Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses the progress or lack thereof in analytic philosophy of film, based on David Chalmers’ thoughts about progress in philosophy. It argues that new media machines of post-cinema are able to produce thoughts that go beyond the ones identified in The Intelligence of a Machine, including four forms: animacies, capture, flows and plastic temporalities. The book focuses on the idea that films can be philosophical thought experiments and takes a look into the main objections that have been made against film as philosophy in general, and cinematic thought experiments as philosophy, especially those made by Bruce Russell and Murray Smith. It offers a new idea about exactly how films can philosophize. The book also argues that screen studies and philosophy and the intersection between them should incorporate concerns for the nonhuman natural world.