Dennis Knepp

Star Wars action figures can help illuminate some theories about the science of the mind and how religious thinking originated. Playing with action figures illustrates how a science of the mind is possible and what can go wrong in the religious mind. In the twentieth century, philosophers began to think of new ways to study the mind. The key is to switch from a first‐person view to a third‐person perspective. Playing with Star Wars action figures illustrates Daniel Dennett's theory of how a science of the mind is possible. To illustrate, this chapter presents a vintage Blue Snaggletooth action figure that sells for hundreds of dollars on eBay. The chapter highlights that understanding what happens when we play with action figures can reveal how a science of mind is possible and illuminate a theory of the origins of the religious mind.

A central question in the history of American philosophy is that of the origin of the pragmatist movement, a school of thought that emphasized the importance of testing our ideas in practice. Scott Pratt identifies four Native American philosophical principles that he believes influenced Peirce's theory of pragmatism: interaction, pluralism, community, and growth. These principles belong to what he calls “the indigenous attitude” – represented in Avatar by the Na'vi – in contrast to “the colonial attitude” embraced by the Resources Development Administration (RDA) corporation and its employees. Someone with a colonial attitude regards himself as an autonomous self who can know the one true world in the one right way. Parker Selfridge, the corporate administrator for the RDA, is an excellent example of this colonial attitude. To better understand the object of Selfridge's scorn, this chapter looks closer at these four principles of interaction, pluralism, community, and growth.

Aphrodite, Athena, Mercury, and Hercules are all interesting characters from Greek Mythology, and William Moulton Marston makes it clear that their powers now "fight for America" in World War II. Wonder Woman's "Merciful Minerva!" uses the Roman name for Athena, and it is clear that her physical power and skill with weaponry is based on the ancient goddess. Wonder Woman's origin story uses the ancient Greek in exactly the same way the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel does in his Philosophy of History. Hegel outlined his theory of history as a threefold progression. In the first stage, only the despot was free; in the second stage, the Greeks discovered that some are free; and in the third stage, the stage of the modern world, we know that all are free. The Wonder Woman origin story goes through the same three major stages, and uses the Greeks in that crucial second stage.

If Plato were here today, he would argue that our knowledge of Superman is based on the unchanging and eternal Superman found in the world of being. Philosophers struggled with Plato’s theory of essences for over 2000 years. No one really challenged the idea itself until Ludwig Wittgenstein changed the rules of the game in his enormously influential Philosophical Investigations, published after his death in 1953. Wittgenstein suggests that at least sometimes it does not make sense to look for a thing’s essence. The different versions of Superman share a family resemblance much like games do. Rather than trying to identify the one true essence of Superman, one can simply say that a candidate for being Superman must have enough of the typical Superman characteristics, though not necessarily all of them or any one in particular.