Proposition · all propositions · the paradox suite
One lens,
twenty-one trials.
Zeno's arrow. The liar. The ship of Theseus. Free will against determinism. The gap between is and ought. The proposed diagnostic asks whether a puzzle weakens when one sentence is found doing two jobs. It is not a universal solution: each case keeps its own burden of proof.
The conjecture
Some paradoxes involve a register collision.
Here is the move, once, so you can test it yourself. Every description of the world uses a register — a level of bookkeeping. This framework distinguishes a seam register, where things are true by construction; a score register, where things vary and can be measured; and a node register, where a whole system persists or fails. Confusing these registers is one possible source of philosophical difficulty, not a diagnosis established in advance.
On this reading, "This sentence is false" fuses a claim with an audit of that claim. Zeno's puzzle can be examined by distinguishing continuous process from an inventory of completed steps. The ship of Theseus requires a criterion for "same": material continuity and pattern continuity can yield different answers. Register separation may clarify what remains, but it does not make the underlying philosophical work disappear.
One lens, applied to twenty-one trials — and on our own review, not one of them dissolves its puzzle. Nine of the twenty-one are superseded stubs; one opens by denying that it dissolves anything, which is the most honest line in the set. The cases do not yield in the same way. Each reading sampled here states its tier and a way it could be wrong; the wider library remains subject to coverage audit. A sample:
01Zeno's arrow
This reading distinguishes continuous motion from an infinite inventory of completed steps. Process and inventory use different bookkeeping. Whether that exhausts Zeno's challenge remains open to rival accounts.
02The liar
This reading treats the sentence as a claim fused with its own audit. Separating statement from scorekeeping may expose two semantic jobs in one clause; formal rivals still need comparison.
03The ship of Theseus
"Same" needs a criterion. Material continuity and continuity of a self-maintaining pattern can return different answers. The distinction clarifies the question; it does not select the only valid criterion.
04Free will vs. determinism
Physics can describe a trajectory while agency language describes selection among modeled futures. Treating these as different explanatory registers may reduce a collision, but compatibility remains a philosophical claim.
05Is and ought — handled differently
The one case we do not claim to settle with logic. Hume's gap remains. The framework publishes non-extraction as a revisable ethical commitment, not a consequence derived from geometry or a universal theorem.
21…and the remaining sixteen
The working suite — Fermi, the measurement problem, the hard problem, the problem of evil, and more — is public in the paradox library. Tier and kill-criterion fields are part of the required record; any missing field remains an audit defect, not evidence of resolution.
If a 2,400-year-old knot opens in a paragraph, suspect the key — then check whether it turns.
Why this may matter to you: the register move is not only for antiquity's puzzles. In an everyday disagreement, one word may carry several criteria: "Is this working?" (score), "is this alive?" (node), or "is this what we said it was?" (seam). Splitting the question into its jobs can reveal whether a disagreement is factual, definitional, or evaluative.
And the caution: clarifying a paradox is not the same as solving it. A lens applied this widely may be useful or may be overgeneralized. That is why each proposed reading is graded separately, compared with rivals, and kept on trial rather than declared.
Internally reviewed with AI assistance; external human validation remains absent — see the trial record.
[I] Insight — one lens, twenty-one readings, none of them a dissolution, each graded separately with its own kill-criterion