A Cabinet of Philosophical Curiosities: A Collection of Puzzles, Oddities, Riddles and DilemmasWill you answer this question in the same way that you will answer my next question? Done? Good Will you buy this book'. Inside you will discover that your only truthful answer to this second question is affirmative. Logic has made some men rich. Inside this book you will learn of John Eck (who debated Luther in 1519). He Will you answer this question in the same way that you will answer my next question? Done? Good Will you buy this book? Inside you will discover that your only truthful answer to this second question is affirmative. A Cabinet of Philosophical Curiosities is a colorful collection of puzzles and paradoxes, both historical and contemporary, by philosopher Roy Sorensen. Taking inspiration from Ian Stewart's Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, which assembled interesting "maths" from outside the classroom into a miscellany of marvels, these puzzles are ready to be enjoyed independently but gain mutual support when read in clusters. The volume ranges from simple examples to anomalous anomalies, considers data that seems to confirm a generalization while lowering its probability, and argues that we are doomed to believe infinitely many contradictions-and that the pain of contradictions can be profoundly stimulating.Inside this book you will learn of John Eck, who debated Luther in 1519. He devised a sequence of contracts that sidestepped usury laws, and German bankers made a fortune from this Triple Contract. Sorensen also recounts how Voltaire set himself up for life by exploiting a fallacy in the construction of a Parisian lottery. There is logic for altruists, too. You will discover how General Benjamin Butler used other-centric reasoning to protect runaway slaves. There are historical snapshots of logic in action, and the book contains tributes to Lewis Carroll, Arthur Prior, and Peter Geach. In addition to short essays, there are dialogues, cures and insults. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Conform to Confound | 7 |
Razing Hopes | 8 |
Hidden Messages in Songs | 9 |
A Blessed Book Curse | 10 |
Listen for a Counterexample | 11 |
Schopenhauers Intelligence Test | 12 |
A Knucklehead on My Premises | 13 |
Advice from Shih Teng | 122 |
Thales Shady Measurement of Pyramids | 124 |
The Cowpox Transmission Problem | 125 |
An Antipodal Algorithm | 126 |
The Invisibility of Function Words | 127 |
Necessary Waste | 133 |
The Art of the Counterexample | 135 |
The Philosophy of Scale Effects | 138 |
The Tversky Intelligence Test | 14 |
A Matter of Life and Death | 16 |
Indiscernible Pills | 17 |
A Pebble from the Baths of Caracalla | 18 |
Assassination Proof | 20 |
Lewis Carrolls Peek at Menos Slave Boy | 23 |
The Elderly Scientist | 24 |
Emily Dickinsons Hummingbird | 26 |
Telepathy for the AbsentMinded | 27 |
Order of Absence versus Absence of Order | 28 |
Child Proof | 30 |
Wittgensteins Parallelograms | 35 |
Freud versus the Dreaming Logicians | 37 |
Do Butterflies Dream? | 39 |
Descartess Disappearance | 42 |
The Most Fairly Distributed Good | 44 |
What the Dishwasher Missed | 46 |
Developmental SelfDefeat | 49 |
Greshams Law of Numbers | 50 |
Laziest Reductio | 52 |
The Twin Cities Race | 53 |
Deducing Names | 54 |
Richard Feynman is Inconsistent | 57 |
Galbraiths Cow | 59 |
Logical Names for Babies | 60 |
Being Relatively IllNamed | 62 |
Roman Resemblance Humour | 63 |
The PrisonHouse of Language | 64 |
The Pierre Puzzle and Implicit Racism | 66 |
Eyebrow Punctuation | 67 |
Putting Out Your Second Eye | 68 |
A Pyramid Schema | 72 |
The Eighteenth Camel | 74 |
The Negation Test for Nonsense | 75 |
Shifty Os | 78 |
A Plenum of Palindromes for Lewis Carroll | 79 |
Pining for the Impossible | 83 |
Anything Is Possible? | 86 |
Half Full or Half Empty? | 87 |
The Scientific Drinker | 89 |
Is Akrasia Crazy? | 92 |
A Cure for Incontinence | 93 |
Lewis Carrolls Pig Puzzles | 94 |
A Round Trip from Small to Large | 97 |
Contrapositive Thinking | 98 |
Queer Quantities | 101 |
New Zealands Arthur Prior | 103 |
Most Remote Capital City | 106 |
Predicting Your Predictor | 107 |
The Freedom of a Coin Toss | 108 |
Fair Tosses from an Unfair Coin | 109 |
Wittgenstein on Ice | 111 |
Impossible Crimes | 113 |
Double Belief | 114 |
The Evil of Doing the Impossible | 115 |
Identity Theft | 116 |
Infinite TwoMinute Debate | 117 |
Indian Debate Tournament | 118 |
Winning by Losing | 119 |
Minimising Selfishness | 120 |
Lawrence of Arabia Collars a Leopard | 121 |
Humble Exercise | 142 |
Philosophy for the Eye | 143 |
Synthetic A Priori Lies | 155 |
Passive A Priori Deception | 157 |
Crete Revisited | 159 |
Less Lucky the Second Time? | 160 |
Nothing Is Written in Stone | 163 |
The Philosophers Petition | 164 |
Handicaps on Deduction | 165 |
Logical Insults | 167 |
Blasphemous Tautologies | 169 |
Generality Jokes and Consistency Proofs | 172 |
To Be and Not to Be | 174 |
The Triple Contract | 178 |
Voltaires Big Bet | 179 |
Biblical Counting | 180 |
The First Female Philosopher? | 183 |
Is a Burrito a Sandwich? | 185 |
Second Place | 186 |
The Drachmas Defect | 187 |
Illogical Coin Collecting | 189 |
A Meeting of Minds | 190 |
Deadliest Gettier Case | 191 |
Premature Explanatory Satiation | 195 |
UpsideDown Charity | 198 |
Does Charity Apply to Group Beliefs? | 199 |
Following the Argument | 200 |
A Foolproof Guessing Game | 201 |
Predicting Your Death Date | 202 |
The Oldest Mosque | 203 |
The Referees Dilemma | 204 |
A Terrible Tautology? | 206 |
Quantifier Mottos | 207 |
Christmas Eve364 | 209 |
Putting Parody into Practice | 210 |
Hoax Proof | 211 |
Penny Wise | 212 |
Platos Punning Riddle | 213 |
Chess Puzzle Puzzle | 214 |
The Moment of Truth | 215 |
Preventing Prevarication | 217 |
Argument and Oscar Wildes The Decay of Lying | 218 |
Ethics of Supposition | 219 |
Behaviourism for Eggs | 223 |
The Egg Came Before the Ellipse | 224 |
Indiscernible Harm | 225 |
An Unjust but Fair Obituary | 229 |
Reflective Truth Tables | 230 |
The Bikini Palindrome | 232 |
Family Resemblance for Primates | 233 |
Minimal Resemblance | 235 |
BrotherinLaw Resemblance | 236 |
Tolstoys Syllogism | 239 |
Woody Allens Death Wish | 241 |
A Memory Lapse | 242 |
The Penultimate State | 243 |
Meditations on the Headstone of Adam Ferguson | 244 |
The Answers | 251 |
290 | |
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