Use of paradoxes as didactic resources that develop critical thinking in students

Abstract

Lately, education has been challenged by the digital context that benefits virtual platforms that contain creations of youtubers or influencers, which focus on entertaining rather thancomprehensively educating the student. In this sense, this article considers paradoxes as didacticresources that can help the development of students’ critical thinking during their education. Thisresearch is documentary and is based on the consultation of written sources and the Internet. It begins by clarifying the concepts of fallacy and reductio ad absurdum, since paradoxes have been seen as very subtle fallacies by some scholars such as Bertrand Russell and, in addition, there are those who use paradoxes to make deductions, as occurs in the reductio ad absurdum applied in the ontological argument of St. Anselm of Canterbury. Next, a list of paradoxes is analyzed, but with the objective that they can be used in a clssroom. Thus, some paradoxes such as the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Galileo’s paradox, Hilbert’s hotel paradox, Tristam Shandy’s paradox, Protagoras’ paradox, etc. are discussed. This work closes by trying to make explicit the affective and emotional aspect that a student experiences when dealing with this kind of problems.