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Paper Abstract
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Beckett Machine
'Something Mechanical Encrusted Upon the Living'
The paradigmatic example of a logical paradox reads as follows: 'This sentence is false.'
A logical paradox is a proposition which refers to itself and simultaneously negates all of its own truth-functional possibilities. It appears as an endlessly irresolvable sentence. When read as true it becomes false; when read as false it becomes true. This is a recursive cycle that stays one step ahead of the reader. It is a rational manifestation of the absurd.
Logical paradoxes provide a subversive context for examining the discourse of repetition, transcendence and embodiment. Arising from concerns with representation, contradiction and truth, the paradox appears at first to have a stronger affinity with the more ethereal discourse of 'mind' and 'reason' - albeit an affinity with the highly mechanistic conception of these notions that develops out of rationalistic philosophical concerns.
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