Monday, 25 July 2016

Pokémon Go: Philosophy Examination

Philosophy Examination

Subject: Pokémon Go

Answer as many questions as take your fancy

Time allowed: for as long as you have nothing better to do

Note: this examination is based on a simplified version of Pokémon Go, which is not identical to the actual game. The broad idea of capturing different monsters which appear on the screen of a mobile phone when one is in the right area is carried over from the actual game. Other features which are to be assumed are indicated by the questions. Candidates may assume such other features as are reasonable given what the questions ask, so long as no assumptions which would make the questions trivial to answer are made.

1. Assume that when several people are at the same location, surrounding a table, they can all see a monster in the middle of that table, and they see it in ways that reflect their relative positions. (For example, if someone facing south sees the monster face-on, someone facing west sees its right hand side.) And when a viewer moves round the table, his or her view of the monster changes accordingly.

(a) Under what additional conditions, if any, would this be evidence that the monster was real?

(b) What kind of evidence, if any, would help to settle the question of whether the viewers saw one monster or numerically distinct but qualitatively identical monsters?

(c) How would your answer to (b) be affected by whether the monster disappeared from all screens when it was captured by one of the viewers?

2. Assume that a monster is at an absolutely fixed position relative to the Earth's surface. Does it exist when no-one is looking at it?

3. What conditions, if any, of numerical identity over time could be applied to monsters?

4. New monsters are supposed to come out of eggs which have been fertilized and laid following an encounter between two monsters, and the species of a new monster is systematically related to the mother's ancestry. (It seems that these facts are known from other Pokémon games, rather than from Go.) But it appears that no-one has seen a monster lay an egg, and the eggs are simply found.

(a) Is inference to the breeding-and-laying account an example of inference to the best explanation?

(b) Is it a respectable inference (of whatever type it may be)?

5. Monsters are apparently distributed in a way that is positively correlated with human population density. Such a distribution would give people in rural areas very limited access to monsters, unless they travelled to urban areas.

(a) Assuming that there is a cost to the creation and maintenance of monsters, which is a cost per monster unrelated to the location of the monster or the number of other monsters near it, would such a distribution policy accord with utilitarian principles?

(b) If you were behind Rawls's veil of ignorance, would you approve of such a distribution policy?

6. Some of these questions come out of a conversation between the examiner and a (human) interlocutor who is happy to remain anonymous. Other people may have already had and published the same or similar thoughts.

(a) If thoughts which are qualitatively identical to those set out in the questions here have already been captured by others, do they count as captured by the examiner and the interlocutor, and do they get points for capturing them?

(b) Is there any identity other than qualitative identity for (i) thoughts (ii) Pokémon monsters?