Research paper

On
Philosophical
Thought
experiments

Rafael Kieran M. Monday

AB Philosophy II
 Branch of
Author Title/Name Objective/Issue Philosophy
1. Aristotle Zeno’s Arrow An arrow which Metaphysics
seems in motion
is supposedly
motionless.
2. John The Chinese The Chinese Philosophy
Searle Room Room argument, Of
Argument devised by John Science
Searle, is an
argument against
the possibility of
true artificial
intelligence.
3. Galileo Galileo’s Balls To demonstrate Philosophy
Galilee the time of Of
descent of Science
different objects
were independent
of their masses.
4. Hilary Twin Earth A thought Philosophy
Putnam experiment on of
semantic Language
externalism
5. Philippa The Trolley A thought Neuroethics
Foot Problem experiment on
ethics which is
widely used in
Psychology.
6. Jean Buridan’s Ass Buridan's ass is an Ethics
Buridan illustration of a
paradox in
philosophy in the
conception of
free will.
7. Robert Experience It is one of the Ethics
Nozick Machine best known
 attempts to refute
ethical hedonism,
and does so by
imagining a
choice between
everyday reality
and an apparently
preferable
simulated reality.
8. Edmund Gettier Problem A Gettier problem Epistemology
Gettier is any one of a
category of
thought
experiments in
contemporary
epistemology that
seem to repudiate
a definition of
knowledge as
justified true
belief (JTB).
9. John Inverted Inverted spectrum Metaphysics
Locke Spectrum is the apparent
possibility of two
people sharing
their color
vocabulary and
discriminations,
although the
colours one sees
one's qualia are
systematically
different from the
colours the other
person sees.
 10.John Original The original Logic
Rawls Position position is a
hypothetical
situation
developed by
American
philosopher John
Rawls as a
thought
experiment to
replace the
imagery of a
savage state of
nature of prior
political
philosophers like
Thomas Hobbes
11.Theseus Ship of Theseus The ship of Logic
Theseus, also
known as
Theseus's
paradox, is a
paradox that
raises the
question of
whether an object
which has had all
its components
replaced remains
fundamentally the
same object.

12. William Molyneux’s Molyneux's Logic/

Molyneux Problem problem is a Epistemology
thought
 experiment in
philosophy
concerning
immediate
recovery from
blindness. It was
first formulated
by William
Molyneux, and
notably
referenced in
John Locke's An
Essay
Concerning
Human
Understanding.
13. David Philosophical A philosophical Philosophy of
Chalmers Zombie zombie or p- Mind
zombie in the
philosophy of
mind and
perception is a
hypothetical
being that is
indistinguishable
from a normal
human being
except in that it
lacks conscious
experience,
qualia, or
sentience.
14. Paul N-Universes The n-universes Metaphysics
Franceschi are a conceptual
tool introduced by
 philosopher Paul
Franceschi. They
consist of
simplified models
of universes
which are reduced
to their essential
components, in
order to facilitate
the associated
reasoning.
15. Rene Ball of Wax In René Descartes Rationalism
Descartes Example Meditations on
First Philosophy
the ball of wax
example (also
known as the wax
argument) is used
to analyse what
properties are
essential for
bodies, show how
uncertain our
knowledge of the
world is
compared to our
knowledge of our
minds, and argue
for rationalism.
16. Plato Allegory of the The Allegory of Epistemology
Cave the Cave (also
known as the
Analogy of the
Cave, Plato's
Cave or the
 Parable of the
Cave) is
presented by the
Greek
philosopher Plato
in his work The
Republic (514a-
520a) to compare
"...the effect of
education and the
lack of it on our
nature".
17. Plato Metaphor of the The Metaphor of Epistemology
Sun the Sun — also
known as the
Simile of the Sun
— is presented by
the Greek
philosopher Plato
in his work The
Republic Book
VI, 507b-509c. It
is written as a
dialogue between
Glaucon (Plato's
brother) and
Socrates, narrated
by the latter. It
draws a parallel
between the sun
as the source of
illumination of
visible objects,
and the Form of
the Good as the
 source of
intellectual
illumination of all
Forms.
18. Plato Analogy of the The Analogy of Epistemology
Divided Line the Divided Line
is presented by
the Greek
philosopher Plato
in his work The
Republic Book VI
(509D–513E). It
is written as a
dialogue between
Glaucon (Plato's
brother) and
Socrates, narrated
by the latter. Plato
has Socrates
explain through
the literary device
of a divided line
his fundamental
metaphysical
ideas as four
separate but
logically
connected models
of the world.
19. George If a Tree Falls "If a tree falls in a Philosophy of
Berkeley in a Forest forest and no one the Mind
is around to hear
it, does it make a
sound?" is a
philosophical
 thought
experiment that
raises questions
regarding
observation and
knowledge of
reality.
20. Donald Swampman Swampman is the Philosophy of
Davidson subject of a the Mind
philosophical
thought
experiment
introduced by
Donald Davidson,
in his 1987 paper
"Knowing One's
Own Mind."

Discussion
1. Zeno’s Arrow
In the arrow paradox (also known as the fletcher's paradox), Zeno
states that for motion to occur, an object must change the position which
it occupies. He gives an example of an arrow in flight. He states that in
any one (durationless) instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to
where it is, nor to where it is not. It cannot move to where it is not,
because no time elapses for it to move there; it cannot move to where it
is, because it is already there. In other words, at every instant of time
there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant,
and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible.

Whereas the first two paradoxes divide space, this paradox starts by
dividing time and not into segments, but into points.

2. The Chinese Room Argument

Work in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has produced computer programs
that can beat the world chess champion, and programs with which one
can converse in natural language. Our experience shows that playing
chess and carrying on a conversation are activities that require
understanding and intelligence. Does computer prowess at chess and
conversation then show that computers can understand and be
intelligent? Will further development result in digital computers that
fully match or even exceed human intelligence? Alan Turing (1950), one
of the pioneer theoreticians of computing, believed the answer to these
questions was “yes”. Turing proposed what is now known as “The
Turing Test”: if a computer can pass for human in online chat, we
should grant that it is intelligent. Later workers in AI claimed that
computers already understood at least some natural language. Beginning
in 1980, philosopher John Searle introduced a short and widely-
discussed argument intended to show conclusively that it is impossible
for digital computers to understand language or think.

Searle argues that a good way to test a theory of mind, say a theory that
holds that understanding can be created by doing such and such, is to
imagine what it would be like to do what the theory says would create
understanding. Searle (1999) summarized the Chinese Room argument
concisely:
Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a
room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a
book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program).
Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols
which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the
input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the
man in the room is able to pass out Chinese symbols which are correct
answers to the questions (the output). The program enables the person in
the room to pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese but he does
not understand a word of Chinese.

Searle goes on to say, “The point of the argument is this: if the man in
the room does not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the
appropriate program for understanding Chinese then neither does any
other digital computer solely on that basis because no computer, qua
computer, has anything the man does not have.”

3. Galileo’s Balls
According to a biography by Galileo's pupil Vincenzo Viviani, in
1589 the Italian scientist Galileo had dropped two balls of different
masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to demonstrate that their time of
descent was independent of their mass.Via this method, he supposedly
discovered that the objects fell at the same acceleration, proving his
prediction true, while at the same time proving Aristotle's theory of
gravity (which states that objects fall at speed relative to their mass)
false. At the time when Viviani asserts that the experiment took place,
Galileo had not yet formulated the final version of his law of free fall.
He had, however, formulated an earlier version which predicted that
bodies of the same material falling through the same medium would fall
at the same speed.This was contrary to what Aristotle had taught: that
heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones, in direct proportion to weight.
While this story has been retold in popular accounts, there is no account
by Galileo himself of such an experiment, and it is accepted by most
historians that it was a thought experiment which did not actually take
place. An exception is Drake, who argues that the experiment did take
place, more or less as Viviani described it.

Galileo arrived at his hypothesis by a famous thought experiment

outlined in his book On Motion. Imagine two objects, one light and one
heavier than the other one, are connected to each other by a string. Drop
this system of objects from the top of a tower. If we assume heavier
objects do indeed fall faster than lighter ones (and conversely, lighter
objects fall slower), the string will soon pull taut as the lighter object
retards the fall of the heavier object. But the system considered as a
whole is heavier than the heavy object alone, and therefore should fall
faster. This contradiction leads one to conclude the assumption is false.

4. Twin Earth
Putnam’s Experiment:
We begin by supposing that elsewhere in the universe there is a planet
exactly like Earth in virtually all respects, which we refer to as ‘Twin
Earth’. (We should also suppose that the relevant surroundings [are
exactly the same as for] Earth; it revolves around a star that appears to
be exactly like our sun, and so on.) On Twin Earth, there is a Twin
equivalent of every person and thing here on Earth. The one difference
between the two planets is that there is no water on Twin Earth. In its
place there is a liquid that is superficially identical, but is chemically
different, being composed not of H2O, but rather of some more
complicated formula which we abbreviate as ‘XYZ’. The Twin
Earthlings who refer to their language as ‘English’ call XYZ ‘water’.
Finally, we set the date of our thought experiment to be several centuries
ago, when the residents of Earth and Twin Earth would have no means
of knowing that the liquids they called ‘water’ were H 2O and XYZ
respectively. The experience of people on Earth with water, and that of
those on Twin Earth with XYZ would be identical.

Now the question arises: when an Earthling (or Oscar for simplicity
sake) and his twin on Twin Earth say 'water' do they mean the same
thing? (The twin is also called 'Oscar' on his own planet, of course.
Indeed, the inhabitants of that planet call their own planet 'Earth'. For
convenience, we refer to this putative planet as 'Twin Earth', and extend
this naming convention to the objects and people that inhabit it, in this
case referring to Oscar's twin as Twin-Oscar, and Twin-Earth water as
water.) Ex hypothesi, their brains are molecule-for-molecule identical.
Yet, at least according to Putnam, when Oscar says 'water', the term
refers to H2O, whereas when Twin Oscar says 'water' it refers to XYZ.
The result of this is that the contents of a person's brain are not sufficient
to determine the reference of terms they use, as one must also examine
the causal history that led to this individual acquiring the term. (Oscar,
for instance, learned the word 'water' in a world filled with H 2O, whereas
Twin Oscar learned 'water' in a world filled with XYZ.)
This is the essential thesis of semantic externalism. Putnam famously
summarized this conclusion with the statement that "'meanings' just ain't
in the head."

5. The Trolley Problem

The general form of the problem is this: There is a runaway trolley
barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five
people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for
them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a
lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of
tracks. Unfortunately, you notice that there is one person on the side
track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the
five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley
onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct
choice?
The general form of the problem is this: There is a runaway trolley
barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five
people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for
them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a
lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of
tracks. Unfortunately, you notice that there is one person on the side
track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the
five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley
onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct
choice?
A utilitarian view asserts that it is obligatory to steer to the track with
one man on it. According to simple utilitarianism, such a decision would
be not only permissible, but, morally speaking, the better option (the
other option being no action at all). An alternate viewpoint is that since
moral wrongs are already in place in the situation, moving to another
track constitutes a participation in the moral wrong, making one partially
responsible for the death when otherwise no one would be responsible.
An opponent of action may also point to the incommensurability of
human lives. Under some interpretations of moral obligation, simply
being present in this situation and being able to influence its outcome
constitutes an obligation to participate. If this were the case, then
deciding to do nothing would be considered an immoral act if one values
five lives more than one.
6. Buridan’s Ass

It refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass that is

equally hungry and thirsty is placed precisely midway between a
stack of hay and a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes the ass
will always go to whichever is closer, it will die of both hunger and
thirst since it cannot make any rational decision to choose one over
the other.[1] The paradox is named after the 14th century French
philosopher Jean Buridan, whose philosophy of moral determinism
it satirizes. A common variant of the paradox substitutes two
identical piles of hay for the hay and water; the ass, unable to
choose between the two, dies of hunger.

Some proponents of hard determinism have granted the

unpleasantness of the scenario, but have denied that it illustrates a
true paradox, since one does not contradict oneself in suggesting
that a man might die between two equally plausible routes of
action. For example, Baruch Spinoza in his Ethics, suggests that a
person who sees two options as truly equally compelling cannot be
fully rational.
Other writers have opted to deny the validity of the
illustration. A typical counter-argument is that rationality as
described in the paradox is so limited as to be a straw man version
of the real thing, which does allow the consideration of meta-
arguments. In other words, it is entirely rational to recognize that
both choices are equally good and arbitrarily (randomly) pick one
instead of starving. This counter-argument is sometimes used as an
attempted justification for faith or intuitivity (called by Aristotle
 noetic or noesis). The argument is that, like the starving ass, we
must make a choice in order to avoid being frozen in endless
doubt. Other counter-arguments exist.
According to Edward Lauzinger, Buridan's ass fails to
incorporate he latent biases that humans always bring with them
when making decisions.

7. Experience Machine
Nozick asks us to imagine a machine that could give us
whatever desirable or pleasurable experiences we could want.
Psychologists have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain
to induce pleasurable experiences that the subject could not
distinguish from those he would have apart from the machine. He
then asks, if given the choice, would we prefer the machine to real
life?

Nozick also believes that if pleasure were the only intrinsic value,
people would have an overriding reason to be hooked up to an
"experience machine," which would produce favorable sensations.

Nozick is using this thought experiment to illustrate his claim

against Utilitarianism. It raises the question of what matters other
than experiences, by making readers realize that they wouldn't plug
into the experience machine even if they could. This raises the
question of why only felt experiences dictate what can and cannot
be done to an animal.
8. Gettier’s Problem
 Gettier problems or cases arose as a challenge to our
understanding of the nature of knowledge. Initially, that challenge
appeared in an article by Edmund Gettier, published in 1963. But
his article had a striking impact among epistemologists, so much
so that hundreds of subsequent articles and sections of books have
generalized Gettier’s original idea into a more wide-ranging
concept of a Gettier case or problem, where instances of this
concept might differ in many ways from Gettier’s own cases.
Philosophers swiftly became adept at thinking of variations on
Gettier’s own particular cases; and, over the years, this fecundity
has been taken to render his challenge even more significant. This
is especially so, given that there has been no general agreement on
how to solve the challenge posed by Gettier cases as a group —
Gettier’s own ones or those that other epistemologists have
observed or imagined. (Note that sometimes this general challenge
is called the Gettier problem.) What, then, is the nature of
knowledge? And can we rigorously define what it is to know?
Gettier’s article gave to these questions a precision and urgency
that they had formerly lacked. The questions are still being debated

9. Inverted Spectrum

The argument dates back to John Locke.It invites us to

imagine that we wake up one morning, and find that for some
unknown reason all the colors in the world have been inverted.
 Furthermore, we discover that no physical changes have occurred
in our brains or bodies that would explain this phenomenon.
Supporters of the existence of qualia argue that, since we can
imagine this happening without contradiction, it follows that we
are imagining a change in a property that determines the way
things look to us, but that has no physical basis. In more detail:

1. Metaphysical identity holds of necessity

2. If something is possibly false, it is not necessary
3. It is conceivable that qualia could have a different relationship to
physical brain-states
4. If it is conceivable, then it is possible
5. Since it is possible for qualia to have a different relationship with
physical brain-states, they cannot be identical to brain states (by 1).
6. Therefore, qualia are non-physical.

The argument thus claims that if we find the inverted spectrum

plausible, we must admit that qualia exist (and are non-physical). Some
philosophers find it absurd that an "armchair argument" can prove
something to exist, and the detailed argument does involve many
assumptions about conceivability and possibility, which are open to
criticism. Perhaps it is not possible for a given brain state to produce
anything other than a given quale in our universe, and that is all that
matters.

10. Original Position

In the original position, the parties select principles that will
determine the basic structure of the society they will live in. This
choice is made from behind a veil of ignorance, which would
deprive participants of information about their particular
characteristics: his or her ethnicity, social status, gender and,
crucially, Conception of the Good (an individual's idea of how to
 lead a good life). This forces participants to select principles
impartially and rationally.
Rawls specifies that the parties in the original position are
concerned only with citizens' share of what he calls primary social
goods, which include basic rights as well as economic and social
advantages. Rawls also argues that the representatives in the
original position would adopt the maximin rule as their principle
for evaluating the choices before them. Borrowed from game
theory, maximin stands for maximizing the minimum, i.e., making
the choice that produces the highest payoff for the least advantaged
position. Thus, maximin in the original position represents a
formulation of social equality.
In the social contract, citizens in a state of nature contract
with each other to establish a state of civil society. For example, in
the Lockean state of nature, the parties agree to establish a civil
society in which the government has limited powers and the duty
to protect the persons and property of citizens. In the original
position, the representative parties select principles of justice that
are to govern the basic structure of society. Rawls argues that the
representative parties in the original position would select two
principles of justice:

1. Each citizen is guaranteed a fully adequate scheme of basic

liberties, which is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for
all others;
2. Social and economic inequalities must satisfy two conditions:
o to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference
principle);
o attached to positions and offices open to all.

The reason that the least well off member gets benefited is
that it is assumed that under the veil of ignorance, under original
 position, people will be risk averse. This implies that everyone
is afraid of being part of the poor members of society, so the
social contract is constructed to help the least well off members.

11. Ship of Theseus

Theseus is remembered in Greek mythology as the slayer of

the Minotaur. For years, the Athenians had been sending sacrifices
to be given to the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull beast who
inhabited the labyrinth of Knossos. One year, Theseus braved the
labyrinth, and killed the Minotaur.
The ship in which he returned was long preserved. As parts
of the ship needed repair, it was rebuilt plank by plank. Suppose
that, eventually, every plank was replaced; would it still have been
the same ship? A strong case can be made for saying that it would
have been: When the first plank was replaced, the ship would still
have been Theseus’ ship. When the second was replaced, the ship
would still have been Theseus’ ship. Changing a single plank can
never turn one ship into another. Even when every plank had been
replaced, then, and no part of the original ship remained, it would
still have been Theseus’ ship.

Suppose, though, that each of the planks removed from

Theseus’ ship was restored, and that these planks were then
recombined to once again form a ship. Would this have been
Theseus’ ship? Again, a strong case can be made for saying that it
would have been: this ship would have had precisely the same
parts as Theseus’ ship, arranged in precisely the same way.
 If this happened, then, then it would seem that Theseus had
returned from Knossos in two ships. First, there would have been
Theseus’ ship that has had each of its parts replaced one by one.
Second, there would have been Theseus’ ship that had been
dismantled, restored, and then reassembled. Each of them would
have been Theseus’ ship.

12. Molyneux’s Problem

The problem can be stated in brief, "if a man born blind can
feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes,
could he similarly distinguish those objects by sight if given the
ability to see?"

The history of the issues surrounding Molyneux's question

shows that the question was not as easy to answer as Molyneux
himself may have assumed. On the contrary, there is no problem in
the history of the philosophy of perception that has provoked more
thought than the problem that Molyneux raised in 1688. In this
sense, Molyneux's problem is one the most fruitful thought-
experiments ever proposed in the history of philosophy, which is
still as intriguing today as when Molyneux first formulated it more
than three centuries ago.

13. Philosophical Zombie

The notion of a philosophical zombie is used mainly in

thought experiments intended to support arguments (often called
 "zombie arguments") against forms of physicalism such as
materialism, behaviorism and functionalism. Physicalism is the
idea that all aspects of human nature can be explained by physical
means: specifically, all aspects of human nature and perception can
be explained from a neurobiological standpoint. Some
philosophers, like David Chalmers, argue that since a zombie is
defined as physiologically indistinguishable from human beings,
even its logical possibility would be a sound refutation of
physicalism.[2] However, physicalists like Daniel Dennett counter
that Chalmers's physiological zombies are logically incoherent and
thus impossible.

Though philosophical zombies are widely used in thought

experiments, the detailed articulation of the concept is not always
the same. P-zombies were introduced primarily to argue against
specific types of physicalism such as behaviorism, according to
which mental states exist solely as behavior: belief, desire, thought,
consciousness, and so on, are simply certain kinds of behavior or
tendencies towards behaviors. A p-zombie that is behaviorally
indistinguishable from a normal human being but lacks conscious
experiences is therefore not logically possible according to the
behaviorist, so an appeal to the logical possibility of a p-zombie
furnishes an argument that behaviorism is false. Proponents of
zombie arguments generally accept that p-zombies are not
physically possible, while opponents necessarily deny that they are
even logically possible.

The unifying idea of the zombie is of a human that has no conscious

experience, but one might distinguish various types of zombie used in
different thought experiments as follows:
 A behavioral zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a
human.
 A neurological zombie that has a human brain and is generally
physiologically indistinguishable from a human.
 A soulless zombie that lacks a "soul".

14. N-universes

They consist of simplified models of universes which are

reduced to their essential components, in order to facilitate the
associated reasoning. In the study of thought experiments related to
paradoxes and philosophical problems, the situations are generally
complex and likely to give birth to multiple variations. Making use
of Occam's razor, modeling in the n-universes makes it possible to
reduce such situations to their essential elements and to limit
accordingly the complexity of the relevant study.

The n-universes were introduced in Franceschi (2001), in the

context of the study of Goodman's paradox and were also used for
the analysis of the thought experiments and paradoxes related to
the Doomsday argument. In the typology of n-universes, it is worth
distinguishing: - according to whether they comprise constant-
criteria or/and variable-criteria (space, time, color, shape,
temperature, etc.) - according to whether they comprise one or
more objects - according to whether a given criterion is or not with
demultiplication - according to whether the objects are in relation
one-one or many-one with a given criterion
 The n-universes proceed of a double inspiration: on the one
hand, as a system of criteria, that of Nelson Goodman and on the
other hand, at the ontological level, that of the Canadian
philosopher John Leslie. The n-universes also propose to extend
the properties of probability spaces classically used in probability
theory (Franceschi 2006).

15. Ball of Wax Example

Considering the sensible properties of a ball of wax, he points out that
they will all change as it is moved close to a fire. The only properties
that necessarily remain are extension, changeability and movability:

Let us begin by considering the commonest matters, those which we

believe to be the most distinctly comprehended, to wit, the bodies which
we touch and see; not indeed bodies in general, for these general ideas
are usually a little more confused, but let us consider one body in
particular. Let us take, for example, this piece of wax: it has been taken
quite freshly from the hive, and it has not yet lost the sweetness of the
honey which it contains; it still retains somewhat of the odour of the
flowers from which it has been culled; its colour, its figure, its size are
apparent; it is hard, cold, easily handled, and if you strike it with the
finger, it will emit a sound. Finally all the things which are requisite to
cause us distinctly to recognise a body, are met with in it. But notice that
while I speak and approach the fire what remained of the taste is
exhaled, the smell evaporates, the colour alters, the figure is destroyed,
the size increases, it becomes liquid, it heats, scarcely can one handle it,
and when one strikes it, now sound is emitted. Does the same wax
remain after this change? We must confess that it remains; none would
judge otherwise. What then did I know so distinctly in this piece of wax?
It could certainly be nothing of all that the senses brought to my notice,
since all these things which fall under taste, smell, sight, touch, and
hearing, are found to be changed, and yet the same wax remains.
Perhaps it was what I now think, viz. that this wax was not that
sweetness of honey, nor that agreeable scent of flowers, nor that
particular whiteness, nor that figure, nor that sound, but simply a body
which a little while before appeared tome as perceptible under these
forms, and which is now perceptible under others. But what, precisely, is
it that I imagine when I form such conceptions? Let us attentively
consider this, and, abstracting from all that does not belong to the wax,
let us see what remains. Certainly nothing remains excepting a certain
extended thing which is flexible and movable.
—René Descartes, 1911 edition of The Philosophical Works of
Descartes (Cambridge University Press), translated by Elizabeth S.
Haldane

These properties are however not directly perceived through the senses
or imagination (the wax can be extended and moved in more ways than
can be imagined). Instead to grasp the essence of the wax, it must be
done through pure reason:

We must then grant that I could not even understand through the
imagination what this piece of wax is, and that it is my mind alone
which perceives it.
—René Descartes, 1911 edition of The Philosophical Works of
Descartes (Cambridge University Press), translated by Elizabeth S.
Haldane
16. Allegory of the Cave

It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon

and his mentor Socrates, narrated by the latter. The Allegory of the
Cave is presented after the metaphor of the sun (508b–509c) and
the analogy of the divided line (509d–513e). All three are
characterized in relation to dialectic at the end of Book VII and
VIII (531d–534e).
Plato has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have
lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank
wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things
passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to
these shadows. According to Plato's Socrates, the shadows are as
close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how
the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and
comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up
reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than
the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.
The Allegory may be related to Plato's Theory of Forms,
according to which the "Forms" (or "Ideas"), and not the material
world of change known to us through sensation, possess the
highest and most fundamental kind of reality. Only knowledge of
the Forms constitutes real knowledge.[1] In addition, the Allegory
of the Cave is an attempt to explain the philosopher's place in
society: to attempt to enlighten the "prisoners."
Plato's Phaedo contains similar imagery to that of the
Allegory of the Cave; a philosopher recognizes that before
philosophy, his soul was "a veritable prisoner fast bound within his
body... and that instead of investigating reality by itself and in
itself it is compelled to peer through the bars of its prison."
 17. Metaphor of the Sun

The metaphor illustrates the nature of Plato's ultimate reality

and how knowledge is acquired concerning it. The character
Socrates is the main speaker of The Republic, but it is generally
agreed that the thoughts expressed are Plato's.

The eye, Plato says, is unusual among the sense organs in

that it needs a medium, namely light, in order to operate. The
strongest and best source of light is the sun; with it, objects can be
discerned clearly. Analogous things, he writes, can be said of
intelligible objects (i.e., the fixed and eternal forms that are the
ultimate objects of scientific and philosophical study):
When [the soul] is firmly fixed on the domain where truth and
reality shine resplendent it apprehends and knows them and
appears to possess reason, but when it inclines to that region which
is mingled with darkness, the world of becoming and passing
away, it opines only and its edge is blunted, and it shifts its
opinions hither and thither, and again seems as if it lacked reason.
(The Republic bk. VI, 508d; trans. Paul Shorey)
By "the world of becoming and passing away" Plato means the
familiar visual or perceptual world we see around us. Thus if we attempt
to understand why things are as they are, and what general categories
can be used to understand various particulars around us, without
reference to any forms (universals), we will fail completely, as if [we]
lacked reason. By contrast, "the domain where truth and reality shine
resplendent" is none other than Plato's world of forms--illuminated by
the highest of the forms, that of the Good. Since true being resides in the
world of the forms, we must direct our intellects there to have
knowledge, in Plato's view; otherwise, we are stuck with mere opinion
of what may be likened to passing shadows.
Plato also says the sun and the Good ("the object of knowledge")
are both sources of "generation":
The sun ... not only furnishes to those that see the power of
visibility but it also provides for their generation and growth and
nurture though it is not itself generation. ... In like manner, then ...
the objects of knowledge not only receive from the presence of the
good their being known, but their very existence and essence is
derived to them from it, though the good itself is not essence but
still transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power. (509b)
This is one of the passages that leads some to infer that the Good
is, for Plato, God, though there is some dispute about this point. (Plato
refers to the Sun as a divinity and claims that it is the child of goodness).
Many modern readers will find it puzzling that one and the same thing is
called the Good, the source of being (the being of the forms, at least),
something that (somehow) sheds light on all other forms, and a
universal. Indeed, exactly how it is Plato thinks "very existence and
essence is derived to [the forms] from" the Good is a matter of
considerable interpretive difficulty.
Incidentally, the metaphor of the sun exemplifies a traditional
interrelation between metaphysics and epistemology: interpretations of
fundamental existence create - and are created by - ways of knowing. It
also neatly sums up two views for which Plato is well-known: his
rationalism and his realism (about universals).
Plato goes on to describe the levels of reality and knowledge with the
device of the so-called "divided line"

18. Analogy of the Divided Line

The four models are arranged into a first pair for the visible
world, and a second pair for the purely intelligible world. The
models are described in succession as corresponding to increasing
levels of reality from common illusion, to belief, to reasoning, and
then to philosophical understanding.
The Analogy of the Divided Line immediately follows the
Metaphor of the Sun and is in turn followed by the Allegory of the
Cave.
Plato holds a very strict notion of knowledge. For example,
he does not accept expertise about a subject, nor direct perception
(the Theaetetus), nor true belief about the physical world (the
Meno) as knowledge. For knowledge, he also requires
philosophical understanding of the relevant Ideas (Forms), as a
basis for proper justification at all other levels of the Divided Line.
Thus, for this reason, in most of the 'earlier, Socratic' dialogues,
Socrates denies knowledge both to himself and others.
For the first level, "the world of becoming and passing
away," Plato expressly denies the possibility of knowledge.
Constant change never stays the same, therefore, properties of
objects must refer to different Ideas at different times. Note that for
knowledge to be possible, which Plato believed, the other three
levels must be unchanging. The third and fourth level, mathematics
and Ideas are already eternal and unchanging. However, to ensure
that the second level objective, physical world is also unchanging,
 Plato, in the Republic, Book 4 introduces empirically derived
axiomatic restrictions that prohibit both motion and shifting
perspectives.

19. If a Tree Falls in a Forest

Philosopher George Berkeley, in his work, A Treatise

Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), proposes,
"But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine
trees, for instance, in a park and nobody by to perceive them. The
objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees
therefore are in the garden no longer than while there is somebody
by to perceive them." Nevertheless, Berkeley never actually wrote
about the question.
Berkeley's example is referred to by William Fossett twenty
years later in a consideration of the emergence of meaning:
"[T]ease apart the threads [of the natural world] and the pattern
vanishes. The design is in how the cloth-maker arranges the
threads: this way and that, as fashion dictates. To say something is
meaningful is to say that that is how we arrange it so; how we
comprehend it to be, and what is comprehended by you or I may
not be by a cat, for example. If a tree falls in a park and there is no-
one to hand, it is silent and invisible and nameless. And if we were
to vanish, there would be no tree at all; any meaning would vanish
along with us. Other than what the cats make of it all, of course."

Some years later, a similar question is posed. It is unknown

whether the source of this question is Berkeley or not. In June
1883 in the magazine The Chautauquan, the question was put, "If a
tree were to fall on an island where there were no human beings
 would there be any sound?" They then went on to answer the query
with, "No. Sound is the sensation excited in the ear when the air or
other medium is set in motion." This seems to imply that the
question is posed not from a philosophical viewpoint, but from a
purely scientific one. The magazine Scientific American
corroborated the technical aspect of this question, while leaving
out the philosophic side, a year later when they asked the question
slightly reworded, "If a tree were to fall on an uninhabited island,
would there be any sound?" And gave a more technical answer,
"Sound is vibration, transmitted to our senses through the
mechanism of the ear, and recognized as sound only at our nerve
centers. The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will
produce vibration of the air. If there be no ears to hear, there will
be no sound."

20. Swampman
The experiment runs as follows:

Suppose Davidson goes hiking in the swamp and is struck and killed by
a lightning bolt. At the same time, nearby in the swamp another
lightning bolt spontaneously rearranges a bunch of molecules such that,
entirely by coincidence, they take on exactly the same form that
Davidson's body had at the moment of his untimely death. This being,
whom Davidson terms "Swampman," has, of course, a brain which is
structurally identical to that which Davidson had, and will thus,
presumably, behave exactly as Davidson would have. He will walk out
of the swamp, return to Davidson's office at Berkeley, and write the
same essays he would have written; he will interact like an amicable
person with all of Davidson's friends and family, and so forth.
Davidson holds that there would nevertheless be a difference, though no
one would notice it. Swampman will appear to recognize Davidson's
friends, but it is impossible for him to actually recognize them, as he has
never seen them before. As Davidson puts it, "It can't recognize
anything, because it never cognized anything in the first place."

These considerations lead Davidson to deny that the Swampman's

utterances can be construed as referring to anything in particular. To
take a fairly specific example, suppose that at some point the previous
day Davidson had looked at a glass marble on a shelf; unbeknownst to
him there was another, visually identical, glass marble hidden right
behind it. When he makes an assertion about "the marble I saw
yesterday," we take him to be referring to the one that he did in fact see,
even if he could not supply enough descriptive information to identify it
later. Had the marbles been arranged in the other order, therefore, we
would take him to be referring to the other marble, yet his internal state
would be identical.

The Swampman has no causal history. He is in the same state as the

actual Davidson and the counter-factual Davidson considered above,
whose utterances refer to different marbles. As a result his utterance
could refer to either marble. In principle, Davidson tells us, the above
indeterminacies can be extended to any degree we like: the fact that the
Swampman happens to be identical to Davidson does not change the fact
that he could have arrived at that state by any one of countless histories,
each of which would demand we interpret him differently. Until the
Swampman has begun interacting with and using language among the
objects of the real world, we can have no grounds to attributing any
meanings or thoughts to him at all.

Amongst those who accept the force of this argument, there are two
distinct ways of viewing its consequences. On the one hand, many
philosophers have taken it to affect merely how we should evaluate
Swampman. The argument is believed to demonstrate that Swampman's
utterances and thoughts do not mean anything, and do not refer to
anything in particular. On this view, Swampman's subjectivity and
consciousness are considered to be unchanged. Others have argued that
this lack of a causal history renders incoherent the notion that
Swampman could have a mind at all, which in turn raises the question of
whether he is, in fact, a person. (Note that Davidson calls Swampman
"it" rather than "he.")

This argument depends upon the acceptance of semantic externalism -

the claim that what one's words mean is determined not merely by some
internal state, but also by the causal history of the speaker.