Which philosophical ideas (or examples) would make for a good Halloween costume?
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.
Or go as Everything. It leaves nothing to the imagination.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
(image via @Replicakill)
Sobel and I have dressed as a pair of hands. Added bonus: Belly-bop high-fives.
I was what it’s like to be a bat once, and that went over quite well.
Tried it once, no one grasped it.
Brain. In. A. Vat.
Turtles all the way down this year.
Madison, WI, is famed for its Halloween parade on State St., so the members of the philosophy department there always had a lot to live up there. When my husband and I were there as grad students, one year we went as triangularity seducing the color purple (he, with a triangular frame, me dressed in purple silk, he occasionally paying me compliments or offering me chocolates), and another year we dressed in green/brown, wore duck bills, and had name-tags saying “Property of B.R.” (We were Russell’s pair o’ ducks.)
A Cartesian evil demon, a Humean bundle of perceptions, and the famous picture of the Leviathan (attach a bunch of dolls to yourself) would be pretty easy to pull off. Maybe even a Chinese room or a Platonic tripartite soul would be recognizable to philosophers. For a group costume, it would be fun to go as a bunch of monads; Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis, or Jim and the Indians (questionable culturally, I know!).
Anomalous monism would an interesting challenge…
Go as yourself: nobody will recognize you. Humean variant: go as a bundle of impressions.
A friend recently pulled off “grue,” using two identical outfits from target, one blue and one green. When it came to time t, a little superman action made for many confused party-goers…
I went as Louie Generis this year, but everyone in my department just thought I forgot to wear a costume. Secret identities are tricky.
Abominable Conjunctions!
Things I’ve seen and/or things I’d like to pull off someday: Gavagai, Thomson’s famous violinist, a bound variable, a utility monster. This year I’m the owl of minerva.
I once attended a philosophical costume party as the present King of France.
The thing in itself.
Veil of ignorance, surrounded by a reflective “equilibrium”
Nobody noticed when I went as a spacetime point. This year I’m expanding to a Planck length and see if that’s an improvement. If not, next year I’ll round up a cat costume, a big box, a Geiger counter-actuated dispenser, a radium-dial watch, a vial of potassium cyanide, some sulfuric acid. . .
Duck-rabbit.
I thought of going as the Idea of the Good this year. Anyone have one of those sun costumes from the spokesguy for Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches?
This year I’m going as the critique of pure reason, and only speaking in the passive voice. It’s the scariest book I know.
A hat called logic; a sign reading, ‘language!’
All one needs is a floor-to-head tape measure for being Protagoras’ ‘the measure of all things.’
A Lewisian possible world–the one in which only my counterpart and nothing else exists.
P.D. I’m sorry, but I have to ask – are you bald?
Nope. I wore a rather unconvincing bald cap. Nick Jolley was quick with the apt quote, “Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will say he wears a wig.”
I’ve often thought black-and-white Mary would be a good one.
I am an indexical
Serial Killer Karl Popper. Walk around with a fake syringe and a large jar of clear liquid labelled “morphine”. Tell people you’re preparing to bite the bullet on the logical conclusion of negative utilitarianism.
I dressed up as the law of excluded middle once, one person even guessed what I was!
A nefarious neuroscientist, anyone?
I’m Rawls. Basically, I’m just dressing normally, but talking way more than normal about something boring and using terrible sentence structure. You can tell I’m already in character.
I’m going as Wittgenstein and leaving town.
I did Tabula Rasa last year – just hung a blank slate around my neck.
My Tabula wasn’t very Rasa by the end of the night, though.
As a grad student, I heard tell of a somewhat famous prof who put curly braces of cardboard or foam on either side of him and went as the set whose only member was himself.
So he went as his singleton. Get with the program!
I went as heterophenomenology and told stories all night.
Sam’s friend also went as overdetermination (belt and suspenders) one year. Another year, he went as a super rabbit with the proportional powers of a duck (Duck-Rabbit).
This year, he will be a reanimated corpse who is too depressed to *feel* anything (P-zombie).
I like to go in a suit with no tie, and constantly pointing directly in front of me. Most people ask if I’m a demonstrative or David Kaplan. That’s when I inform the inquirer that I am actually Wittgenstein’s Poker and poke them.
I’ve gone as The Best of All Possible Worlds: Make it look like you just won a pageant: wear a crown or tiara, and a sash that says, “Mister [or Miss] Actual World.”
I’ve also gone as Poststructualist Me: I suspended quotation marks around my head. Just a signifier, man.
Last year I was Falling Under a Concept (so, I was an Object?): I put a wire in my tie to make it stick straight up.
You could wear an NYU cap, Princeton sunglasses, a Rutgers T-shirt, Michigan shorts, and Yale socks and go as the PGR report!
Okay, everybody talking about Hume on personal identity: REPUBLIC, not bundle. T.1.4.7.19ff
{both Hume and Halloween are v. important, so if we’re going to do this, let’s do it right, shall we? 🙂 }