In the pub with G., remembering from university those ‘thought experiments’ much beloved by certain philosophers of the ‘analytical’ persuasion. Such as: if you knew for certain that torturing Mr X would yield knowledge of the whereabouts of 7 hostages who would otherwise die, would it be legitimate..
G. thinks these are valid tools of philosophical enquiry. I reply that they invariably seem to involve some impossible posited ‘certainty.’ Since this certainty is an abstraction, it can surely have little or no practical moral value. It appears almost as a tool forcing you to accept the conclusion in question.. ‘If you knew for certain that feeding a live human being to some rats would prevent nuclear bombs being dropped on every capital city in the world…”. These curious hypotheticals are like ruses permitting some particular fantasy-scene of cruelty or whatever. And with the alibi of disinterested theoretical speculation.
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I agree, absolutely. It's as if in the absence of any genuine appreciation for the uncertainty of existence, or at least in the face of knowing that uncertainty cannot be resolved, the thought experiment provides an odd excuse for gaming the world as if it was governed by rules. Analytic philosophy's own version of the theatre of cruelty.
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