A thought experiment in the broadest sense is the use of a hypothetical scenario to help us know the way things actually are. There are many different kinds of thought experiments. All thought experiments, however, employ a methodology that is a priori, rather than experimental, in that they do not proceed by observation or physical experiment. Thought experiments have been used in a diversity of fields, including philosophy, law, physics, and mathematics. In philosophy, they have been used at least since classical antiquity, some pre-dating Socrates. In law, they were famous to Roman lawyers quoted in the Digest. In physics and other sciences, distinguished thought experiments date from the 19th and particularly the 20th century, but examples can be found at least as early as Galileo.
In philosophy, a thought experiment naturally presents an imagined scenario with the purpose of eliciting an instinctive response about the way things are in the thought experiment. The scenario will naturally be designed to target a particular philosophical view, such as ethics, or the nature of the mind or linguistic reference. The intuitive response to the imagined scenario is supposed to tell us about the nature of that idea in any scenario, real or imagined. For example, a thought experiment might present a condition in which an agent deliberately kills an innocent for the benefit of others. Here, the relevant question is whether the action is moral or not, but more broadly whether a moral theory is correct that says morality is resolute solely by an action’s. John Searle imagines a man in a locked room who receives written sentences in Chinese, and returns written sentences in Chinese, according to a complicated instruction manual. Here, the relevant question is whether or not the man understands Chinese, but more broadly, whether a functionalist theory of mind is correct.
It is usually hoped that there is universal agreement about the intuitions that a thought experiment elicits. A successful thought experiment will be one in which intuitions about it are extensively shared. But often, philosophers are different in their intuitions about the scenario. Other philosophical uses of imagined scenarios questionably are thought experiments also. In one use of scenarios, philosophers might imagine persons in a particular situation, and ask what they would do. For example, John Rawls asks us to imagine a group of persons in a situation where they know nothing about themselves, and are charged with devising a social or political organization. The use of the state of nature to imagine the origins of government, as by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, may also be measured a thought experiment. Similarly, Nietzsche, in On the Genealogy of Morals, speculated about the historical development of Judeo-Christian morality, with the intent of questioning its legitimacy. One of the earliest known thought experiments was Avicenna's "Floating Man" thought experiment in the 11th century. He asked his readers to imagine themselves balanced in the air isolated from all sensations in order to demonstrate human self-awareness and self-consciousness, and the substantiality of the soul.
In philosophy, a thought experiment naturally presents an imagined scenario with the purpose of eliciting an instinctive response about the way things are in the thought experiment. The scenario will naturally be designed to target a particular philosophical view, such as ethics, or the nature of the mind or linguistic reference. The intuitive response to the imagined scenario is supposed to tell us about the nature of that idea in any scenario, real or imagined. For example, a thought experiment might present a condition in which an agent deliberately kills an innocent for the benefit of others. Here, the relevant question is whether the action is moral or not, but more broadly whether a moral theory is correct that says morality is resolute solely by an action’s. John Searle imagines a man in a locked room who receives written sentences in Chinese, and returns written sentences in Chinese, according to a complicated instruction manual. Here, the relevant question is whether or not the man understands Chinese, but more broadly, whether a functionalist theory of mind is correct.
It is usually hoped that there is universal agreement about the intuitions that a thought experiment elicits. A successful thought experiment will be one in which intuitions about it are extensively shared. But often, philosophers are different in their intuitions about the scenario. Other philosophical uses of imagined scenarios questionably are thought experiments also. In one use of scenarios, philosophers might imagine persons in a particular situation, and ask what they would do. For example, John Rawls asks us to imagine a group of persons in a situation where they know nothing about themselves, and are charged with devising a social or political organization. The use of the state of nature to imagine the origins of government, as by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, may also be measured a thought experiment. Similarly, Nietzsche, in On the Genealogy of Morals, speculated about the historical development of Judeo-Christian morality, with the intent of questioning its legitimacy. One of the earliest known thought experiments was Avicenna's "Floating Man" thought experiment in the 11th century. He asked his readers to imagine themselves balanced in the air isolated from all sensations in order to demonstrate human self-awareness and self-consciousness, and the substantiality of the soul.
1 comment:
Thought experiments do not proceed through a priori reasoning. John Norton had given a detailed account of this
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