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101 Philosophy Problems
Third Edition
Cohen examines the main currents of classical thought as well as outlining the
dilemmas which tax the brains of contemporary philosophers. Using a fascinating
array of examples, he draws the aspiring philosopher into increasingly complex
problems and points the readers in the direction reason will eventually lead
them. Ilkley Gazette
Cohen continually delights or infuriates us with his irreverent opinions. He tells us,
for example, that Kant reduced philosophy ‘to esoteric monologues of
professionals’ and that Aristotle ‘suffered from a particularly severe taxonomical
disorder’. Logic is irrelevant, a point he reinforces by not using it to clarify
philosophical problems. Harry Gensler, John Carroll University, Cleveland, USA
Tired of yet more introductions, anthologies and textbooks, publishers are beginning
to wake up to the fact that, especially for the non-academic reader, what is needed
in philosophy are different kinds of books that can engage the interest of the
enthusiast. . . . It has long been recognised that philosophy is among other things,
something that needs to be engaged in. You can’t just read philosophy, you’ve got
to actually do it. Given that, it’s surprising how few introductions actually try and get
their readers to join in. 101 Philosophy Problems is an all too rare example of a
book that does just that, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is soon joined by many
others. Cohen takes as his starting point, not the history of philosophy, nor the
various sub-disciplines of it, nor its great and good. Rather he gets the reader
stuck straight into some philosophical puzzles. The Philosophers’ Magazine
101 Philosophy Problems
Third Edition
Martin Cohen
First published 1999
Second edition published in 2001
by Routledge
2 Milton Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Reprinted 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004
Third edition published 2007
(Sherlock Holmes in The Red Headed League, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, first published 1891)
Contents
Forward! xiii
How to use this book xvi
Note on the philisophical pictures xviii
Contents
9 The Society for Useless Information’s problem 12
10 A problem with lentils 13
11 The sentence 14
12 Diktatia 17
13 A relative problem 18
14 The dog and the professor 20
15 The dog and the professor II 21
16 Problems in the Lost Kingdom of Marjon 22
17 Problems in the Lost Kingdom of Marjon II 23
18 The Lost Kingdom and the pesky-fly problem 24
19 The Lost Kingdom and the pesky-fly problem II 25
20 The Lost Kingdom and the pesky-fly problem III 26
21 New Diktatia 27
22 New Diktatia II 28
23 New Diktatia III 29
ix
25 Life on Sirius 32
26 The infinite hotel 34
Zeno’s paradoxes
36 Figure/ground reversal 48
37 The false leg 49
38 The chair 50
39 Band with a twist in it 51
40 ‘The blobs’ and ‘The colour disk illusion’ 52
Personal problems
x
52 The sleeping man 69
53 A problem arranging ship battles 70
54 Deep Thought speaks for itself 72
55 Deeper thought 73
Paradoxical pictures
56 Daytime – or night-time? 76
57 But will the waterfall? 77
58 The architect’s secret 78
59 The three hares illusion 79
60 Unicorns’ horns 81
61 The King of France’s pate 81
62 Snow’s colour 81
63 Unmarried bachelors 81
64 The author of Waverley 81
Contents
65 Martian water 81
66 The millennium problem 81
67 Green and red 82
68 G. E. Moore’s problem 82
69 Kant’s problem 82
70 More Kant 82
71 The table 82
79 The turtle 94
80 The nightingale’s song 95
xi
Fundamentally religious problems
Discussions 115
Glossary 193
Reading guide 225
Acknowledgements 231
Index 233
xii
Forward!
‘One hundred and one?!’ (the reader may exclaim) ‘I didn’t think there were that
many philosophical problems!’
After all, Bertrand Russell, in his definitive account The Problems of Philosophy
(1912, 1980), only seemed aware of about a dozen, and most of these were just to
do with varieties of knowledge. There was the problem of appearance and reality,
the problem of mind and matter, the issue of idealism, and the various problems of
knowledge: knowledge by acquaintance, or by description, knowledge of general
principles, a priori knowledge and knowledge of universals, intuitive knowledge,
knowledge as opposed to error (truth and falsehood), even probable knowledge.
And, overarching all, the question of the ‘value’ of philosophy.
But let us be generous. In the edition I was looking at, next to an underlined
passage saying ‘All acquisition of knowledge is an enlargement of the Self, but this
Forward!
enlargement is best attained when it is not directly sought’ (and can that be a
thought for this book too?) someone has written, in block capitals:
IS THIS SELF-ASSERTION?
This is quite a useful list, albeit not long enough. We need to go to A. J. Ayer’s
monolithic* Central Questions of Philosophy to find anything approaching 101
problems. But on closer inspection, these prove to be rather unsatisfying,
concerned only with xs and ys and professors. Instead of real problems we have
xiii
propositional functions and syntactical disjunctions. Ayer even has the temerity to
claim that Zeno’s paradoxes are not real ones. He solves them all with advice like
that for Achilles, claiming that there is a flaw in the problem that states that before
he can move one yard, he must first of all have moved half a yard. This is, quite
simply, that it is ‘false’. (‘False’ being a word used by a certain kind of philosopher
to refer to any claim that is not a tautology. Or that they don’t like.) And anyway, as
Ayer freely admits, for him the purpose of philosophy is not, whatever Marx may
have supposed, to ‘change’ the world, but only to change our ‘conception’ of it.
Philosophy must be restricted to ‘the practice of analysis’. Although this, we learn,
‘is not the source of its charm for those who practise it’. For practitioners, its value
consists in ‘the interest of the questions which it raises and the success which it
achieves in answering them’.
Of that, have no doubt. Within these pages are all the philosophical issues that
matter. Even a few that don’t. The discussion is brief but to the point, clarified – not
just enlivened – by the (increasingly respectable) vehicle of ‘narrative fiction’. The
technical jargon so beloved of academics is banished, but none of the ideas or
issues are.
Although some philosophers today may react to clarity like vampires to sunlight,
shuddering, covering their eyes in fear and loathing at the plain little words and
readable sentences that threaten to destroy their private world, we need have no
such qualms. Instead, we return to a tradition far older, a tradition of philosophy as
an activity, a skill to be developed.
There are facts here too, of course, and as for techniques, this whole book is
perhaps training in that, originally subversive, form of philosophy known as ‘critical
thinking’. Originally, that is, because later the philosophers got hold of it and locked
the whole notion up in a gilded and jargon-encrusted cage of linguistic obscurity.
It was not always so. In classical Greece, where the word, but certainly not the
activity, of philosophy originated, clarity was the measure and the aim, and
xiv
sophistry the lower form. If this book is indeed a return to that tradition, then that is
its justification and its role. And if this still seems too simple for the self-consciously
serious-minded thinkers – let them actually solve some of the problems!
But, before we ourselves attempt that, here is what Russell has to say on
philosophical problems in general:
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its
questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but
rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions
enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination,
diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation;
but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which
philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great and becomes
capable of that union with the universe which contributes its highest good.
(The Problems of Philosophy, pp. 93–94)
Forward!
xv
How to use this book
1 Unputdownable though, of course, this book is, resist any temptation to read it
How to use this book
For philosophy is far better approached with an eager mind than with a tired and
unwilling one.
101 Philosophy Problems can be taken in quite different ways: either more
conventional, scholarly ones, as problems to be solved and points to be absorbed;
xvi
or on an intuitive level, in which case it is a more philosophical work, attempting to
paint a picture of a reality hidden behind words and logic.
But the best way to use this book, and I should think all philosophy books, is to
read it as a philosophical journey, with lots of new things to see, note, but not yet
fully investigate, far less to be detained by. In this spirit, it is like the best of its kind,
a voyage where once you have finished, you find that you know little more than
when you started. Indeed, you may know rather less – but you will, by the end,
know some new things that you don’t know.
xvii
Note on the philosophical pictures
In this edition, a new picture introducing each section has been added. Drawn
especially to illustrate the philosophiacl texts by the French artist, Judit, each one
provides proof that there are verily two parts to the brain, if not the mind, one to
process images, one to process words, and the one that processes images in
much more powerful. I like to think that, in this way, we add both a new dimension
and a new way of approaching the problems.
Note on the philosophical pictures
xviii
Eleven logical loops and
paradoxical problems to
get started with
Problem 1
The hanging judge
Now Judge Dread had had many disagreeable people before him, but this one,
who styled himself ‘the Philosopher’, despite never having studied the subject, had
really annoyed him. Dread says:
‘I intend to teach you the value of honesty, prisoner. You have been found guilty of
being a crook and a swindler and of repeatedly and systematically lying to the
court to try to save your wretched skin. Well, justice has caught up with you now,
my friend. The sentence of this court is . . . ’ (here the Judge pauses for effect and
dons a pair of black gloves and a little black hat) ‘ . . . that you be taken from here
to a place of execution and hanged by the neck until you are dead.
101 Philosophy Problems
At this the jury applaud at the severity of the sentence and everyone in the
courtroom looks at the defendant, pleased to see such a villain get a heavy
sentence, coupled with the humiliating public truth declaration. But, strangely, the
Philosopher just smirks back as he is led away to Death Row.
The day of the execution arrives and the crook, beaming, signs a declaration which
is handed to the Chief Executioner who reads it with growing bewilderment. Then,
snarling, she crumples it up and orders the Philosopher be released, with no
penalty whatsoever to be imposed.
What could the prisoner have said in the statement to have saved himself?
2
Problem 2
The cow in the field
Farmer Field is concerned about his prize cow, Daisy. In fact, he is so concerned
that when his dairyman tells him that Daisy is in the field happily grazing, he says
he needs to know for certain. He doesn’t want just to have a 99 per cent idea that
Daisy is safe, he wants to be able to say that he knows Daisy is okay.
Farmer Field goes out to the field and standing by the gate sees in the distance,
behind some trees, a white and black shape that he recognises as his favourite
cow. He goes back to the dairy and tells his friend that he knows Daisy is in the
field.
The dairyman says he will check too, and goes to the field. There he finds Daisy,
having a nap in a hollow, behind a bush, well out of sight of the gate. He also spots
a large piece of black and white paper that has got caught in a tree.
Daisy is in the field, as Farmer Field thought. But was he right to say that he knew
she was?
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