This is

This is Philosophy Bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.

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If a murderer is at your door and asks for the whereabouts of a potential victim

whom you're sheltering, are you permitted to lie to him?

You might recognize the example from Immanuel Kant.

But why does Kant use the example in the first place?

Why do any philosophers use examples rather than just deploy pure

abstract reasoning? Here's Tamar Gendler.

Tamar Gendler, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you so much.

It's a delight to be here.

The topic we're going to focus on is why philosophers use examples.

That's a really interesting question.

Why do philosophers use examples?

So one of the most striking things when you pick up one of the works in the ancient Greek

philosophical tradition take something like Plato's Republic is that on the one hand it's

full of all sorts of abstract argument and on the

other hand it's full of all sorts of vivid cases and I think Plato gives a clue to

why it is that the works, the dialogues include these two sorts of things

...