The Arrow Paradox

Another of Zeno's Paradoxes for the possibility of motion.
Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more!
Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more!
(#Paradox #Zeno)

[@MrTweej]

Falsidical: The definition of movement used in the paradox is wrong. Movement implies that an object is in different places at different times, not that it isn't in one place at one time. There's probably a better way to word that but it's 3 am.

[@bazzad6369]

haha its 3am while i am rweading this, and i agree

[@CyberSlaYerAka-NinjaThug]

MrTweej gotta give you the respect bro!

[@geofreak12345]

hahaha 3

[@clabe9010]

remember that in the ancient greek movement might have an other definition

[@robertwilsoniii2048]

Quantum mechanics poses a problem with this view. In some sense it actually is possible for 1 object to be in multiple places at the same time. But, since this paradox is about macroscopic arrows rather than microscopic particles I guess classical physics applies, but technically your argument is faulty because you made a false assumption that things can not be in more than one place at the same time. In this way, then, I’d say his argument is Antinomious, because he was right that things can be in more than one place at a time, but his conclusion is wrong because if you shoot an arrow then it flies and hits the ground farther away. Thus he’s put his finger on an important topic of physics, namely, how do we account for the behaviors of large groups of particles that seem to behave differently than single particles?

[@jaybeetdown]

Since I've gone down this "Xeno" paradox, my perception of what movement is HAS started to shift into a new perspective, like one of those "Magic Eye" images. 🤔

[@justtheouch]

This is like the question asking what is the present. If we define it as this very moment, then it is immediately in the past with no time passing, therefore there is no such thing as the present. It relies on the idea that time can be split up discretely, but it cannot. At no point is the arrow not moving because you cannot take a time period of 0. 0+0=0, so taking multiple time frames with a value of 0 to show the arrow changing its position in space is to imply time does not exist or progress, when this clearly isn't true as it goes against our perception of time. If you accept that time progresses between these time frames of 0, like a collection of photographs, the arrow is moving between these time frames, no matter how short these are as long as they don't = 0. If you argue that there is no time passing between time frames of 0, then time does not exist. This is taking "time" to mean the universal idea of prgression, not the man made way of measuring it, which is arbitrary and made up, but there must be some progression in the universe, or you assume that nothing exists, changes or happens.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Josh Cottle This will have some interesting consequences for our series on temporal logic (a new video every day for all of November) stay tuned!

[@KingBaldwinTheFirstOfJerusalem]

Exactly why one should take the present as a period of time and not a present now similar to movie film. Deny premise 3 as wrong and we are ok.

[@StefanTravis]

Georg Hegel's "solution" to this is to say when the arrow moves from A to Z, it's first at A, then simultaneously at A _and_ Z, then only at Z. So what about travelling half the distance, from A to M? Same duplication process, and so on until you reach a distance of zero. So it's a "solution" which recreates the problem it's trying to solve. Hegel's non-solution to Zeno's non-paradox about non-movement.

[@screw0dog]

This can be either veridical or falsidical, depending on the precise definition of movement that we use. Most modern concepts of motion are based in the idea of being in different places at different times. Under this concept the claim that "it never moves" does not follow from "the arrow is always standing still". In fact, under this definition everything is always standing still at a given moment in time. This makes the paradox falsidical. The other way of resolving this paradox is to accept that there simply aren't any moments in time when something moves. This is counterintuitive, but not contradictory. On this reading it is correct to conclude that the arrow never moves. All it does is be at different locations at different times. Essentially a series of teleportations so fine that they appear smooth. On this concept of movement, the paradox is veridical.

[@screw0dog]

***** Why is it impossible, rather than just unintuitive?

[@zakmatew]

"Series of teleportations" is a form of movement.

[@kelvinluk9121]

I dont think the paradox is veridical, because movement should be considered as rate of change, i.e. a continuous changing in coordinates in 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimemsion, but NOT some discrete teleportations. The paradox's assumption of the flying arrow being stationary in 1 moment implies that the paradox takes movement as discrete teleportations, which is false in physics. And i dont think conclusion based on a wrong assumption shouldnt be considered as veridical

[@Jahidhasan-ms5os]

you r right brother..i completely agree with you

[@trafalgarla]

Coming from a physics perspective, I'd say it's falsidical, since movement has to be looked at compared to time to get a velocity or speed, so the paradox is already assuming a wrong view of how to view movement.

[@yifuj]

Motion is a direct function of time; without the passage of time, movement itself would be impossible. Whilst it may be true that initially, at a given snapshot in time (i.e. fixed space-time reference), nothing moves, but in that snapshot, time is also standing still. If one stops time arbitrarily, nothing moves around anymore, but that does not necessarily prove that motion is impossible.

[@pokebros5764]

Faslsidical: If time was composed of instances in which 0 time elapses, then there would be no time, because any thing multiplied by zero equals zero. Therefore, some time has to pass during an instance, and if some time passes, then the arrow has to move some distance

[@Jahidhasan-ms5os]

Poke Bros you are wrong brother... infinity×0=anything

[@torosushi6423]

Infinity is not a number per se, but instead a set's cardinality. Therefore, we say there are infinite natural numbers but not "infinity + 1". Infinity times 0 equals, perhaps counter-intuitively, undefined.

[@3agram]

The solution is simple, the arrow simply teleports from one tiny position to the next on the smallest scale, this is the only way for it cross from one point to the next. It proves that time can only be quantified so much, otherwise the arrow would never move as it would have no definite position to teleport to as there would also be something smaller.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Tick Tock So you would claim that time is not dense? (kzbin.info/www/bejne/nGbOd4yZfbeUhpo and kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJyzqYqrgcZ0hck)

[@3agram]

Thanks for the reply I've just watched the video and it was really cool. But yes as you say I don't believe it, as motion would not be possible otherwise unless of course the way I understand motion is completely different to what is actually happening.

[@sneakerbabeful]

The arrow may not be moving, but it has momentum. Which enables it to move from one moment to another (arrow as a 4 dimensional object). The arrow is not moving through space, but through time.

[@Tardisius]

"There is no spoon" =)

[@matthewnguyen5829]

The Matrix

[@ObjectsInMotion]

An object can still be "moving" at a given instant. Objects have "instantaneous velocity", which is their momentum (a property like energy independent of time) divided by their mass (for non-relativistic objects). Therefore an object frozen in time is still moving.

[@coreprotocol]

Fascinating

[@paradox6647]

Someone in the comments has probably answered the same way I did-Disclaimer. If we pause at a moment in time it seems the arrow is moving still, but the arrow actually has a speed, we just can’t see that speed because the time is frozen, meaning the arrow can’t progress. We can find the speed of an arrow at a given time “t”, we can do this with various techniques such as functions and even derivatives. If we were to graph the function f(t)=x, where t is time and x is position, then the derivative, f’(t) will give us the speed at any given moment “t”. Using the laws of functions we can prove that the arrow must have a defined speed at every instant in time, however we can’t really visualise the speed because the time is frozen in one time frame. The speed is still there, but without time to progress, the arrow will not move. Without time to elapse, no distance is travelled. However, the arrow still has speed. This is indeed, the solution to the paradox.

[@MikeRosoftJH]

The paradox can be summarized like this: What does it mean that an object is in motion? For example, if you shoot an arrow, is it in motion? "Of course it is." Okay, but when is it in motion? Is it in motion now? Or one second from now? Two seconds from now? After all, at any given moment the arrow occupies only one place. And if there's no moment when we can say: "now the arrow is in motion", how can we say that it's in motion at all? Zeno is in fact heading towards a concept from calculus, the derivative of a function. (But he wasn't able to make the final "step to infinity", and instead he declared: that's not possible; and so apparently motion is also impossible.)

[@antmon123]

i saw the video 4x...read your explanation 1x, thank you! i kinda get it now 😊

[@snowman8157]

How was the arrow in movement /not movement in the first place.

[@jaset362]

It could be rather Antinomious ,however there is some problem with it. If we consider an arrow as one particle (which is not true) then it can not be in different places at the same time. However , you can watch runners in slow motion or even immobile while they're still running on tape recorder. And again we all know of electron's movement but we can not point out where any particular electron is at the moment.It is even possible that we live in the world with only one existing electron which is at the same time everywhere for us becase its motion keeps our reality intact. We cant observe it .It existence is a result of mathematical equations used by physicists.We can not move in the same speed as an electron ,can we? However we exists .Our body is built of atoms which are invisible for us but we can see each other. And we can also move as very complicated biological structure however some movements inside our body are infinitely faster then our whole body motion.Somehowe it is comparable to motion of Universe as whole body with all its components moving inside much faster. We live on the planet Earth which surface at equator moves 460 meters per second and it moves through the space with a speed of 390 kilometers per second. And for us standing on the ground Earth does not move at all (excluding local earthquakes) under our feet.Thus Arrows Paradox is true only if the observer moves with the same speed as an arrow. For observer an arrow will hang motionless in the air. If observer moves faster he will never see an arrow at all. If observer moves slower he will see an arrow only at the beginning and the end of its motion if it is close enough ( see what happens to astronauts who stay beyond the influence of Earth's gravity in sci-fi movies). There is the concept of Sunyata as "emptiness" - according to this concept "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form Emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness Whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form." In this case an arrow exist only at the moment it is released and at the moment it materializes again at the point of destination. It does not exists in between (nowadays we can observe whole arrow's motion due to modern technology,we can even stop it in virtual reality).But we need to keep in mind that our perception of reality is created by our brain .Our brain iterprets all information submitted by our senses but first all of them are turned into electric impulses.Our brain in a blink of blink of second compares them with previous experiences/informations ,consults it with our basic instinct located in brains oldest structures and creates pictures,sounds and ideas biased by our hidden wishes. There it is-our Reality (or our Maya an illusion).

[@FiguraMolenMedia]

It is always standing still but at different places. If it is at different places or points than it is not standing still all the time. The object is constantly still yet constantly moving.

[@TheToXeye]

In maths, a function which consists of only points but which represent a continuous function is called a devil's ladder (with good reason). The position of the arrow is f(x) = x, for example...

[@ant1pod]

this paradox works when you're using "quantum" time (your "moments"). but there're no moments. the time isn't quantum - it's smth like a wave that your mind being quantized for any purpose.

[@jordanwolff5243]

Since the earth is moving, the arrow is moving. How's this answer?

[@peterwright5311]

False premise. The arrow is never standing still. This argument requires us to consider the arrow as standing still, but in reality this is only possible if we consider an infinitely small (and hence impossible to measure) period of elapsed time. The argument then does not accurately portray the actual state of affairs but relies upon us forgetting that we cannot deal with actual infinities in our reasoning.

[@TaylorMichael90]

The arrow is not standing still in one "moment" because standing is a temporal condition. In any one moment, ALL things are "standing" still because no time is passing for them to DO ANYTHING. Doing something requires time, which requires moments to pass. I'm gonna go with Veridical.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Interesting argument. So you would say that we can't say that the arrow is not moving at any one point because "Not Moving" is a predicate that only applies to objects over time?

[@TaylorMichael90]

Thanks for the reply, fam! My problem with this is I have no idea what a "moment" is. It's as arbitrary a unit of time as a second, minute or whatever. Those are units of time that have finite duration, just as I would imagine a moment would have to. A moment is an abstract unit of time that doesn't have a finite duration, but that we all understand intuitively. I'm having a moment with my girlfriend if all the other conditions are constant like the room we're in, the noise level, temperature... etc. I think all animals are shaped by natural selection to deal with the universal temporal condition we call "right now", which is constantly in motion. A universal physical constant called "the speed of light".

[@kieranhughes1110]

Taylor Hill YES!

[@TaylorMichael90]

Kieran Hughes Thanks!

[@prkycck4445]

the energy making it move however seems to travel with it from one position to the next. this energy is lost little by little after each frame yet still is a part of the arrow. therefore the energy is part of the arrow as much as what ever the arrow is physically made up of, its wood, or feathers. that kinda thing. we need to look at each time frame with a broader perspective. only then can we see every aspect that time entails.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Interesting idea. The question would be, how does an object which is not moving, frozen in an instant of time have energy to begin with. How can something which is by definition stationary, trapped in an instant have energy, which is by definition movement?

[@MikeyRoofffff]

I think the original poster is directionally correct but incorrectly used the term energy where they should have said "force." There is a force acting on the arrow at any given point in time that is causing the space translation over time

[@jimprjayp]

Speed is the total distance over time to traverse it. v = d/t Because there is a measurable distance to the target the speed is the average velocity toward the target. Zeno has described the formula for acceleration. At any given point measure the distance from the initial point and time it took to get from the initial measurement and add them all together. v = u + at Zeno correctly reasoned that the arrow measured at any given point was in stop motion but over time those stop points would equal a distance over the total time traveled. Therefore the argument is Antinomious.

[@theorbization]

my contention is that movement is composed of moments if a moment is defined as an infinitely small measure of time, therefore falsidical? im still new to this

[@faerryn8708]

This is a falsidical paradox, as the notion of time is misunderstood. Time is the difference between moments. Time is change, thus time is more than moments. It uses faulty reasoning.

[@PessimisticIdealism]

A body moves from point A to point B. The body’s movement from point A to point B is not instantaneous, rather the motion has a duration, and this duration can only be conceived of as being one whole or extended block of time. However, all happenings and activity can only occur in the Present, since only the Present exists. But if the body’s motion has a duration, and only the Present exists, then the duration of the body’s motion must be contained within the Present. But if the duration of the body’s motion is contained within the Present, that means that the Present would have to be extended. But if the Present is extended, then the body occupies two different points of space (i.e. point A and point B) in one time (i.e. the Present). The body’s motion must be continuous, and the body that moves must be the same body at point A and point B, so the same body would be at point A and point B at the same time. And this is contradictory, because the same body cannot occupy two different places at the same time. Furthermore, if the Present is extended, there would be infinitely many diverse Presents within the Present that are all existing and simultaneous, yet this is contradictory as well. All motion is confined to the Present. There can be no motion in the Past, because the Past does not exist, and there can be no motion in the Future, because the Future, like the Past, does not exist. Therefore, all motion must be in the Present. But if all motion is in the Present, and a body moves from point A to point B, then that which moves is in two different places in one time. The reason for this is that the body must preserve its identity throughout its motion from point A to point B, and the motion must be continuous, and the motion has a duration; therefore, that duration must itself be a “Present,” otherwise there would be no motion in the Present, and there can only be motion in the Present, since there can be motion neither in the Past nor the Future.

[@chrisg3030]

You're at Paddington Station in London, dashing to catch your train to Oxford (home of Lewis Carroll). You jump on at the last second or two without giving yourself time to look at the departure board. There's just one other passenger in the car, with a beard, sandals and toga. "Does this train go to Oxford?" you ask. "Yes" comes the reply. You settle in your seat, and an hour or so later look up to see that the train is rushing through Oxford station without even slowing down. "Hey, you said it goes to Oxford" you protest. "And so it does", says the toga man "It just doesn't stop there". One moral: It's not motion that's an impossibility, but stopping is. But if things slow down enough to get off or on, or just to say where they are with enough accuracy to go and find them now or later, it doesn't make much practical difference. The choice of an arrow in the paradox depends on excluding that option.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Chris G An interesting thought. From my understanding of physics, nothing actually ever stops moving, we can't seem to get things to absolute zero. So maybe the problem isn't motion as you mention, it is the assumption that anything ever stopped.

[@chrisg3030]

+Carneades.org "At any one moment the arrow is standing still". This can be considered a fundamental convention we use for describing motion. Every time we ask and answer the question of a moving object "Where is it now?" it helps us to pretend it is stationary at, say, a stationary division marker on a ruler, a furlong post on a race course, a grid line on a graph or chart, or - well - a rail station. As long as the information thus provided can be acted on, such as in intercepting it, the description is valid. Asking a submarine commander "State your position speed and bearing" is, on one pointlessly pedantic interpretation, contradictory. Yet we can use his/her answer to arrange a rendezvous. Other jokes which depend on stretching beyond or extracting such conventions from usefulness include a fly stopping a train: your fly is buzzing along down a rail track and is struck by a train speeding along in the opposite direction. Immediately the fly's trajectory is reversed, therefore at the moment of impact its speed is zero, so therefore is the train's, thus the fly stops the train. One of mine: An object is dropped from 15m. How fast is it travelling when it hits the ground? Don't need to use any complicated formulae, the answer is always zero. Zeno is a joker.

[@blankname6657]

I'm pretty sure zenos paradox is falsidical, and ill explain why, Time is isnt only composed of moments, time is a concept, and we dont even have a definitive way to prove that time itself is real. Motion occurs when an object moves out of its position, to occupy another position. This means that as soon as an object moves out of where its previous state was, motion has occurred, no matter how the object ended up getting there. Zenos logic implies that time ONLY consists of moments. Think of a moment as 1 second long, and with the speed formula speed = time/distance, we can get a rough speed of how fast an object is moving. Now zeno is basically saying that the object must go from one moment point to another, so if it stops in 1 second, it MUST travel another second and stop again. But this is not true, because time can be however short or long you want it to be.

[@IanChau]

Fallacy of composition, saying that since A is made up of B therefore A contains traits of B (e.g. the atoms that make up humans cannot be seen. Therefore, humans cannot be seen)

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Ian Chau I like that response. It still makes motion a little weird since something moving is just something standing still at a series of different points.

[@Socoolgirl94]

This is falcidical because it falls prey to a composition fallacy. Just because at any one moment it's standing still does not mean on the whole it is standing still. For a parallel, in calculus any one segment of a curved line has the slope of a straight line, but that does not mean then that the whole line is straight.

[@gillianjones6629]

This is rather over my head, but it makes me think of calculus...the way a particular point on a graph has a displacement from the origin, but when you take the derivative you find that it isn't just there, but it has a velocity, it's moving.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Calculus is useful for dealing with Zeno's other paradoxes, by showing that infinite series can actually have finite sums, however the trouble here is that there is no derivative of just a bunch of points, no matter how close they are together, you need a continuous function, just like all of the moments of an arrow moving through space have nothing which connects them and therefore they lack velocity.

[@RealityCheckMaster]

Continuation of below comment: Conclusion: the universe is composed of a set of static frames with a resolution of Planck length and a refresh rate of Planck time. There is an extra dimensional source outside of our perceivable universe that is running this "movie". That source also contains the mathematical algorithms that maintain the order that we see. This arrow paradox is only a paradox from a materialist point of view but makes perfect sense from an idealist point of view. To any believers of materialism I ask the same question. In a matter based universe, where does the math reside that maintains the order that we see. Math is a concept that cannot be explained by matter not can you recreate the fluidic continuity of calculus within our universe. Math can however describe matter so it's a level above in the hierarchy. Since math is the parent of matter, and is an idea, it stands to reason that matter comes from idea rather than the reverse.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

What you are saying is that time is not dense? kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJyzqYqrgcZ0hck and kzbin.info/www/bejne/nGbOd4yZfbeUhpo

[@KingBaldwinTheFirstOfJerusalem]

Deny premise 3 and say there is no present instant but instead any period of time can only be broken down into smaller periods of time so the present would be a period of time and not as Zeno would assume as a now.

[@johnnolan8785]

is ZENO confusing time with duration we situate ourselves psychologically in time we relate ourselves back and forth spatially as it were(by analogy)in terms of periods I.e durations our experiences are ranked in terms of how long they lasted Inc seemed to.this makes ZENO s paradox possible time seems to be going somewhere but it is not that can only happen in space time is actually .....

[@PaulTheSkeptic]

Sounds Falsidical to me. It is not standing still at any one moment. It's just an appeal to one's sense that if we could freeze time that things would appear to stand still but time cannot do that. I think we perceive of time as a series of moments but time is more complicated than that.

[@timo4463]

Did I understand it right he just sayed we are a film with Idk 60fps for example

[@709zzy]

Here is how to solve this paradox. Every instance in time is actually not a frozen slice like a photo. An instance in time is actually an infinitesimal period of time. So think of an instant as a super short video clip. Super short, but not frozen. Thus every instant (or a super short clip) has a velocity, which is called the instant velocity. This is not wild imagination or approximation. The infinitesimal is proven by the mathematician Abraham Robinson.

[@zeljkoharandi7067]

Movement is possible, its just if everything stood still, there would be as time is just what we use to describe movement If nothing moves there is no way you can measure passing of time, therefore time would stand still

[@studioROT]

It is rationally veridical and empirically falcidical and therefore antinomious. It follows that Zeno's thesis is an aporia rather than a paradox.

[@James-ff7mk]

Wait, whhhaaaattttt? Someone get me my translator

[@studioROT]

Zeno's statement is truthful (veridical) when considered in accordance to logic (rational). But when we consider the evidence (emperical), and we discoverer that the arrow moves, the statement becomes false (falcidical). It is an irresalvable disjunction in the statement (aporia) which causes an internal contradiction between two philosophical fields of thought (antinomious). It is like the Cretan Epimenides saying that "all Cretans are lairs". That statement is not paradoxical, it merely contains an internal aporial riddle. To say 'white is red' would be stating a paradox.

[@James-ff7mk]

Thank you. It makes much more sense now

[@Garthur0]

Ahmm... why is everyone saying "movement"... The way this either works or it doesn't is by defining what a "moment" is "a brief period of time" but how brief are we talking about? A period of time, means there Is time, and so the motion, regardless of how slow or short the Time is, will exist, if you however say that a moment is like a picture, or a frame then there is NO time involved hence it's Not a moment

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

I don't know what any theory of time which denies that there are moments looks like. It seems that we are always in some moment of time, Maybe you can come up with some way to deny them, but it is not something I have heard of. Even the interval theory uses moments to determine starting and ending points of intervals. If anything it seems harder to deny that moments exist than that movement exists. And it should be noted that there is a difference between change and movement, at least in the understanding of most people. Many people would argue that change is required for time, but not necessarily movement. Or, to put it another way, there seems to be a big difference between me sitting on one side of a room one moment and sitting on the other side the next. Something changed, but I don't think you can say I moved in the same way that you would if I walked across the room. However, if Zeno is to be believed, me walking across the room is jsut an illusion and in fact it is a series of tiny jumps just like me suddenly appearing on the other side of the room. He's not saying that change does nto happen, he's saying that movement does not happen.

[@RealityCheckMaster]

There is no actual movement through the universe, only the illusion of movement due to our inability to resolve down to the Planck length. We know that between Planck distances, things jump, similar to how electrons jump in discrete orbits. In other words, the universe is digitized into discrete units of space and time. As such, fluidic continuous motion doesn't ever occur. The arrow is in fact standing still in each Planck "frame". The question is what makes it jump from one Planck frame to the next giving that illusion of direct motion? Since the arrow flashes into and out of existence to make the Planck jumps, I posit that in fact, the universe operates more like a picture flip book or a movie on your tv screen. On a tv screen, there is an illusion of movement that your eyes cannot resolve due to the refresh rate of 72 frames/second. On a tv screen, objects jump from one pixel to the next. The sequence of static frames comes from the source of the transmission.

[@ashnur]

We do not know, but I for one do not believe that what we call time is a thing and not a pattern of things and I do not believe in continuity either, in fact, I am not aware of any example where I could even perceive continuity at all. Not sure why would you believe in it, it seems like believing in angels.

[@ashnur]

your point being?

[@ashnur]

When you say physics, you mean the practice what physicists do (as I understand it), or you mean the "reality of our existence" or something like that? Because I think math is a practice of what mathematicians do, so math is the consequence of physics because first there was physics then there was math. But if you mean the second one, I can't answer because we disagree about bigger things than time :)

[@medic2009guy]

This is explained in Quantum physics by De Brogile's wave particle duality!

[@antonioaguera4580]

I know this paradox in a different way. When an arrow is shot from a bow to a target, the arrow has to travel half that distance first. Then again, the half distance for the remaining distance. And repeat into infinity. Therefore the arrow should never reach it's destination.. maybe this could be construed that motion as we understand it, is not what we believe it is.

[@aydc6740]

completely different paradox mate both made by the same person tho

[@ALSALAZAR1985]

remember the factor of time. its a big factor. location is as important as time

[@fellthesky8285]

its way interesting if you change the word movement by its opposite

[@2Hesiod]

Antinomious because it starts from a false premise that the arrow is ever still making the argument unsound.

[@jeradclark8533]

Falsidical. Again comparing apples to oranges, dividing a finite amount of time by an infinite number of "moments" defined as zero seconds long. He is just dividing by zero again. That is why it does not matter how long it takes for the arrow to reach the target. One minute contains an infinite amount of "moments". One hour contains the same amount. Define how long a moment lasts, say a single Planck second, and the paradox disappears.

[@OlejzMaku]

There is no such thing as a Planck second. Planck time isn't smallest possible unit of time. Time in quantum mechanics is still infinitely divisible.

[@robertwilsoniii2048]

In some sense it actually is possible for 1 object to be in multiple places at the same time, as quantum mechanics shows. But, since this paradox is about macroscopic arrows rather than microscopic particles I guess classical physics applies, but technically most people in these comments are wrong because you made a false assumption that things can not be in more than one place at the same time. In this way, then, I’d say the argument is Antinomious, because he was right that things can be in more than one place at a time, but his conclusion is wrong because if you shoot an arrow then it flies and hits the ground farther away. Thus he’s put his finger on an important topic of physics, namely, how do we account for the behaviors of large groups of particles that seem to behave differently than single particles? This is an open question in physics, and is the topic of current research. Some proposals are Quantum Field Theory, The Standard Model, and even String Theory. Stat mechanics and chemistry assume the standard model (I think), which is compatible with QFT, but both are incompatible with string theory.

[@stephentoons]

i like zeno. take the motion in a motion picture.... nothing is actually moving, it is composed of a sequence of still frames... the motion is an illusion... this is the arrow paradox... the arrow only appears to be moving, each moment is composed of a still arrow.... motion is an illusion. a covenient one.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

That's a great analogy for the paradox!

[@NinjaMonkey088]

veridical I believe. but I feel like you implied relativity without implying it. the arrow never moves. it is in moments of zero motion. relative to itself. the world however is moving around it

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+DJ Waldo (NinjaMonkey088) Interesting idea. Frankly I am not well versed in the theories of relativity to comment.

[@nesperado0790]

It's gotta be falsidical right? I'm no scientist, but my gut says taking something at any single point in time (like a picture) doesn't tell you the whole picture, could be called bad reasoning. You have to analyze the whole situation which includes actions over a period of time in order to have good reasoning.

[@nesperado0790]

*the whole picture* might have been confusing language considering my previous analogy of a "picture". " the whole story" might have been better language

[@markusf8445]

It is not a paradox, it is simply based on false premisses. "The arrow does not move" is true for a three-dimensional snapshot of the event, but not for an instant in space-time. Take a cube and slice it in half, then slice the half again, and continue for a long time. The resulting object will look like a two dimensional square, but will never be, in fact, a square. Another way to look at it: make a flip-book of the flying arrow, shaped like a cube, with an innumerable infinite number of pages. Open it at random and observe the immobile arrow, and then turn a page to see what's happening "just after". What you are now holding between your fingers is a innumerable infinite number of pages. What you perceive as a snapshot (the page) is in fact three-dimensional and contains the animation of a moving arrow, even if that movement is infinitely small (an I mean infinitely small, in zero time over zero distance, not just arbitrarily small). Basically, a snapshot is not identical to an instant, just as a slice of cube is not a square.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Markus F There are a couple of problems. First, this is not how we understand instants in temporal logic. Instants are points on a timeline. They have no length. (kzbin.info/www/bejne/g3y9ZmB6oad_bs0) Furthermore, the other problem is that simply because a timeline is dense (kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJyzqYqrgcZ0hck and kzbin.info/www/bejne/nGbOd4yZfbeUhpo) it does not mean that individual instants (or as you call them snapshots) do not exist. If we were talking about intervals with length the paradox would not appear, but we are talking about instants, which, by the standard definition, do not have any duration.

[@Moonbane]

Momentum / acceleration, and impact itself.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+xXMoonbaneXx But how can an arrow which is stopped at a moment in time have velocity and acceleration since it is not moving and time is not moving?

[@Moonbane]

Because of the idea of impact and force itself. If those moments are of something just being still, then there would be no force on the impact itself, or have any effect on either of the two objects.

[@GoldenHay1]

well one could say movement is relative one could also say the arrow is a concept as is movement or in other words there is no spoon as someone below quoted

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Basically you are saying that movement only exists in our heads? That we just attribute movement to objects which exhibit certain positions in time? Interesting claim. It does seem that, unless you are a coherentist about truth, that you would be committed to the claim that there is no objective fact of the world that an arrow is moving. If two people disagreed about it, we could not say that one was right and one was wrong, since movement is grounded in what people believe about movement.

[@GoldenHay1]

Yea, it's all just subjective reality and perspective. Movement is a concept that is attributed to things that have varying distances(distance is a concept) at different points in time(time is a concept) between the observer and themselves. If something is moving at the same speed as the observer it does not seem to be moving at all, so from one perspective there does not seem to be any movement, but from another perspective there is. From one perspective we don't seem to be moving at all when standing still and from another perspective we are hurtling through space at a whopping 375 miles a second. "Nothing is true; everything is permitted" i mean, take a look at the double slit experiment and you will see that it's our consciousness that forms our subjective reality. There is no absolute truth, or objective reality. Our consciousness interprets things in a certain subjective way.

[@VasselofGod2]

I'd say falsidical, since we would need to define what movement is, if we define movement as always heading somewhere (bad definition, just came up with one off the top of my head) then the conclusion would be true, however, if we define movement as going from one place to another over any period of time, then the conclusion would be false, since the arrow would be in a different place each passing moment, and therefore, this paradox is untrue not to mention that I don't think one of the premises is true 1) time is broken up into a series of moments 2) an arrow is standing still in every one of those moments C) therefore, in every moment the arrow is standing still I don't think premise 2 is correct, especially when you take momentum into account

[@aaronlee8694]

Motion is impossible you simply disappear and reappear it’s called a quantum leap

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Hmm. I am not sure that is the definition of a quantum leap, it seems to be when electrons move from one energy level to another without going in between. An example of Zeno's ideas, but I think we have yet to show that all motion is quantum leaps.

[@McLuvin411]

The flaw is that: It is true that the arrow consists of a series of moments, but the arrow is in different places in different moments. So the arrow is not moving in any "moment", but the arrow has moved to a new location to be still in the next frozen place in time.

[@McLuvin411]

​@john templeplate It's like a camera: a series of stills that create movement when viewed in continuity. The right question to ask is how many frames per second was Zeno looking at this shit

[@mikevsamuel]

Falsidical. "The arrow is standing still at each moment" is false. Brahmagupta and perhaps some ancient Greek mathematicians defined (0 / 0) as 0, so confusion over zero and infinity might lead one to conclude that (zero displacement / zero time) implies no motion; but we know now that the axiom (0 / 0) = 0 leads to internal contradiction. Today, we quantify motion by measuring/integrating over a range of time, and we quantify "instantaneous speed" by taking the limit as the range integrated over approaches zero. That approach gives us a non-zero quantity for the instantaneous speed of a moving arrow.

[@awesomeprestigedad6238]

Couldn't classify under any of these terms - they all deal with notions of complete truths when in this case we absolutely do not knoe what time actually is or if it even exists outside of a conscious mind observing it. No answer until we can answer the qurstion of time.

[@mikeduplessis8069]

A 'moment' divorced from time is an artificial construct. All than can be done is for time to be measured in such minute (pun intended) increments that we lose our ability to measure the forward movement of he arrow within it. But that is not a function of the arrow, that is a function of our own limited abilities.

[@alexandervanhook5373]

Veridical... Time and space don't exist therefore movement can't exist. It's simply an illusion created in the mind. Do we move through space in a dream?

[@joaogoncalves-tz2uj]

time can't be just instants

[@myuniverse2798]

Hi

[@Jahidhasan-ms5os]

this is 100% veridical....

[@Artifactorfiction]

No thing is ever not moving

[@TheDevilvivek]

Here both statement are not related.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

What do you mean? How can an arrow not move at every moment, but still be considered in motion. The two statements are about the same object and the same property.

[@mike109374]

this is how tvs work

[@assalane]

Falsidical. A complete description of The arrow movement would also include its speed and direction, not only its position.

[@ryanand154]

Zeno’s paradoxes are a reason why consciousness is a mistake.

[@elakheemode1302]

The arrow is inanimate, I'd suggest it's antimonious.

[@stevenahungerford1981]

The arrow is static, when aboserved our conchince tought influence time see as movement

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

So you agree with Zeno? motion is an illusion? This is a veridical paradox?

[@DarrenMcStravick]

Pretty sure this conception of movement over time relies solely on a bastardised version of the A-Theory of Time.

[@johnnolan8785]

time is static unmoving all times are equidistant from each other movement is different places at different times space and time work together or not at all there are no gaps as with durations that is ends and beginnings no gaps in time to move from and arrive with nothing in between it the universe is Parmenides PLENum and well worth a poem! but not at 5 or so am

[@rolandshelley5165]

Veridical.

[@holz_name]

Falsidical. Motion is position derivative by time. The arrow have a function of motion f(t) for the time t. Therefore, the arrow never stands still. Everything is in motion, because every object in the universe have the function of motion f(t).

[@manavgoyal4965]

this is a paradox ...man chill

[@EnderCrypt]

lol, nice one but.. "theres no moment where the arrow is moving" "therfore movement is impossible" movement noun move·ment \ˈmüv-mənt\ Popularity: Top 40% of words Simple Definition of movement : the act or process of moving people or things from one place or position to another there is nothing about time involved

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

The problem is that at no instant is the arrow moving. At every instant the arrow is perfectly still. Also defining movement by using the word moving seems somewhat circular.

[@EnderCrypt]

Carneades.org hmm.. but the definitions of movement and moving doesent rely on time, it just says.. changing position basically

[@rbxwealth7925]

Carneades.org It takes time to move

[@DiminishedStudios]

This paradox is not veridical, falsical or antinomious

[@dantespo]

wait what just happenend

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+Daniel Cantero Zeno broke time.

[@carrolladdington4517]

This is falsidical, like many of Zeno's Paradoxes. "Movement" is "change in position over time". If you take time out of the equation, then of course there's no movement, because then you're only looking at half the equation. In ANY moment, all things are standing still for that very reason. Once you add time back in though, you have "Movement".

[@steveoh8036]

frozen moment dont exist cause time is always moving and it has infinite fps Even if we're able to slow the time until it may look like its frozen i can say it still moving the only thing is our sense of sight has limited receptors on how many fps we can see. so therefore the paradox is falsidical

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Interesting. So what is "now"? It cannot be an instant, since those do not exist, but to call it an interval seems quite contradictory.

[@steveoh8036]

"now" is how humans define the current instance of time, therefore since the time is unlimited and has unbreakable flow the "now" dont exist. what were experiencing "now" is the reaction of our consciousness in flow of time. to be able to fully comprehend the time itself we should break to its law and observe from the outside but we're not capable of doing it so due to that fact this paradox falls to falsidical since it misses the concept of time.

[@harrisonoswald5159]

This paradox was solved by Isaac newton (and also by Archimedes, and a few others) the idea was solved by the concepts of instantaneous time, limits and infinitesimals, also the invention of the calculus.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+harrison oswald A lot of Zeno's paradoxes have been subsequently solved. The question here is what kind of Temporal Logic are you using: Dense or Not? (kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJyzqYqrgcZ0hck and kzbin.info/www/bejne/nGbOd4yZfbeUhpo)

[@harrisonoswald5159]

+Carneades.org I should spend more time learning about philosophy, I just know the math behind the paradox. I stumbled across this video when I was trying to explain instantaneous acceleration to a friend in an intuitive way. I will definitely watch more of your videos and get back to you.

[@37rainman]

Simply put, there is nothing like a "paradox". There is only lack of understanding. The lack here is the idea that there is something like "an infinitely small length of time or distance". In the statement "infinitely small length" dwells a falsehood. No matter how small it is, it still remains a length, or the word length would not be being used, and the arrow is moving thru that length. The idea that he brought up a "paradox" which was not solved until the advent of calculus is nonsense, and Zeno himself would agree to that. Any 8 year old kid knows what motion is, and likely also realizes that doing a simple mind exercise like dividing a space into an "infinite" number of lengths does not change motion or make motion confusing. See, there I said "infinite number of lengths" again. Such a thing does not exist except in the mind. Thus the arrow is never standing still, it is in the same motion, no matter how small the length becomes. With quantum physics, we also realize that no length can even be divided infinitely, so ........ ??!

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

+37rainman So you would claim that this paradox is what we would call falsidical, based on some misunderstanding. But that means that we need to assume that time is "dense" infinitely divisible. The reason that the paradox was not solved, is not because someone doubts that motion exists, but rather because we don't know what we can throw out to make the paradox falsidical instead of antinomious.

[@37rainman]

+Carn: The "paradox" goes thru a silly, irrelevant math game which essentially "proves" motion does not exist. Why do I say that? Because if the silly exercise asks the question "how does the arrow ever hit the target", it can just as easy ask "how does it ever make the halfway point". Or "how does it go 1 ft" Or "how does go 0.000001 inch", or ....... (Using the silly mind game to prove it "cannot" move 0.000001 inch or 0.0000000000000001 inch is just as relevant as proving it cannot move 50 yds (to a target). (The target CAN be ANY distance from the tip of the arrow). If you are going to ponder this "paradox" and ask why it reaches a target, you are essentially asking "why does motion exist?" And you (and all calculus professors on day 1) are asserting that it took many centuries after Zeno proposed this silly mind game waiting for calculus to come along to "prove" why motion exists. You cannot escape this fact. The children in Zenos town knew that motion does exist. And they knew, just as Zeno did, that this "paradox" is not relevant to anything at all. Dividing up a distance into a huge number of diminishing sizes is not relevant to why an arrow might cover those "infinite" number of spaces. (But with quantum physics, we know now that there cannot actually be an infinite number of spaces anyway, so that alone makes the exercise silly, if nothing else makes it silly). It takes a REALLY anal individual to say this is a "paradox", no matter what your private definition of that word might be.

[@37rainman]

+Carn: If I can use the silly dividing exercise to ask "how/why does the arrow get there", I can just as easily use the same silly exercise to prove it does get there, thus proving the exercise is in fact, silly. Divide the distance into 3/4. Now in the next iteration, the arrow goes 3/4th of the original 3/4. There, during those two iterations the arrow hit the target. Sounds silly doesn't it. It really is! But actually it is JUST as relevant as anything Zeno did to divide up the distance.

[@reklaw2358]

If stuff doesn't move then how does the world spin, airplanes fly, hands move. that paradox doesn't exist because stuff doesn't work that way the world doesn't work by frames per second. If the world was captured by a camera then the paradox would be true. But since your eyes don't work like a camera the paradox is false.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

The question is not about how your perceive the world, but rather how the world actually works. Are there such things as instants in time? How can there be motion during these instants?

[@geofreak12345]

Mr, do we know a solid answer to the 'instants of time' ? how come we can Not stop time, imagine it stopping at it stops at a certain point in time, i just hope mathematics arent the answer to this

[@TjWhoo]

antimonious. this would be from the perspective of the arrow.

[@johnshredder7078]

There is no such thing as a "moment."

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

How can there be no points on a line?

[@dimitarvel1441]

Falsidical: no matter how much you slow down time, a non stationary object will still be moving through space, no matter how little. so to make things more clear: if you slow down time to only 0.1% of the natural flow of time, the object will still move, and it's velocity will intact be affected because time is slowed down. its velocity will be the original velocity over 1000 because time is 0.1% of its original speed. You see, this is an interesting approach to this problem. A lot of you stuck to the definition of a moving object and ignored the value of this paradox. The person who thought of this paradox probably knew the definition of movement, but ignored it because he wanted to see what kind of answers would people give.

[@MightyAmygdala]

k

[@FitPhilie]

This just gave me the worst mindfuck

[@afm4711]

This is so wrong in so many ways: 1. When looking at a single moment, it does not make sense to talk about movement. Movement can only be discerned by change, which requires comparison of two different points in time. So to say "at any one moment, the arrow is standing still" is just BS. We could stop here. 2. All of Zeno's paradoxes are based on the tacit assumption that an infinity of intermediate states between two states is not possible. They then go on to construct an infinity set of intermediate states. Well, duh. 3. If one removes that assumption that an infinity of intermediate states is impossible, then the paradox disappears. 4. Whether or not an infinite number of intermediate states is possible is not a question that philosophy can decide. It is a question that needs to be decided by experiment. Newtons physics postulates an infinite number of intermediate states, and is quite successful, as all mechanical engineering is based on it. Some quantum mechanical models of the universe don't. The question is currently open.

[@nicholasveira5608]

This is the dumbest paradox ever. How do you get a video to stop playing? Pause it… but it’s always paused we just don’t see it that way because we don’t pause while it’s in play? Weed existed back then right? Because my man Zeno was digging high

[@ianhruday9584]

Falsidical! "Motion" is poorly defined here.

[@josaicompany7333]

Kind of a nonsense

[@whitneyHU2014]

Falsidical

[@HCMOVIES2024]

it's stupid