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The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures pp 469–490Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Thoughtful Films, Thoughtful Fictions: The Philosophical Terrain Between Illustrations and Thought Experiments

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Abstract

Many philosophers maintain that works of art, in particular films and novels, cannot function as thought experiments. Most who claim this make their case by setting the bar for what can count as a philosophical thought experiment very high. It is argued here not that these positions are necessarily mistaken, but that there is a large gray area that is seldom acknowledged between what counts as a philosophical thought experiment narrowly defined and what counts as “being used to illustrate a philosophical point,” where the fiction is imported into an already complete external argument. I contend that these are not the only alternatives available, that intuition pumps and variant case arguments provide better grounds for comparison than has been acknowledged, and that there are uses to which filmic illustrations in particular may be put that make distinctive and cognitive contributions of their own. In the course of making this case, it is stressed both that emotional response has clearly cognitive aspects and that many thought experiments with lower stakes rely on eliciting emotional response.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Indeed, a part of what follows, especially material in Section III, initially involved my investigations of the capacity of literature to function as a species of thought experiment. I have adapted those investigations, initially published in conference proceedings, to the present project involving film. See “Literature, Ethical Thought Experiments, and Moral Knowledge,” Southwest Philosophy Review 29:1 (2013): 195–209.

  2. 2.

    Paisley Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64:1 (2006): 11–18. Murray Smith, “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64:1 (2006): 33–42. David Egan, “Literature and Thought Experiments,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74:2 (2016): 139–150.

  3. 3.

    Thomas Wartenberg, “Beyond Mere Illustration: How Films Can Be Philosophy,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64:1 (2006):19–32. Noel Carroll, “Movie-Made Philosophy,” (draft) pp. 1–26. David Davies, “Can Philosophical Thought Experiments Be ‘Screened’?” in Thought Experiments in Science, Philosophy, and the Arts ed. Melanie Frappier, Letitia Meynell, and James Robert Brown (NY: Routledge, 2012): 223–238.

    Aaron Smuts, “Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67:4 (Fall 2009): 406–420. Robert Sinnerbrink, Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film (NY: Routledge, 2016).

  4. 4.

    Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy,” p. 11.

  5. 5.

    Ibid., p. 12.

  6. 6.

    Noël Carroll, “Movie-Made Philosophy” (draft), p. 10.

  7. 7.

    Davies, “Can Philosophical Thought Experiments Be ‘Screened’?” p. 235.

  8. 8.

    Smith, “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity,” p. 39.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., p. 40.

  10. 10.

    Daniel C. Dennett, “Intuition Pumps” (Chapter 10) Edge 5/7/96. Accessed 6/7/16: http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/r-Ch.10.html

  11. 11.

    Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1: 1 (1971): 47–66.

  12. 12.

    Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1: 3 (1972): 229–43.

  13. 13.

    Thomas Metcalf, “Against the Technique of Variant Cases: The Problem of Applied Ethics Induction,” Mountain-Plains Philosophy Conference, October 2011. This paper is the source of some of my suggestions above.

  14. 14.

    Ibid.

  15. 15.

    Jennifer Mock, “Bid halted to revise child support law,” NewsOK April 20, 2007. Accessed December 27, 2017: http://m.newsok.com/bid-halted-to-revise-child-support-law/article/3043042

  16. 16.

    Michel Faber, Under the Skin (NY: Harcourt, 2001).

  17. 17.

    Thomas E. Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 67.

  18. 18.

    Duncan Purves, “Still in Hot Water: Doing, Allowing and Rachels’ Bathtub Cases,” Southwest Philosophy Review 27 (2011): 129–137.

  19. 19.

    Michael Tooley, “An Irrelevant Consideration: Killing Versus Letting Die,” in Killing and Letting Die, ed. By Bonnie Steinbock and Alastair Norcross (Fordham University Press, 1994):103–111. See also, Judith Lichtenberg, “The Moral Equivalence of Action and Omission,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 8 (1982): 19–36.

  20. 20.

    Arseny Ryazanov, Jonathan Knutzen, Samuel Rickless, Nicholas Christenfeld, and Dana Kay Nelkin, “Intuitive Probabilities and the Limitation of Moral Imagination,” Cognitive Science 42 suppl 1 (May 2018): 38–68.

  21. 21.

    David Lewis, “Truth in Fiction,” APQ 15 (1978): 37–46.

  22. 22.

    Richard Moran, “The Expression of Feeling in Imagination,” The Philosophical Review 103:1 (1994): 75–106, 106.

  23. 23.

    Wartenberg, “Beyond Mere Illustration: How Films Can Be Philosophy,” pp. 25–26.

  24. 24.

    Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen, pp. 55–75.

  25. 25.

    Carroll, “Movie-Made Philosophy,” pp. 20–21.

  26. 26.

    Davies, “Can Philosophical Thought Experiments Be ‘Screened’?” pp. 229–230.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK, USA

    E. M. Dadlez

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  1. E. M. Dadlez
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Noël Carroll

  2. William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, USA

    Laura T. Di Summa

  3. Baton Rouge Community College, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Shawn Loht

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Dadlez, E.M. (2019). Thoughtful Films, Thoughtful Fictions: The Philosophical Terrain Between Illustrations and Thought Experiments. In: Carroll, N., Di Summa, L.T., Loht, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19601-1_20

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