I'm looking for a book about philosophy and I can't find it by searching

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/42740833

I remember reading a book about philosophy a few years ago, but I don't remember what it's called, despite remembering several things about it. However searching the web or asking LLMs with what I remember has proved to not find it.

Can any of you help?

What I remember

  • It's ordered into chapters by topic
  • It's lighthearted in tone, despite being mostly nonfiction, reminiscent of the style of What If or We Have No Idea
  • They like telling stories to illustrate their points
  • One topic was about identity and there was a story about two people's brains getting swapped
  • There was a mention of the simulation hypothesis with aliens that put a boy inside a video game for his birthday gift because they saw he liked the game - brain in a vat
  • Various time travel paradoxes and how they could be solved - diverging universes, multiple universes, closed timelike curves
  • The cover was fun and bold, and it mentioned on it things that it contained inside
  • One chapter was about the ethics of eating animals and there was a story about giants eating people (because people eat animals)
  • There was a chapter about God
  • I didn't finish it, I want to read the rest of it

Please help me find it

10 points · 5 comments · view on lemmy.world

5 Comments

sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y (2 replies)

Do you remember the colour of the cover at all? I did an image search for fun philosophy book, and found a load of brightly coloured possiblities, but if we could narrow it down that might help us find it :-)

TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Not properly, it might have had a dark background and multiple colors, but I don't remember correctly. I do remember it listed all the topics it had inside on the cover.

sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y

Fair enough. Sounds like a tricky search - good luck though :-)

pairwise@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 360d (1 reply)

"Does Santa Exist?: A Philosophical Investigation" by Eric Kaplan.

https://archive.org/details/doessantaexistph0000kapl

The cover isn't vibrant but it has brain swaps, giants, and is the described format.

TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 360d

Thanks for sharing! I'm not sure it's the one (I don't think it has the thing about time travel), but I appreciate the suggestion.