Research Catalog

Title

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

Author

Tittle, Peg, 1957-

Publication

New York : Pearson/Longman, c2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 243 p.; 21 cm.

Summary

This brief ... collection features over 100 classic and contemporary "thought experiments" that explore philosophical arguments to awaken students' intellectual curiosity and introduce them to the kind of disciplined thought required in philosophy. Each thought experiment [is] accompanied by the author's short commentary and followed by several ... questions. Featuring a ... conversational writing style that doesn't dilute the ideas, the value of this book is in its simplicity - in both format and tone. An ideal supplement, this brief book can be used in a variety of courses, including Introduction to Philosophy, Critical Thinking, Introduction to Ethics, and Applied Ethics.-Back cover.

Subject

Thought experiments

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

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.

ISBN

0321202783

LCCN

2004044439^^

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library