ZENO'S PARADOX ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Philosopher's Circle. The Philosopher's Circle attempts to
answer the most profound questions we all have in life.
It is your guide to the fundamental nature of existence, society,
and how we think. Join doctor Carlos as he discusses
philosophy with leading philosophers, theologians, and more. And now here

(00:24):
is Doctor Carlos.

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Speaker 3 (01:08):
Welcome back. We'll be bringing back to podcast and I
apologize for the delay, but today we're going to be
looking at Zeno's paradox. It's a Greek philosopher from the
fifth century bcees the famous for a series of paradox
is a challenge our understanding of motion and coninuity, but
there is something you can take away from it psychologically.
One of the most well known is the paradox of

(01:29):
Achilles and the Tortoise. In this thought experiment, Achilles, a
swift Greek hero, raises a slow moving tortoise who's given
a small head start. Xeno argues that Achilles can never
overtake the tortoise because every time Achilles reaches the point
where the tortoise was, the tortoise has moved slightly ahead.
Even though Achilles is faster, he must pass an infinite

(01:49):
number of points where the tortoise once stood, which seems
to make overtaking it impossible. Of course, on the surface,
it seems absurd. After all, real race, this fast runner
is over take the lower ones. But Xeno's paradox is
not about athletic ability, you see, It's about the logical
structure of space and time. It's physics related, and he's
highlighting a tension between how we mathematically divide motion into

(02:12):
infinite parts and how we experience it in real life. Mathematically,
we now know this paradox has resolved using the concept
of convergence series and calculus the infinite steps. Achilles must
take it smaller and smaller, something to a finite distance.
But Xeno's paradox invites me to where a deeper reflection,
especially from a psychological point of view, and something that

(02:33):
I have seen in practice. Xeno's paradox could be instributed
as a metaphor for procrastination or even perfectionism, and this
is the big one perfectionism, but also in anxiety. Just
as Achilles never quite catches the tortoise in the paradox,
people may feel like they never quite reach their goal
because there's always one more thing to do, one more

(02:53):
step to take, one more task to perfect, and a
lot of reasons. It's because they don't feel good enough
about themselves, lacked the ability, They lacked validation. I'm sorry.
When growing up people didn't validate them, especially to their
parents in some way that they felt acknowledged. So they
constantly strive for pervection to get that acknowledgement. But even

(03:14):
when they get it, they dismiss it because they have
to believe it in themselves. It isn't from an external
situation or external stimuli it's going to give them that
validation has to come from within. We call this also
cognitive pal paralysis. It's the experience of being stuck in
a loop of overthinking or endless preparation. But the driving

(03:35):
motive again is being good enough. We don't feel good enough.
Like Xeno's infinite points or internal mental mental hurdles can
seem limitless, even if in reality they're finite inconquerable, though
that's the good news with individuals struggling with this, Zeno's
ancient puzzle speaks to the modern mind in this way.

(03:56):
It reminds us that the obstacles we perceive, whether the
philosophical or psychologe logical, offer and strength when we take action,
rather than endlessly dissect the past forward