A philospher walked into a bar

| Wednesday, December 21, 2011
And said "Which sort of bar are you refering to? The ambiguity makes it impossible to offer anything close to an accurate prediction, particularly given the impossibility of prediction unless we assume cause and effect, but maybe that's just me assuming the assuming cause and effect allows us to make predictions and oh god I've gone cross-eyed."

The theist and atheist look at him, puzzled. Then they went back to shouting.

"How can you possibly have anything to look forward to without knowing the wonderful things behind this door? The room is filled with possibilities!"

"So is the rest of the house. It's filled with the possibility of all the stuff I bought when I moved in. What's the big deal about this one room?"

"You inherited this house from your grandfather and clearly this room was important. Thing of all he means to you, all you owe to him, and you cannot even accept that he gave you this wonderful room?"

"He gave me a house, that's pretty wonderful enough."

"Aha, so you acknowledge the existence of your grandfather!"

"Uh, yes."

At this point the philosopher chimes in.

"We cannot actually prove his existence, as he is no longer capable of direct interaction with this world, existing only as a memory, a memory which could be false, making any actions based on it illogical."

"What the fuck?"

"In fact, I'm not sure either of you exist."

By now the scientist has returned and overheard much of the conversation. He pondered the mysteries of the universe, such as why he only brought two bullets.

A voice drifts in...

"Hi! I'm a psychologist and I can explain to you why people often fail to anticipate future problems. Furthermore, you are referred to as a generic scientist, which given that psychology is a science, means that I should be redundant. However I understand why this oversight occurred and have developed a series of exercises we can use to work on this social issue..."

*bang*

*bang*

The scientist was found innocent of killing the philosopher because we cannot prove that the philosopher ever existed and he'd have wanted it that way.

1 comments:

Syl said...

Somewhat related, I assume you are familiar with "why did the chicken cross the road?"

http://philosophy.eserver.org/chicken.txt

I always loved it (Hemingway's "answer" cracks me up every time)! =D

Post a Comment

Comments in posts older than 21 days will be moderated to prevent spam. Comments in posts younger than 21 days will be checked for ID.

Powered by Blogger.