The trolley problem asks whether a person should do what?

Divert a runaway vehicle so it kills one person instead of five

Choose between saving a stranger and a relative

Report a crime committed by a friend

Break a promise to prevent a minor harm

The Ship of Theseus asks whether an object stays the same after what?

Every one of its parts has been replaced

It has been moved to another country

In Plato's allegory of the cave, what do the prisoners actually see?

Paintings left by earlier prisoners

Nothing at all, in total darkness

John Searle's Chinese room argument is aimed against which claim?

That running the right program is enough to produce understanding

That machines can beat humans at strategy games

That language is learned rather than innate

That consciousness has a physical basis

Descartes imagines an all-powerful deceiving demon in order to test what?

Whether any belief survives total doubt

Whether God can be proved to exist

Whether the senses are faster than reason

Schrodinger described a cat in a sealed box in order to argue what?

That a quantum description looks absurd when scaled up to everyday objects

That measurement is impossible in principle

That cats perceive time differently

That energy is not conserved at small scales

Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence asks how you would react to being told what?

That you must live the same life over again without end

That your memories were implanted yesterday

That everyone else is a philosophical zombie

That the world will end within a year

Occam's razor advises choosing which explanation?

The one requiring the fewest assumptions

The one held by the most experts

The one that is easiest to describe

Robert Nozick's experience machine asks whether you would accept what?

A lifetime of pleasant simulated experience instead of real life

Perfect knowledge at the cost of your memories

Immortality without the ability to sleep

Wealth in exchange for anonymity

Philosophy & Ideas Medium ⚡ 10 Questions ⏱️ ~7 Mins +100 XP

Thought Experiments and What They Show

Philosophy often argues through invented situations. These ten are the ones that escaped the seminar room.

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A thought experiment is a way of isolating a question that real life keeps contaminating. You cannot run a controlled trial on personal identity, so you imagine a ship whose planks are replaced one at a time and see which intuitions survive. You cannot ask people to design a society without self-interest, so you imagine them choosing the rules without knowing who they will be in it. The famous ones are often remembered wrongly. The trolley problem was invented as a footnote in an argument about abortion, not as a puzzle about driverless cars. Schrodinger's cat was proposed as a criticism of a view its author found absurd, and is now quoted as though he endorsed it. These questions cover what each case was actually built to test.

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Thought Experiments and What They Show: all 10 questions and answers

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1The trolley problem asks whether a person should do what?
- A Choose between saving a stranger and a relative
- B Report a crime committed by a friend
- C Break a promise to prevent a minor harm
- D Divert a runaway vehicle so it kills one person instead of five Correct
Answer: D. Divert a runaway vehicle so it kills one person instead of five

Why: Philippa Foot introduced it in 1967 inside an argument about abortion and the doctrine of double effect. Most of its later fame came from variants that change only who does the killing.
2The Ship of Theseus asks whether an object stays the same after what?
- A Its owner has died
- B It has been given a new name
- C Every one of its parts has been replaced Correct
- D It has been moved to another country
Answer: C. Every one of its parts has been replaced

Why: Plutarch recorded the puzzle as an argument among Athenians. Hobbes sharpened it by asking what happens if the discarded planks are reassembled into a second ship.
3In Plato's allegory of the cave, what do the prisoners actually see?
- A Nothing at all, in total darkness
- B Shadows cast on a wall Correct
- C Reflections in still water
- D Paintings left by earlier prisoners
Answer: B. Shadows cast on a wall

Why: The escaped prisoner's painful adjustment to daylight stands for education. His return is met with ridicule, which Plato clearly meant as a comment on Socrates.
4John Rawls' veil of ignorance asks you to choose a society's rules without knowing what?
- A Your own position within it Correct
- B How long the society will last
- C What technology it will have
- D Which continent it occupies
Answer: A. Your own position within it

Why: He argued that rational people choosing blind would protect the worst-off position. He set it out in A Theory of Justice in 1971.
5John Searle's Chinese room argument is aimed against which claim?
- A That machines can beat humans at strategy games
- B That language is learned rather than innate
- C That consciousness has a physical basis
- D That running the right program is enough to produce understanding Correct
Answer: D. That running the right program is enough to produce understanding

Why: Searle published it in 1980, imagining himself shuffling symbols by rulebook without knowing the language. A standard reply is that understanding belongs to the whole system, not the person inside it.
6Descartes imagines an all-powerful deceiving demon in order to test what?
- A Whether the senses are faster than reason
- B Whether animals have minds
- C Whether any belief survives total doubt Correct
- D Whether God can be proved to exist
Answer: C. Whether any belief survives total doubt

Why: The exercise is what drives him to the one thing he thinks cannot be faked, his own thinking. A twentieth-century version replaces the demon with a brain kept alive in a vat.
7Schrodinger described a cat in a sealed box in order to argue what?
- A That energy is not conserved at small scales
- B That a quantum description looks absurd when scaled up to everyday objects Correct
- C That measurement is impossible in principle
- D That cats perceive time differently
Answer: B. That a quantum description looks absurd when scaled up to everyday objects

Why: He wrote it in 1935 as a criticism, in correspondence with Einstein. It is now routinely quoted as though he was endorsing the picture rather than mocking it.
8Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence asks how you would react to being told what?
- A That you must live the same life over again without end Correct
- B That your memories were implanted yesterday
- C That everyone else is a philosophical zombie
- D That the world will end within a year
Answer: A. That you must live the same life over again without end

Why: He presents it as a test of how far a person affirms their own life. He does not argue for it as a physical claim about the universe.
9Occam's razor advises choosing which explanation?
- A The one held by the most experts
- B The one that is easiest to describe
- C The one proposed most recently
- D The one requiring the fewest assumptions Correct
Answer: D. The one requiring the fewest assumptions

Why: William of Ockham was a fourteenth-century English friar. The principle is a rule for choosing between competing theories, not evidence that the simpler one is true.
10Robert Nozick's experience machine asks whether you would accept what?
- A Immortality without the ability to sleep
- B Wealth in exchange for anonymity
- C A lifetime of pleasant simulated experience instead of real life Correct
- D Perfect knowledge at the cost of your memories
Answer: C. A lifetime of pleasant simulated experience instead of real life

Why: He observed that most people refuse, and took that as evidence against pleasure being the only thing that matters. The case is now standard in arguments about hedonism.

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Thought Experiments and What They Show

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Thought Experiments and What They Show: all 10 questions and answers

1The trolley problem asks whether a person should do what?

2The Ship of Theseus asks whether an object stays the same after what?

3In Plato's allegory of the cave, what do the prisoners actually see?

4John Rawls' veil of ignorance asks you to choose a society's rules without knowing what?

5John Searle's Chinese room argument is aimed against which claim?

6Descartes imagines an all-powerful deceiving demon in order to test what?

7Schrodinger described a cat in a sealed box in order to argue what?

8Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence asks how you would react to being told what?

9Occam's razor advises choosing which explanation?

10Robert Nozick's experience machine asks whether you would accept what?

Frequently asked questions about Thought Experiments and What They Show

How many questions are in Thought Experiments and What They Show?

How is Thought Experiments and What They Show scored?

Are the answers to Thought Experiments and What They Show explained?

Can I replay Thought Experiments and What They Show?

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