incidents is that Danaus is killed and Lynceus saved. Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from…
Aristotle, The Poetics of Aristotle
The author is tied to Grim Reaper paradox in the knowledge graph.
98. DILEMMA.--For my own part, whenever I attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly and is participated by all beings, I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties. I have no notion of it at all, only I hear others say it is infinitely divisible, and speak of it in such a manner as leads me to entertain odd thoughts of my existence…
George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Close in meaning to Grim Reaper paradox; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Grim Reaper paradox
Related ideas
- Kalam cosmological argument
- Set (mathematics)
- Infinite regress
- Aristotle
- Theism
- Cosmological argument
- Temporal finitism
- Alexander Pruss
- José Benardete
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.