by Matthew Sitman
Charlie Jane Anders argues that "science fiction doesn't just illuminate philosophy — in fact, the genre grew out of philosophy, and the earliest works of science fiction were philosophical texts." She describes the nature of the genre this way:
Science fiction is a genre that uses strange worlds and inventions to illuminate our reality — sort of the opposite of a lot of other writing, which uses the familiar to build a portrait that cumulatively shows how insane our world actually is. People, especially early twenty-first century people, live in a world where strangeness lurks just beyond our frame of vision — but we can't see it by looking straight at it. When we try to turn and confront the weird and unthinkable that's always in the corner of our eye, it vanishes. In a sense, science fiction is like a prosthetic sense of peripheral vision.
And that, for Anders, is what philosophy at its best does, too – provide thought experiments that helps us to see our situation with fresh eyes. Unsurprisingly, it all goes back to Plato:
Plato is probably the best-known user of allegories — a form of writing which has a lot in common with science fiction. A lot of allegories are really thought experiments, trying out a set of strange facts to see what principles you derive from them. As plenty of people have pointed out, Plato's Allegory of the Cave is the template for a million "what is reality" stories, from the works of Philip K. Dick to The Matrix. But you could almost see the cave allegory in itself as a proto-science fiction story, because of the strange worldbuilding that goes into these people who have never seen the "real" world. (Plato also gave us an allegory about the Ring of Gyges, which turns its wearer invisible — sound familiar?)
The Dish 