Cool Lists have Cool Titles

Oo, this is worth a mention — St. Gasoline hits me with a "WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?!" post with his Top Ten Philosophical Thought Experiments writeup.  It’s a very good list and I might even totally agree with it.

He describes all the experiments and what they’re for (very well, I might add), but just for fun, I’ll give the list of winners.  This is mostly because I’m fascinated by what a cool list of names it makes.  Anybody out there a musician?  This would make a bomb-ass list of track-titles for a concept album!  (Or chapter titles, for that matter.  Hmm…)

The winners are….

10.   Twin Earth   (Putnam)

9.    The Chinese Room  (Searle)

8.    The Beetle Box   (Wittgenstein)

7.    The Rabbit-Stage   (Quine)

6.    Theseus’ Ship    (Plutarch)

5.    Induction   (Hume)

4.   The Liar   (Epimenides / Eubulides)

3.   Achilles and the Tortoise    (Zeno)

2.   The Evil Demon    (Descartes)

1.   The Cave   (Plato)

…What’s really weird is, no kidding, I have already read the source material for every single one of those.  (It was close - I just covered Quine and the Rabbit Stage this semester!)  That’s a little cool — it’s nice to know that either my education is adequate, or St. Gasoline and I share an alma mater! –  but also a little disturbing and a little disappointing, because it’s such a great list and I didn’t get a single "I gotta read that!" out of it.  Hmph.

PD