Philosophy through fiction : the clouds

Abstract

While teaching and communicating philosophical ideas is often limited to traditional forms such as texts and presentations, one local researcher looks to explore philosophical concepts through non-classical media forms: interactions and fictions. We talk to Prof. Stefano Gualeni (from the Institute of Digital Games) about his latest work. You might remember some of his ‘playable philosophy works’ presented here in THINK magazine, such as Something Something Soup Something (on analytical categories) or "HERE" (on the notion of indexicality). According to Gualeni, author of the recent book The Clouds: An Experiment in Theory-Fiction, fiction has always been a useful tool for philosophy. ‘Think of the Platonic dialogues,’ he says, ‘or the widespread use of thought experiments to guide reflection, discovery, and insight: those are fictions. [excerpt]