From Chapter 1, "Existence":
Consider a quantum mechanical game of baseball. The pitcher winds up and tosses a slow and straight pitch directly down the middle. The batter takes a perfect swing, and the bat lines up squarely into position to hit the ball at the perfect time. We pause the universe for a moment here to inspect the situation. We carefully inspect the location of the bat and ball, and note that they're just now coming into contact with one another. We can assure ourselves that if not a home run this will at least be a hard line drive. Now we resume the universe, and to our amazement the ball goes directly through the bat and on into the catcher's mitt. The disgusted batter turns around and tells the umpire that this was impossible. Always prepared, the umpire pulls out his rule book and reads from it: "Rule 3.2.7: Quantum Tunneling. If a material object shall hit another material object, it is entirely possible -- although highly improbable -- for them to pass through each other with no effects." Another side effect of this rule is that the ball could have gone on through the catcher and umpire without harming them at all. A bullet could be fired directly through a person's head and come out on the other side without leaving a scratch, although we'd need to either repeat the experiment for trillions of years or encounter exceptional luck.

The umpire's rule is somewhat deceptive in that it maintains the fictitious distinction between material objects and probability fields. Material objects are no longer anything more than interacting probability fields, under this quantum mechanical interpretation. Everything which is material consists of a probability of encountering it within a region.

From Chapter 2, "Dualism"
There's a popular type of puzzle called a cryptogram, in which each letter which occurs in a sentence is replaced with a different letter consistently across the sentence. The reader's task is to deduce the translation scheme and replace each letter of the encrypted version with the proper letter it corresponds to in English. In the cryptogram all the symbols are changed, but their relationships to each other remain and so the essential meaning is intact after translation. This serves to illustrate that only the relationships carry informational content, rather than the symbols themselves. In perceptual translation, the external world is translated into experience. The nature of what phenomenological symbol set is chosen -- be it audio, video, tactile, or some type known only to a few animals which humans do not possess -- is irrelevant to conveying the information. The information lies in the relationships, not in the symbols themselves.

From Chapter 3, "Space-Time"
Suppose a person has such an ego that she cannot conceive of 'left' except as it is for her. For an object to be 'to the left' has to mean it's on her left, and people who disagree about what's to the left are simply confused and should be ignored. For this person, as she slowly turns around, objects in the world flow from right to left. Suppose that she were born incapacitated on a slowly rotating platform, lived her whole life there, and died before it completed a full revolution. It would appear to her that objects have a natural flow: objects always go from the right to the left at a steady pace. For this person, right and left appear much like our earlier and later. The idea that right and left could be arbitrarily defined and could lack objective distinction would seem absurd to her -- obviously right has an entirely different sort of nature from left. If someone claims that a particular object is to the right which this person sees as being to the left, it would not only seem blatantly false but illogical -- yet for us, it would seem perfectly reasonable. As well, right and left are of a nature so entirely different to this person from up and down that she will protest endlessly against any attempt to claim that they are the same type of dimensions... calling them both spatial dimensions seems absurd to her since their natures are so different.

From Chapter 4, "Self"
Each time we try to describe the self as appreciating the existence of a self, the subject-object distinction of our language necessarily pushes the subject back another step. It's impossible to speak of an object without automatically necessitating that another entity exist to be the subject. To speak of observing the self, we treat the self as an object and so invent another subject to observe it. When our goal is to observe the ultimate subject of all our experiences (the observer of all we observe) this regress is a distressing situation. The ultimate observing subject becomes a place holder to represent the infinite regress which we embark on... it becomes a limit to approach rather than a destination to be reached. The process of the self appreciating itself is an empirical process, which leads us to the limitations of the empirical perspective. To understand the metaphysical self we must step back from empirical processes in which one self describes another self, and make note of the category containing all such introspective self-descriptions. The infinite regress of description serves to us as an illustration that the metaphysical self which we attempt to approach through it is beyond description.

From Chapter 5, "Objectivity"
On the eighth day of creation, God indulged himself in a philosophical joke. He created two alien species with entirely different sensory organs and arranged for them to meet each other on a neutral planet. The blarghs have the senses of smell and sound and touch, while the uglus have the senses of sight and taste.

In the first meeting between the species, a blargh steps forward to greet a pair of uglu. "Greetings," it says. "We come in peace."

The uglu exchange a glance of confusion with each other. "The alien makes no gestures which would seem to indicate that it has any language," one of the uglu comments in the standard uglu sign language. "Yet its mouth twitches so frantically from time to time. It must be very hungry." The uglu grabs a tasty treat from its supplies and hands it to the blargh, who holds it under its nose and sniffs the fragerence of it.

"What a strange species," notes the uglu. "They wave the tasty treat in front of a lump above their mouth, and seem to have no interest in tasting it. Perhaps this is some sort of ritual of their culture which is required before eating, but it seems to do nothing."

On the other side, the blargh are equally perplexed. "It's odd," a blargh comments, "that they say nothing at all. It seems they have no language... or perhaps the only way they can communicate is by exchanging lumps of smelly substances? Was this smell a message from them?"

An uglu hands a book to the blargh, with the hope that this will determine for certain if it has a concept of language. The style of printing happens to leave slight bumps in the page where the letters are, although the uglu being devoid of tactile sensations are unaware of this. "They seem to be interested in the book," the encouraged uglu notes, "and yet they can't even figure out that they need to look at it. What this running of the fingers along it does for them is a very strange mystery indeed... surely they cannot even know that their fingers are in contact with the book, when they're looking the other way. Perhaps it's merely an instinctual reaction they can't control?"

By feeling the shapes of the bumps and noting the repeats, the blargh recognizes that there is a pattern of symbols in the book. "These are intelligent creatures," it observes, "who seem to use patterns of almost imperceptable bumps on paper to communicate. They must have a very highly developed, incredibly sensitive sense of touch in order to sense these bumps so easily."

From Chapter 6, "Mind-Brain":
Consider pain as an example of a folk psychology word, which can be considered as qualia. We have an experience, an experience which falls within a range of experiences the approximate boundaries of which we're all familiar with even if we may haggle over which exact spot to differentiate an itch or a twinge from a pain. When we introspect on the experience, it shows itself to be a process... our memory tells us the origin and how that origin has progressed to the current state. When we then seek to communicate the pain, we have two options. First, we may choose to communicate it by trying to evoke an understanding (and thus sympathy or reaction in aid) in others by using physical reactions, screams, grunts, or just the word 'pain' itself. Secondly, we may choose to become analytical and generate a relative description of the pain as measured by the reactions of a machine of some sort to the relations in the mind which the pain consists of. In the first case we treat pain as qualia, whereas in the second case we may find ourselves discussing the firing of c-fibers. Both approaches are useful depending on the situation. The second approach can lead to a much better understanding of how pain relates to other things in the world, since it's more analytical.

From Chapter 7, "Relations":
The prosecutor turns to the judge, shrugs his shoulders, and points a finger at the defense. "He says 'The sun is in the sky' is true and 'The sun is in the sky' is false, at the same time. He has the same proposition being both true and false. How much more obvious a contradiction can we need?"

"But as I've been saying, a single sentence does not in any way imply a single proposition," the defense counters. "It could be any number of propositions depending on the assumptions in the mind of the listener and the intent in the mind of the speaker. All we can express are sentences, utterances which gain their meaning by their context in a coherent language scheme rather than by any God-given power or Plato-given power. The proposition is simply a place holder for what you have after the context is inserted... the proposition represents the relation which relativism gives us. Thus we deny the whole scenario from which the supposed contraction has been concocted. My colleague has presumed an absolutist position in order to come to the conclusion that relativism doesn't work. My esteemed colleague is engaged in a colossal begging of the question."

"Your honor, I object!"

"Sustained," agrees the judge. "Strike that last sentence from the record. The defense attorney will please refrain from any further venomous accusations of philosophical laziness or illegality towards the prosecutor."

From Chapter 8, "Truth":
Flying in a circle above the town just below the clouds, we observe the first rain drops falling. Whipping out the cell phone, we call a citizen on the ground directly below us. We inform them that the rain drops are falling towards them, and make the assertion that it is true that it will rain today. Most people will at this point concede it as a truth. Some, however, might protest that the rain may evaporate before it reaches the ground. To convince these skeptics we may wait until the drops of rain are only inches above their head, and ask again. If they refuse to be satisfied by even this level of justification, there's likely something wrong with the person. If we wait until they're soaking wet and five inches of rain have flooded the street they stand on, perhaps they will still refuse to admit the truth 'It rained today' and will protest that they aren't certain if this is really water or perhaps a giant load of some other clear liquid spilled out of a plane flying above. Perhaps they believe themselves to be hallucinating, and will not even be convinced by a chemical analysis of the water. With this person, we must simply ignore them -- they've never found an instance where the justification did not cohere with experience and yet their paranoia is such that if they can imagine such a possible instance they will not call the assertion true. If we encounter such a person, we can only hand them a card with the numbers for a local mental health institution and philosophical association.

From Chapter 9, "Foundationalism":
On Halloween night, the foundationalists like everyone else have a bowl of candy for the kids. Each piece of candy is labeled 'proposition,' and we know that kids are natural skeptics... to any answer a kid may ask another question. Consider the process of taking candy out the bowl to be the process of doubting a proposition. The first trick-or-treater of the evening rings the door of the foundationalist home. The foundationalist holds out the bowl and instructs the child: "Take whatever you can get, just be careful about the foundational piece since you won't be able to eat it." The child takes three quarters of the bowl before her parent drags her off. The foundationalist waves and smiles, happy that the process of doubt is going well. The next child comes along, and is given the same instructions. His parent, however, tells him he can only take one piece. The child takes one piece, and by misfortune this is the foundational piece. This piece, though it looks like most others, contains the sharp razor of indubitibility hidden within it which will kill the child when he tries to eat it.

The next house over is home to a coherentist family. Here the coherentist tells the kids to take two pieces each, but no more, and does not complain about which particular pieces are taken. The coherentist further advises that it's best to take the pieces that look the most appealing to eat according to the particular child's taste -- or in other words, doubt the most dubitable propositions and the ones which the person doing the doubting is best qualified to understand and repair or replace.

From Chapter 10, "Skepticism":
"Welcome back, Igor." The scientist pauses absentmindedly, then continues. "You have the test subject bound and gagged in the next room?"

"Yes master," Igor grunts in reply.

"Good, very good. I've just put the final touches into the experience simulation program, and tested the chemical injectors. You can recheck the nutrient tubes while I extract the brain."

The mad scientist walks out of the room and into the adjacent one to meet his latest test subject. A few minutes and much blood and gore later, he walks back in carrying a human brain. He hands it to Igor. "Wash this off," he suggests, "and then put it in the vat."

From Chapter 11, "Epistemology":
In a distant solar system, there is a planet which is entirely ocean. On this planet, grotesque alien creatures use stolen DNA to create clones of Earth philosophers for study. The aliens hope to learn something about the capabilities of the human race by observing the thought processes of these philosophers.

The sea is rough, and the travelers on the small raft are weary. After a daring escape from the prison-like laboratory the aliens had them entrapped in, this group is adrift with only the most essential supplies: a desalinization kit for water and a solar powered alien-technology oven which allows them to cook fish.

Sitting in one corner of the raft, carefully winding up his watch and snapping it three times against his wrist as he does at this time every day, is Immanuel Kant. Next to him is Otto Neurath, who's browsing through a scientific journal he stole during the escape. Across from these two are Rene Descartes, who seems to be quietly pondering something or other in his mind, and Plato, who sits suspiciously eyeing his own shadow.

Neurath puts down the scientific journal for a moment and inspects the raft. "I hate to say it," he says in no particular direction, "but our raft is old and rotting. If it isn't fixed, it won't stay afloat long."