Search results for ""Author Thomas Cathcart""

A trolley is careering out of control. Up ahead are five workers; on a spur to the right stands a lone individual. You, a bystander, happen to be standing next to a switch that could divert the trolley, which would save the five, but sacrifice the one—do you pull it? Or say you’re watching from an overpass. The only way to save the workers is to drop a heavy object in the trolley’s path. And you’re standing next to a really fat man….This ethical conundrum—based on British philosopher Philippa Foot’s 1967 thought experiment—has inspired decades of lively argument around the world. Now Thomas Cathcart, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, brings his sharp intelligence, quirky humor, and gift for popularizing serious ideas to “the trolley problem.” Framing the issue as a possible crime that is to be tried in the Court of Public Opinion, Cathcart explores philosophy and ethics, intuition and logic. Along the way he makes connections to the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, Kant’s limits of reason, St. Thomas Aquinas’s fascinating Principle of Double Effect, and more.Read with an open mind, this provocative book will challenge your deepest held notions of right and wrong. Would you divert the trolley? Kill one to save five? Would you throw the fat man off the bridge?

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In this joyous introduction to the major debates in Western philosophy, we see how cartoons can shed light and humour on life’s Big Questions. Topics such as gender, morality and the meaning of life are examined here with a razor wit and eye. Open this book (if it actually exists) and meet philosophers interrogating the world: De Beauvoir on a building site. Kant in a snowglobe. Machiavelli on a tennis court. This is philosophy as you’ve never seen it before.

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Here’s an accusation – Sherlock Holmes never deduced anything. When it comes to language, it all depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is. And one for the existentialists – you haven’t lived until you think about death all the time. Daniel Klein and Thomas Cathcart take philosophy to task with flair and gusto in this wise and hilarious treasure of a book. Lively, original, and powerfully informative, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar... is an irreverent crash course through the great thinkers and traditions. It’s philosophy for everyone, from the curious layperson to the professor who’s seen it all. Klein and Cathcart have the knack of getting to the core of an issue in a crystal clear line, meaning there’s more room for jokes – good jokes, clever jokes, jokes that’ll have you laughing so hard the people nearby will shoot you strange looks. It’s the philosophy class you wish you’d had and finally, it all makes sense!

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