Using Experimental Philosophy to Shift Perspective, with Jonathon Keats | Big Think Mentor

If you think that choreographing a ballet for honeybees and attempting to genetically engineer God are absurd projects, the conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats would agree with you. And yet, that does not mean that these thought experiments are without value.

"When one is pursuing experimental philosophy," Keats says in his new workshop on Big Think Mentor (http://goo.gl/vlWFLq), a way of thinking occurs that is vital to creative problem-solving. While the problem at hand may be abstract, or even absurd, the way of thinking through the problem can be greatly applicable in life.

And so in pursuit of experimental philosophy Keats explores five different rules that he uses and which he says you too can apply in your everyday life in terms of creatively solving problems.

The five that we will explore in this Mentor Workshop are:

-How to ask naïve questions

-How to invert perceptions

-How to combine incompatible systems

-How to remix metaphors

-How to pursue paradox

As Keats explains, these rules are all meant to be subverted. "As you'll see I'm always looking to subvert absolutely everything in our world," he says. "And I think that any experimental philosophy starts with that sort of subversive mindset."