The False Promise of Thought Experimentation in Moral and Political Philosophy

In Borstner Bojan Gartner Smiljana & Smiljana Borstner Bojan & Gartner (eds.), Thought Experiments between Nature and Society. A Festschrift for Nenad Miščević. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 328-348 (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Prof. Miščević has long been an ardent defender of the use of thought experiments in philosophy, foremost metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind. Recently he has, in his typically sophisticated manner, extended his general account of philosophical thought-experimenting to the domain of normative politics. Not only can the history of political philosophy be better understood and appreciated, according to Miščević, when seen as a more or less continuous, yet covert, practice of thought-experimenting, the very progress of the discipline may crucially depend on finding the right balance between the constraints of (biological, psychological, economic, political, and so on) reality and political-moral ideals when we set to design our basic political notions and institutions. I have much less confidence in this project than prof. Miščević does. As a subspecies of moral TE, political TE share all their problems plus exhibit some of their own. In the paper, I present and discuss two types of evidence that threaten to undermine political philosophers’ trust in thought-experiments and the ethical/political intuitions elicited by them: (i) the dismal past record of thought-experimentation in moral and political philosophy; and (ii) the variety, prevalence, and stubbornness, of bias in ordinary social/political judgment.

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The False Promise of Thought Experimentation in Moral and Political Philosophy.Friderik Klampfer - 2017 - In Borstner Bojan Gartner Smiljana & Smiljana Borstner Bojan & Gartner (eds.), Thought Experiments between Nature and Society. A Festschrift for Nenad Miščević. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 328-348.
Miščević.James Robert Brown - 2024 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 24 (71):147-153.
Nenad Miščević Stays True to Himself!Yiftach Fehige - 2024 - Philosophia 52 (3):605-612.
The Mystery of Intuition in Einstein’s Thought Experiments.Marko Grba - 2024 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 24 (71):173-193.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-07-19

Downloads
656 (#32,097)

6 months
118 (#53,724)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Friderik Klampfer
University of Maribor

Citations of this work

Add more citations

References found in this work

What do philosophers believe?David Bourget & David J. Chalmers - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 170 (3):465-500.
Leviathan.Thomas Hobbes - 1904 - Harmondsworth,: Penguin Books. Edited by C. B. Macpherson.
Philosophy Without Intuitions.Herman Cappelen - 2012 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Practical Ethics.Peter Singer - 1979 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Susan J. Armstrong & Richard George Botzler.
The Tragedy of the Commons.Garrett Hardin - 1968 - Science 162 (3859):1243-1248.

View all 26 references / Add more references