Charles II is said to have himself toyed with the philosophers, asking them to explain why a fish weighs more after it has died. Upon receiving various ingenious answers, he pointed out that in fact a dead fish does not weigh anything more.
I think Alistair might have mangled the story there. There does seem to be a Charles II/fish/weight story, but about a completely different weight—in water, not postmortem: https://gwern.net/doc/philosophy/epistemology/1948-oesper.pdf Fortunately, while the question Charles II posed in this version is considerably clunkier, the upshot remains the same, so there are much worse leprechauns...
(Although the sourcing here is still thinner than I’d like and may not be the original: no date is given, but Schönbein was born in 1799 and Charles II died in 1685, and an 1842 publication still leaves at least 157 years between the latest the story could’ve happened and this exact publication. But I’ll leave it to someone else to try to track it further back.)
Well that’s not fair, generating hypotheses that fit an observation is sometimes useful, as Harry&Draco did when finding some that fit magic getting weaker. The philosophers, when acting as oracles, should not have to entertain the possibility that the assumptions given to them are wrong.
In general, considering how many wrong assumptions there are, I think it’s good practice to check the assumptions one has been handed.
Amplifying this: I’m fairly sure that (paraphrasing) “philosophers are useful for exposing other people’s wrong assumptions” is one of the stock justifications for philosophizing!
— Robert Pasnau, “Why Not Just Weigh the Fish?”
I think Alistair might have mangled the story there. There does seem to be a Charles II/fish/weight story, but about a completely different weight—in water, not postmortem: https://gwern.net/doc/philosophy/epistemology/1948-oesper.pdf Fortunately, while the question Charles II posed in this version is considerably clunkier, the upshot remains the same, so there are much worse leprechauns...
(Although the sourcing here is still thinner than I’d like and may not be the original: no date is given, but Schönbein was born in 1799 and Charles II died in 1685, and an 1842 publication still leaves at least 157 years between the latest the story could’ve happened and this exact publication. But I’ll leave it to someone else to try to track it further back.)
Well that’s not fair, generating hypotheses that fit an observation is sometimes useful, as Harry&Draco did when finding some that fit magic getting weaker. The philosophers, when acting as oracles, should not have to entertain the possibility that the assumptions given to them are wrong.
In general, considering how many wrong assumptions there are, I think it’s good practice to check the assumptions one has been handed.
On the other hand, it’s probably not fair for kings to play that sort of game.
Amplifying this: I’m fairly sure that (paraphrasing) “philosophers are useful for exposing other people’s wrong assumptions” is one of the stock justifications for philosophizing!