What If...: Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy

by Tittle,Peg

• ISBN13: 9780321202789
• ISBN10: 0321202783
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-05-05
• Publisher: ROUTLEDGE

Summary

What If. . . Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophyis a brief, inexpensive collection of over 100 classic and contemporary "thought experiments", each with an accompanying commentary, that explore philosophical arguments and often address a genuine problem in life. The value of the book is in its simplicity in both format and tone: Each thought experiment is accompanied by commentary that explains importance of the experiment, and questions to provoke thought and discussion, all encapsulated within two pages. The book is direct, clear and conversational but does not dilute difficult ideas.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction	p. x
Metaphysics	p. 2
Space, Time, and Reality	p. 2
Zeno's Achilles	p. 2
Lucretius's Spear	p. 4
Berkeley's Impossibility of Conceiving the Unconceived	p. 6
Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence	p. 8
Strawson's No-Space World	p. 10
Quinton's Two-Space Myth	p. 12
Shoemaker's Time-Freezing World	p. 14
Free Will and Determinism	p. 16
Locke's Voluntary Prisoner	p. 16
James's Way Home	p. 18
Lyon's Card Predictor	p. 20
Goldman's Book of Life	p. 22
Frankfurt's Willing Addict	p. 24
Taylor's Ingenious Physiologist	p. 26
Philosophy of Religion	p. 28
Gaunilo's Lost Island	p. 28
Pascal's Wager	p. 30
Hume's Infant, Inferior, or Superannuated Deity	p. 32
Paley's Watch	p. 34
Wisdom's Long-Neglected Garden	p. 36
Hick's Resurrected People	p. 38
Hick's World with Flexible Laws of Nature	p. 40
Plantinga's Curley Smith and Transworld Depravity	p. 42
Rowe's Fawn	p. 44
Philosophy of Mind	p. 46
Locke's Inverted Spectrum	p. 46
Leibniz's Machine	p. 48
Turing's Imitation Game	p. 50
Kirk and Squires's Zombies	p. 52
Nagel's Bat	p. 54
Block's Chinese Nation	p. 56
Rorty's Antipodeans	p. 58
Searle's Chinese Room	p. 60
Putnam's Brain in a Vat	p. 62
Jackson's Mary, the Brilliant Color Scientist	p. 64
Searle's Brain Replacement	p. 66
Personal Identity	p. 68
Hobbes's Ship of Theseus	p. 68
Locke's Prince and Cobbler	p. 70
Reid's Brave Officer	p. 72
Leibniz's King of China	p. 74
Williams's Charles and Guy Fawkes--and Robert	p. 76
Shoemaker's Brownson	p. 78
Williams's Body Exchange/Mind Swap	p. 80
Perry's Divided Self	p. 82
Price's E. coli John	p. 84
Parfit's Fission	p. 86
Parfit's Teletransporter	p. 88
Philosophy of Language	p. 90
James's Squirrel	p. 90
Wittgenstein's Games	p. 92
Wittgenstein's "S"	p. 94
Ayer's Robinson Crusoe	p. 96
Quine's Gavagai	p. 98
Putnam's Twin Earth	p. 100
Epistemology	p. 102
The Possibility of Knowledge	p. 102
Descartes's Evil Demon	p. 102
Russell's Five-Minute Hypothesis	p. 104
The Sources of Knowledge	p. 106
Plato's Equal Portions of Wood and Stone	p. 106
Descartes's Wax	p. 108
Molyneux's Blind Man	p. 110
Hume's Missing Shade of Blue	p. 112
Hume's Constant Conjunction	p. 114
Kant's A Priori Space	p. 116
Mill's Chaotic World	p. 118
The Conditions of Knowledge	p. 120
Gettier's Smith and Jones (and Brown in Barcelona)	p. 120
Skyrms's Pyromaniac	p. 122
Harman's False Report	p. 124
Goldman's Fake Barns	p. 126
Bonjour's Clairvoyants	p. 128
Plantinga's Epistemically Inflexible Climber	p. 130
Lehrer's Mr. Truetemp	p. 132
Logic	p. 134
The Liar Paradox	p. 134
The Barber Paradox	p. 136
Frege's Other-Thinking Beings	p. 138
The Surprise Quiz	p. 140
Black's Two Spheres	p. 142
Goodman's Grue	p. 144
Ethics	p. 146
Ethical Theory	p. 146
Plato's Ring of Gyges	p. 146
Godwin's Fenelon	p. 148
Moore's Two Worlds	p. 150
Smart's Deluded Sadist	p. 152
Foot's Gas	p. 154
Brandt's Spelunkers	p. 156
Williams's Jim in South America	p. 158
Nozick's Experience Machine	p. 160
Feinberg's Egoist	p. 162
Jamieson and Regan's Chainsaw	p. 164
Jamieson and Regan's Terrorist Tank	p. 166
Thomson's Trolley Problem	p. 168
Thomson's Transplant Problem	p. 170
Donaldson's Equim	p. 172
Applied Ethics	p. 174
Thomson's Violinist	p. 174
Thomson's Growing Child in a Tiny House	p. 176
Thomson's People-seeds	p. 178
Tooley's Kitten	p. 180
Warren's Space Traveler	p. 182
Warren's Space Explorer	p. 184
Sylvan's Last People	p. 186
Rachels's Smith and Jones at the Bathtub	p. 188
Harris's Survival Lottery	p. 190
The Routleys' Nuclear Train	p. 192
Regan's Lifeboat	p. 194
Caste's Hedonine and Pononine	p. 196
Battin's Automatic Reversible Contraception	p. 198
Social and Political Philosophy	p. 200
Locke's Acorns and Apples	p. 200
The Prisoner's Dilemma	p. 202
Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons	p. 204
Rawls's Veil of Ignorance	p. 206
Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain	p. 208
Hardin's Lifeboat	p. 210
O'Neill's Lifeboat	p. 212
Alexander's Doomsday Machine	p. 214
Marty's Two Shipwrecked Islanders	p. 216
Parfit's Nobelist	p. 218
Mills's Mr. Oreo	p. 220
Aesthetics
Dewey's Finely Wrought Object	p. 222
Ziff's Eccentric and Peculiar Objects	p. 224
Danto's Randomly Generated Object	p. 226
Moore's Glass Flowers	p. 228
Carroll's Loathe Letter	p. 230
Just One More ...	p. 232
Patton's Can Bad Men Make Good Brains Do Bad Things?	p. 232
Index by Author	p. 234
Index by Date of Publication	p. 236
Index by Keyword	p. 238
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.