What if-- : collected thought experiments in philosophy / Peg Tittle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tittle, Peg, 1957-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thought experiments.

Physical Description:

xii, 243 pages ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Pearson/Longman, [2005]

Summary:

"What If ... Collected Philosophical Thought Experiments" > is a brief, inexpensive collection of over 100 classic and contemporary "thought experiments," each with an accompanying commentary and thought provoking questions, which 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 the 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. Anyone interested in the major issues philosophers discuss, and how they use thought experiments to explore their arguments.

Contents:

1 Metaphysics 2

Space, Time, and Reality 2

Zeno's Achilles 2

Lucretius's Spear 4

Berkeley's Impossibility of Conceiving the Unconceived 6

Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence 8

Strawson's No-Space World 10

Quinton's Two-Space Myth 12

Shoemaker's Time-Freezing World 14

Free Will and Determinism 16

Locke's Voluntary Prisoner 16

James's Way Home 18

Lyon's Card Predictor 20

Goldman's Book of Life 22

Frankfurt's Willing Addict 24

Taylor's Ingenious Physiologist 26

Philosophy of Religion 28

Gaunilo's Lost Island 28

Pascal's Wager 30

Hume's Infant, Inferior, or Superannuated Deity 32

Paley's Watch 34

Wisdom's Long-Neglected Garden 36

Hick's Resurrected People 38

Hick's World with Flexible Laws of Nature 40

Plantinga's Curley Smith and Transworld Depravity 42

Rowe's Fawn 44

2 Philosophy of Mind 46

Locke's Inverted Spectrum 46

Leibniz's Machine 48

Turing's Imitation Game 50

Kirk and Squires's Zombies 52

Nagel's Bat 54

Block's Chinese Nation 56

Rorty's Antipodeans 58

Searle's Chinese Room 60

Putnam's Brain in a Vat 62

Jackson's Mary, the Brilliant Color Scientist 64

Searle's Brain Replacement 66

3 Personal Identity 68

Hobbes's Ship of Theseus 68

Locke's Prince and Cobbler 70

Reid's Brave Officer 72

Leibniz's King of China 74

Williams's Charles and Guy Fawkes

and Robert 76

Shoemaker's Brownson 78

Williams's Body Exchange/Mind Swap 80

Perry's Divided Self 82

Price's E. coli John 84

Parfit's Fission 86

Parfit's Teletransporter 88

4 Philosophy of Language 90

James's Squirrel 90

Wittgenstein's Games 92

Wittgenstein's "S" 94

Ayer's Robinson Crusoe 96

Quine's Gavagai 98

Putnam's Twin Earth 100

5 Epistemology 102

The Possibility of Knowledge 102

Descartes's Evil Demon 102

Russell's Five-Minute Hypothesis 104

The Sources of Knowledge 106

Plato's Equal Portions of Wood and Stone 106

Descartes's Wax 108

Molyneux's Blind Man 110

Hume's Missing Shade of Blue 112

Hume's Constant Conjunction 114

Kant's A Priori Space 116

Mill's Chaotic World 118

The Conditions of Knowledge 120

Gettier's Smith and Jones (and Brown in Barcelona) 120

Skyrms's Pyromaniac 122

Harman's False Report 124

Goldman's Fake Barns 126

Bonjour's Clairvoyants 128

Plantinga's Epistemically Inflexible Climber 130

Lehrer's Mr. Truetemp 132

6 Logic 134

The Liar Paradox 134

The Barber Paradox 136

Frege's Other-Thinking Beings 138

The Surprise Quiz 140

Black's Two Spheres 142

Goodman's Grue 144

7 Ethics 146

Ethical Theory 146

Plato's Ring of Gyges 146

Godwin's Fenelon 148

Moore's Two Worlds 150

Smart's Deluded Sadist 152

Foot's Gas 154

Brandt's Spelunkers 156

Williams's Jim in South America 158

Nozick's Experience Machine 160

Feinberg's Egoist 162

Jamieson and Regan's Chainsaw 164

Jamieson and Regan's Terrorist Tank 166

Thomson's Trolley Problem 168

Thomson's Transplant Problem 170

Donaldson's Equim 172

Applied Ethics 174

Thomson's Violinist 174

Thomson's Growing Child in a Tiny House 176

Thomson's People-seeds 178

Tooley's Kitten 180

Warren's Space Traveler 182

Warren's Space Explorer 184

Sylvan's Last People 186

Rachels's Smith and Jones at the Bathtub 188

Harris's Survival Lottery 190

The Routleys' Nuclear Train 192

Regan's Lifeboat 194

Caste's Hedonine and Pononine 196

Battin's Automatic Reversible Contraception 198

8 Social and Political Philosophy 200

Locke's Acorns and Apples 200

The Prisoner's Dilemma 202

Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons 204

Rawls's Veil of Ignorance 206

Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain 208

Hardin's Lifeboat 210

O'Neill's Lifeboat 212

Alexander's Doomsday Machine 214

Marty's Two Shipwrecked Islanders 216

Parfit's Nobelist 218

Mills's Mr. Oreo 220

9 Aesthetics

Dewey's Finely Wrought Object 222

Ziff's Eccentric and Peculiar Objects 224

Danto's Randomly Generated Object 226

Moore's Glass Flowers 228

Carroll's Loathe Letter 230

Patton's Can Bad Men Make Good Brains Do Bad Things? 232.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

0321202783

OCLC:

54460762