Have a personal or library account? Click to login
What’s the Best Way to Resolve a Plausibility Paradox? Cover

What’s the Best Way to Resolve a Plausibility Paradox?

By: Mathew Coakley  
Open Access
|Jan 2026

Abstract

A “plausibility paradox” has very plausible premises that seem to require acceptance of an implausible conclusion. Resolutions can reject a premise, accept the conclusion, or deny that either is necessary. Some general strategies, however, may in expectation be superior. This paper argues that if acceptance of the premises requires acceptance of the conclusion, then the best resolution would be to show that the paradox relies on a psychological framing effect. Specifically, the premises are accepted yet replaced with functionally equivalent ones where the conclusion is now no longer implausible. To illustrate, the paper provides such a resolution to Hempel’s ravens’ paradox and contrasts it with existing rivals.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2023-0019 | Journal eISSN: 2182-2875 | Journal ISSN: 0873-626X
Language: English, Portuguese
Page range: 491 - 511
Published on: Jan 18, 2026
Published by: University of Lisbon
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 4 issues per year

© 2026 Mathew Coakley, published by University of Lisbon
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.