The flying teapot and my opinion

One time at school, we talked about thought experiments in my philosophy class. It was a very interesting topic and there are hundreds of different thought experiments to talk about.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, thedecisionlab.com defines thought experiments as “the mental process of using hypotheticals to logically reason out a solution to a difficult question”.
So, we use our imagination to perform an experiment, to help us answer a philosophical question or emphasise a point in that matter.

Today I would like to talk about two thought experiments and my personal conclusions.

The American philosopher Robert Nozick designed the “happiness machine” thought experiment.
We imagine that a machine exists that could show us a hallucination in which all of our dreams would come true if we connect ourselves to it.
Nothing would be real, but we could do and get whatever we want.

Would I connect myself to such a machine? And if yes, for how long?

The apparent fulfilment of all of my dreams seems tempting at first, but the more I think about it, the more I realise that I’m completely against such a connection.

For example, what value would the acceptance at my dream university have for me, if everything were not real and not hard-earned by myself? The harder and longer you work for your dreams, the greater and more intense the joy of fulfilling them is.

Let’s dive deeper into my university example.
I would love to be accepted for medical studies at the university of Münster.
If I command the machine to show me the fulfilment of this dream, I certainly wouldn’t be as happy and proud of myself as I would be, if I really were accepted there after thirteen long years of dedication and studying.
The achievement of this aim would be a product of the machine and not my own.

In addition to that, life isn’t only about those great feelings of happiness. The path to them can be full of new insights, friends, smaller successes, etc. that inspire us in life and make it worth living in the first place. This also includes the “downs” of life, because they make us appreciate the “ups”.

Furthermore, there are no surprises and secrets in this hallucination, which would make everything pretty boring, wouldn’t it?
What is going to happen tomorrow? What does life have in store for me next? We can’t predict that in reality, and fate constantly gives us new opportunities to change our future, which in turn shapes our dreams and hopes.

So, if one connected to such a machine, everything would be predetermined by oneself; until all one’s dreams were finally over and weren’t even true to begin with.

The second thought experiment is called “the teapot”, which was constructed by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Imagine that your neighbour believes that there’s a flying teapot in our solar system. It rounds the sun and is very small. He calls himself a “teaist” and as long as no one can convince him of the non-existence of the teapot, he thinks he has every right to believe in it.

Now we have three options; which one would be the most reasonable?

First one: You could agree with your neighbour and say that there’s a flying teapot in space.
Second one: You say, that you don’t know if the teapot exists because there hasn’t been evidence for or against it’s existence.
Third option: You disagree with your neighbour; there is no flying teapot in our solar system.

Bertrand Russell used this experiment to emphasise that the non-refutability of such outlandish theories (under which he also considered the question of the existence of God) isn’t a good enough reason to believe in them.
He wanted to turn agnostics into atheists.
On top of that, Russells demands that the burden of proof lies with the advocates of a controversial theory and not with the contradictors.

Personally, I agree with the philosopher and option number three. Physically alone, a flying teapot can’t make sense. Why should it be that exact teapot that’s flying in space? How did it originally even get into our solar system? Why a teapot and not a table or something else?
So many unanswered questions, as well as no proof of a flying teapot in space. Where does such a faith come from, if there has never been evidence?

If option two were true, one could also say that humankind never knew anything, because it could always be, that our knowledge today, our facts, are wrong or proven wrong in the future. One could never claim to know something; that in turn, opens the door for conspiracy theories and other absurdities. For example, we could never say for certain, that the earth is round.
If option two were true, then why do we research, learn and teach someone anything at all, if nothing ever is definite and 100% true?

That’s why I think that as long as there isn’t concrete evidence for a theory ,in this case a flying teapot or a flat earth, we can rightly and confidently say that it doesn’t exist.

I hope you were able to participate in those thought experiments yourselves; if you want more of them, there are plenty of different ones online, 🙂 feel free to leave a comment!