Thought experiments

A thought experiment is basically a hypothetical situation.

Any philosophical stance can be strengthened by a thought experiment; a bare bones argument is just premises and a conclusion, a thought experiment is a hypothetical situation that illustrates your argument. Each thought experiment is designed to apply to a specific argument. It is not important (depending on the argument) that thought experiments be plausible or feasible in reality.

Some examples of thought experiments:

Molyneux's problem

Suppose there was a man born blind. He is made familiar with a metallic cube and a metallic sphere of the same material roughly the same size. Using his sense of touch he easily can tell one from the other. One day due to a miracle the blind man attains his sight. If the man was presented with the sphere and cube on a table, could he discern which was which without touching them?

Brain in a Bucket (the matrix)

What if reality as you know it is all an elaborate science experiment. You think you are who you are and live where you do but in reality you are a brain in a bucket in this mad scientist's laboratory hooked up to some sort of reality generating machine. Everyone and everything you know is a lie; a rouse.


What if the cube and the sphere had a particular smell? What if the reality machine was conveying the false reality of being a brain in a bucket? Thought experiments do not work if you do not accept them as they are. You cannot change a thought experiment to prove a point; if you did you would be creating a new thought experiment all together. Creating a new thought experiment is fine and well, but try not to do so until you have answered all the questions the original thought experiment has posed.

Next a philosopher spotlight!

Art and aesthetics

After a long hiatus, I'm back! I'm ready to fill your brain with stuff again. 2010 has been quite unkind to me so far...

The Greeks were concerned with many things philosophically; the concept of "beauty" was one of them. At first glance, this subject can seem a bit trivial. Compared to contemplating what exists, or the concept of good and evil, 'what is beauty?' seems to lack a little weight, but there are some very interesting and important questions loaded in the concept of beauty. In this post 'beauty' should be considered that which is aesthetically or visually pleasing.

I had prepared some research on the subject over a month ago but a couple things this past week re-sparked my motivation to tackle the intro course to this subject. The first was a movie The Art of the Steal and the second a show I saw this morning, This is Civilization titled "Uncertainty." "Uncertainty" provided a comprehensive look at the history of 20th century art and the very best description of abstract/abstract expressionist art I have heard.

The movie was about the art collection of Alfred C Barnes. It follows the control of the foundation that is in charge of it, and the legal battle of where and how it should be displayed. It is an interesting documentary about something I didn't know anything about. What sparked my interest specifically was not the magnitude of the collection itself, estimated to be worth between 25 billion and priceless (the Barnes Foundation has the largest collection of post-impressionist art in America and, to some, the most impressive collection in the world) but specifically was how Mr. Barnes acquired this art.

He became a millionaire around the turn of the 20th century and soon after fostered an interest in collecting art. He traveled to France and around Europe and started meeting with artists and buying paintings that he liked. When he brought these paintings back to Philadelphia and showed them to the public he was ridiculed for showing ugly, uninteresting paintings. Lo and behold some 15 years later the art Alfred had begun collecting grew exponentially in value as post-impressionist art swept the world. Mr. Barnes would tell you that he was just collecting paintings that he enjoyed, but in effect what he did was predict the next large movement in the global art culture.

Aesthetics as a philosophical subject is concerned with which objects are considered visually pleasing whether they are art or not. Artists create art objects as representations (of the human experience, etc...) in doing so they are commenting directly on their personal aesthetic philosophy. The very creation of art is a philosophical statement. Because of this a large chunk of the philosophy of aesthetics concerns itself with art, however it is also concerned with the beauty in non-art objects.

Art creates an interesting aesthetic dilemma: should the standard for beauty be the same for art objects and non-art objects?

Until next week...