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

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.