Are we making progress in philosophy? Or at least in philosophy-themed costumes? Here’s one way to find out.
Ten years ago, I put up a post asking which philosophy ideas make for good Halloween costumes.
I included some suggestions:
Yes, Brain in Vat. We all think we’ve thought of that one already. What else?
Eternal Recurrence? You went as that last year! And the year before.
I suppose you could go as anything. Just make a sign that says “p & ¬ p” and walk behind it.
How would you go about dressing up as the Categorical Imperative? Remember, it would have to be the kind of costume everyone could wear.
Looking for a sexy costume idea? Go as Philosophy Department Budget. It barely covers anything.
Readers came through with various ideas: turtles all the way down, Moore’s hands, a duck-rabbit, and so on. You can check them out here.
But we barely scratched the surface of possibilities. Since it has been a decade, I thought we could revisit the topic.
There certainly seems to be room for growth, especially when it comes to ideas developed, say, over the past 30 or so years, or ideas from outside the traditional canon. Plus, there are plenty of people reading these words who were not in DN’s audience back in the day, and I bet they’ll have some good suggestions. So let’s hear ’em.
Happy Halloween, philosofriends!
related: previous Halloween posts
Philosophical zombie
Go as you are, and if anyone asks, say you’re dressed up as “non-ideal theory”
Transformative Experience: bring a few outfits with you and spend the evening changing into them.
Somewhat off-topic, but when I was testing a compiler for a new language, I amortized my wedding Tuxedo (two years in a row — does that count as Eternal Recurrence?) by going as AxLang Formal Verification. Sadly, a blockchain language never had a realistic chance of the sort of functional purity needed for formal verification.
bleen or grue
An LLM-generated publication in Noûs.
Banana suit over a gray outfit, and insist that you are in fact a grayscale banana seen-as yellow. If someone insists you are a yellow banana, tell them they forgot their Fodor costume.
Ockham’s Razor!
Unrestricted composition. Just stand next to everything and make something new.
The number 42.
Buridan’s Ass
Descartes’ Demon
An Honest Man
The God of the Gaps
Hobbes’ Leviathan
Hume’s Fork
Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance
Russell’s Teapot
The Third Man
A Web of Beliefs
Go as God (never show up to the party)
The problem of induction: An outfit covered with 250 miniature white swans, and one somewhat hidden miniature black swan.
One of my students suggested going as a non-black non-raven.
Walking around with a large ceramic jar. Doubles for storing candy.
When I was in grad school I went as a bound variable – I borrowed some fetish cuffs and leather pants from someone I knew, and painted “x” on a torn t-shirt. A friend of mine went as an existentialist quantifier – she wore a black turtleneck with a beret and a cigarette holder, and attached a piece of paper with a backwards E.
I did duck rabbit one year. Could have been executed better.
Sorry, I’m late here. A couple ideas (for next year):
Use your filthy imaginations…