The Armchair Thomist

  WARNING: CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS OF DANIEL CRAIG'S  No Time To Die.     I have a question to pose: Are the changes between actors for characters like James Bond (Connery -> Moore -> Brosnan -> Craig) and Spider-Man (Maguire -> Garfield -> Holland), for example, the same exact kind of actor-changes as Dumbledore (Richard Harris -> Michael Gambon) in Harry Potter or Clarice (Jodie Foster -> Julianne Moore) in the Silence of the Lambs? The question is ambiguous, I know, but bear with me. I am asking whether what is happening when a character's actor is different in the case of James Bond is the same thing as what is happening when Jodie Foster gets replaced with Julianne Moore.     The reason I ask is because I have recently seen Daniel Craig's newest and final Bond film, No Time to Die , and, quite contrary to the title, James Bond dies. It was melancholic to be sure, but it evoked a reaction from some I know that I never would ...

     The Liar's paradox is a well known conundrum to anyone with a general knowledge of philosophical topics. You are probably already familiar with the paradox and may not even realize it. Take the proposition, "this sentence is a lie." If this proposition is true, then it is true that it is a lie, which makes it false; yet, if this proposition is false, then it is true because it is true that the proposition is false, etc. The truth of this proposition entails its falsity and its falsity entails its truth, meaning that it is both true and false simultaneously. The point of the paradox is to call into question the validity of the Law of Noncontradiction, a classical law of thought which states that a proposition cannot be both true and false in the same sense or at the same time, by providing an exception to it. But is this truly an exception?       I contend that it is not. There are two responses to the paradox that I am familiar with. One is to say...