A Little History of Philosophy (Little Histories)

by Nigel Warburton

The basic weakness of Pyrrho's approach is that he moved from ‘You can't know anything’ to the conclusion ‘Therefore you should ignore your instincts and feelings about what is dangerous’

Cicero seemed to pack more than most into a day: he was a lawyer and politician as well as a philosopher. In his book On Old Age he identified four main problems with growing older: it gets harder to work, the body becomes weaker, joy in physical pleasures goes, and death is close.

The Manichaeans believed that God wasn't supremely powerful. Instead there was a never-ending struggle going on between equal forces of good and evil. So on this view, God and Satan were locked in an ongoing battle for control.

This is a version of a thought experiment originally created by the British philosopher Philippa Foot (1920–2010).

Creator of the trolley problem

Philosophers are still arguing about the train example and how it should be solved. They're also arguing about another thought experiment that Judith Jarvis Thomson (born 1929) came up with. This one was to show that a woman who had used contraception but who had still become pregnant did not have a moral duty to go through with having the baby. She could have an abortion without doing something morally wrong. To have the baby in such circumstances would be an act of charity, but not a duty. Traditionally, debates about the morality of abortion had focused on the foetus' point of view. Her argument was important in that it gave a lot of weight to the woman's perspective. Here's the example. There is a famous violinist who has a kidney problem. His only chance of survival is to be plugged into a person who shares his very rare blood group. You have that same blood group. One morning you wake up to find that while you were asleep doctors have attached him to your kidneys. Thomson argues that in such a situation you don't have a duty to keep him plugged into you, even though you know that he will die if you pull the tubes out. In the same way, she suggests, if a woman is pregnant even though she used contraception, the developing foetus inside her does not have an automatic right to the use of her body. The foetus is like the violinist.