So Halloween’s coming up, and I’m mulling over what to do. Samhain’s one of my favorite holidays, and I typically insist on making a costume rather than just buying one. Last year I was Number 6 from the great mindbending BBC series The Prisoner, and the year before that, I was Batman’s nemesis The Joker.

What I’d really like to do this year is the psychotic nihilistic antihero Rorschach from Alan Moore’s seminal Watchmen, but I’m not sure how I’d manage the mask. I guess I could just paint a solid Rorschach blot on white fabric, instead of trying to emulate the ever-shifting pattern on the character’s mask, but then I’d probably need eyeholes in the thing, which would look cheesy. Maybe if I wore very dark wraparound sunglasses under it, and painted the blot over the eyes? Alternatively, I’m pondering going as the even-more-obscure Too Much Coffee Man. Other suggestions welcome via comments, but keep in mind it should be something of the make-not-buy variety.

On a semi-related note, partly inspired by Eugene Volokh’s infamous costume parties, I’ve always thought it would be fun to do a costume party where everyone comes as an image or character from philosophy, which is rife with bizarre examples and thought experiments. Below are a couple costume ideas I’ve cooked up; highlight the area after the costume description to see what it is after you’ve tried guessing.

• A dunce cap with a thin sheet of gauze hanging down over the wearer’s face. The Veil of Ignorance (Rawls). Ideally the wearer spends much of the evening curled up in a little foetal ball: “the original position.”
• Little moustache, crown, bald cap, and tricolor sash. “The present king of France is bald,” an example used by Bertrand Russell from the philosophy of language.
• A bicycle pump mounted on the shoulder, with the nozzle sticking into the wearer’s ear. An intuition pump.
• Loincloth, war paint, and a crown. The noble savage.
• An all-green outfit with a large stopwatch hanging around the neck counting down. Grue.
• Big cubical mask, wearer carrying an enormous piece of paper with a complex game-theory decision tree on it. Ned Block’s Blockhead
• Hard shelledâ??insect costume, with a cardboard box worn about the waist. Wittgenstein’s “beetle in a box.”

Other philosophy costume suggestions are also welcome.