Thought Experiments, “Reverse-Racism,” and Comedy

In the following clip from comedian Aamer Rahman, the concept of “reverse racism” is considered. Is it a meaningless rhetorical construction, or does it represent some aspect of social reality? Rahman imagines he could be a reverse racist, if only he had a time machine and reversed the entire course of history. Here we have an introduction to the thought experiment, a central tool of philosophy, and a difficult social issue, presented through a humorous performance.

Time machines are a common prop in science fiction and philosophical thought experiments, and as it turns out, a lot of comedy (there is even a movie called “Hot Tub Time Machine”). This brief bit from Rahman can be used to introduce thought experiments, Gedankenexperiment or Gedankenspiel, from the German philosopher of science Ernst Mach. “Thought play” is one translation, which is a wonderful notion easily applicable to both an ideal philosophical attitude and a humorous attitude, each of which are open to novelty, ambiguity, confusion, doubt, error, and importantly, shifting perspectives. While the situations and concepts analyzed in this short story are quite serious, such as racism (or its reverse, if that is even a thing!), humorists allow students to play with ideas in a non-threatening environment, cultivating an interest in the topic and an inclination to perceive an aspect of the world from a unique, and at times, contrary perspective from their own point of view. This is serious play.

Students are asked whether such playfulness of thought can be applied to serious matters and whether experimenting only in thought can be a useful tool to engage with real-world problems. At times we also introduce the runaway trolley thought experiment as enacted in the show The Good Place, where Ted Danson’s character, trying so hard to understand philosophy, informs the philosophy professor that he needs concrete examples from which to learn.

“There have to be stakes, or else it’s just another thought experiment.”

This assumption is analyzed by the class as we consider how experimenting in thought might be able to cultivate the appropriate distance, emotionally and cognitively, from the issues of moral concern. The fact that there “are no stakes,” or far fewer than in the real world, in pondering and deciding in the thought experiment while in what I call “play” mode, is one of the enormous benefits of playing with ideas in the laboratory of our imagination. This is not to say there are no limitations to thought experiment; some “intuition pumps,” as Daniel Dennett refers to them, might be too far removed from the real world lived experiences of the audience such that the distance they foster is disengaging, and we are not sufficiently concerned.

One of the hooks of the Rahmer piece that keeps students at the right distance from the subject matter is humor.

This is not trivial in the context of thought experiments, as many jokes and humorous stories can themselves be considered kinds of thought experiments.

The time machine thought experiment illustrates the power of hypotheticals to “make the unthinkable thinkable,” as Rebecca Brown puts it referring to philosophy in general but practical ethics in particular. Some ideas are not unthinkable because of our cognitive incapacity, rather they are unthinkable because we might be disinclined to think about them, or we have thought about them in some manner before, but not in the way we can see now, after having our imaginations expanded through thought experiments. These mental constructions are “devices of persuasion” that facilitate a “reconfiguration of [our] internal conceptual space,” as Tamar Gendler frames it. When they are infused with humor, or when the very jokes themselves are “compressed thought experiments,” as Tony Veale calls them, the stories can become experiments in a mental mirth lab that keep us curious and thus interested in our own ignorance.

We want to get the punchline or resolution of an incongruity fabricated in the performance even if that only gets us to a place of confusion.

At least now, what we thought was so obvious and felt so certain about, we see it is much more complex. This state of doubt, to borrow from Will Durant, is where genuine philosophy can begin, and in this case, we might come to realize that maybe “reverse racism” really isn’t a thing.

Further reading:

Dennett, Daniel. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Gendler, Tamar. “Philosophical Thought Experiments, Intuitions, and Cognitive Equilibrium.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXXI. (2007): 68-89.

Kramer, Chris A. “The Playful Thought Experiments of Louis C.K.” In Louis C.K. and Philosophy: You Don’t Get to Be Bored. Edited by Mark Ralkowski. Chicago: Open Court, (2016) pgs. 225-235.

The Teaching and Learning Video Series is designed to share pedagogical approaches to using video clips, and humorous ones in particular, for teaching philosophy. Humor, when used appropriately, has empirically been shown to correlate with higher retention rates. If you are interested in contributing to this series, please email the Series Editor, William A. B. Parkhurst, at parkhurw@gvsu.edu.

Chris Kramer

Chris Kramer is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Santa Barbara City College. He wrote his dissertation on “Subversive Humor”, half about humor, half about oppression. Readers will laugh and cry, but mostly cry, and mostly because they are reading a dissertation; what has become of their lives?