ux-phi

The Imaginary City

Glaucon picks up where Thrasymachus left off, and is about to argue that the myth of the Ring of Gyges tells us something about the nature of justice. Socrates begins to build his imaginary city. You are still Kratinos.

The Logician Goes to Court

You are Albert Einstein. In about an hour you will arrive at a federal courthouse in Trenton where your closest friend, Kurt Gödel, is to be sworn in as an American citizen. Over the past weeks Kurt has been studying the Constitution in preparation for the civics test and, because he is who he is, he has found what he considers an inconsistency: a legal path by which the United States could become a dictatorship. He feels he must explain this to the judge as a matter of urgency. The economist and game theorist Oskar Morgenstern is driving. You have the 45 minute drive, and maybe the hearing itself, to keep the greatest logician of the twentieth century from ruining his chance at becoming an American citizen.

Should philosophy be written down?

You are Phaedrus, a young Athenian who loves fine speeches. You and Socrates are sitting under a plane tree by the Ilissus on a hot summer day. Socrates is going to argue that writing is bad for the memory, and like an orphan, can’t defend itself. (Of course those arguments didn’t stop Plato from writing down what Socrates said.) What this short simulation explores is: maybe now writing can defend itself and argue back?

A rubber of whist at the infidel's table

Evenings in David Hume's house in Edinburgh in 1776 playing his favorite card game. You are the fourth at the whist table with Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson (professor of pneumatics and moral philosophy at Edinburgh). The cards are dealt, played, and scored by the house rules: long whist, thirteen cards each. Conversation takes place around and in response to the game. The game keeps score of points and shillings won and lost, and after you play one evening to its end you'll be invited back for another. You can play up until Hume is too sick to continue. Even though he is dying he is still the most cheerful man in the room.

60 Minutes with an Oxford Philosopher

You have written a short piece of philosophical work — 50 to 500 words, your core argument — and submitted it to one of four Oxford philosophers. Today, at the appointed time, you knock on their door. You have an hour. They have read it. They are not going to be generous with praise. Choose your don: Austin at Corpus Christi, Anscombe at Somerville, Hare at Balliol, or Murdoch at St Anne’s. If you are up for it, you can play through the whole eight week Michaelmas term; dons give reading recommendations for the week’s meeting and remember previous discussions.

Hegel, the Phenomenology, and Napoleon at the gates

It is the night of 12 October 1806. Napoleon's watchfires are being lit outside Jena. The Prussian army is camped in the fog. In a rented room a thirty-six-year-old G.W.F. Hegel has just mailed the manuscript of the *Phenomenology of Spirit* to his publisher, with a friend's money staked on the manuscript reaching the publisher by the 18th. By candlelight he writes to that friend and waits. You are Ernst Mayer, his student and friend. This might be your last chance to talk to him about his book, help him get the manuscript safely away, and argue with him once again about the Emperor whose army is burning the Johannisgasse. If you stick around until the morning, you may even see the world-soul on horseback.

Simulations in development