Results for 'Thought Experiments'

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  1. Thought Experiments and the Epistemology of Laws.Thought Experiments - 1992 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22:15-4.
     
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  2. Thought experiments without possible worlds.Daniel Dohrn - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (2):363-384.
    The method of thought experiments or possible cases is widespread in philosophy and elsewhere. Thought experiments come with variegated theoretical commitments. These commitments are risky. They may turn out to be false or at least controversial. Other things being equal, it seems preferable to do with minimal commitments. I explore exemplary ways of minimising commitments, focusing on modal ones. There is a near-consensus to treat the scenarios considered in thought experiments as metaphysical possibilities. I (...)
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  3. Thought-experiment intuitions and truth in fiction.Jonathan Ichikawa & Benjamin Jarvis - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 142 (2):221 - 246.
    What sorts of things are the intuitions generated via thought experiment? Timothy Williamson has responded to naturalistic skeptics by arguing that thought-experiment intuitions are judgments of ordinary counterfactuals. On this view, the intuition is naturalistically innocuous, but it has a contingent content and could be known at best a posteriori. We suggest an alternative to Williamson's account, according to which we apprehend thought-experiment intuitions through our grasp on truth in fiction. On our view, intuitions like the Gettier (...)
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  4.  55
    Thought experiments and conceptual revision.Ian Winchester - 1990 - Studies in Philosophy and Education 10 (1):73-80.
    The idea that claims about the physical world might be arrived through a priori reasoning has a long history in physics. But it is clear that empiricist notions of the nature of science, and in particular the empirical nature of physics, have held sway in this century. Yet, in the idea of thought experiments in science, we might find the survival of earlier a priori reasoning to the truth of claims about the physical world. This paper challenges the (...)
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  5.  58
    Thought Experiments in Science Studies.Petri Ylikoski - 2003 - Philosophica 72 (2):1-25.
    In this paper I examine the role of thought experiments in the social studies of science. More specifically, I will focus on two strands of social studies of science: the so-called sociology of scientific knowledge and the naturalistically oriented philosophy of science with interest in social dimensions of science. I begin by discussing David Hull's views on thought experiments in the study of science. His account serves as a foil that helps me to make some points (...)
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  6.  90
    Thought Experiments, Formalization, and Disagreement.Sören Häggqvist - 2019 - Topoi 38 (4):801-810.
    In the last decade, philosophers have offered a number of proposals concerning the logical form of hypothetical cases, or thought experiments, as these are used for purposes of testing philosophical claims. In this paper, I discuss what the desiderata for a formal proposal are. Employing a comparison with general philosophy of science, I suggest that one important desideratum is to highlight recurrent patterns of disagreement surrounding cases. I advocate a proposal in propositional modal logic which, I argue, better (...)
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  7. On thought experiments: Is there more to the argument?John D. Norton - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):1139-1151.
    Thought experiments in science are merely picturesque argumentation. I support this view in various ways, including the claim that it follows from the fact that thought experiments can err but can still be used reliably. The view is defended against alternatives proposed by my cosymposiasts.
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  8.  26
    Thought Experiments as Social Practice and the Clash of Imaginers.Daniele Molinari - 2022 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 22 (65):229-247.
    In the last few years, several philosophers have highlighted the social dimension of imagination. In this paper I argue that thought experiments prompt social uses of imaginings if we understand them as props in games of make-believe. In prescribing to imagine stories that develop through fictional narratives, authors of thought experiments prompt their readers to engage in the same imaginative project—at least in its salient aspects—and to endorse their conclusions. Contributions on this topic focus on cases (...)
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  9. Thought experiments and mental simulations.John Zeimbekis - 2011 - In Katerina Ierodiakonou & Sophie Roux (eds.), Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts. Brill.
    Thought experiments have a mysterious way of informing us about the world, apparently without examining it, yet with a great degree of certainty. It is tempting to try to explain this capacity by making use of the idea that in thought experiments, the mind somehow simulates the processes about which it reaches conclusions. Here, I test this idea. I argue that when they predict the outcomes of hypothetical physical situations, thought experiments cannot simulate physical (...)
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    Thought Experiments: History and Applications for Education.Chris Edwards - 2021 - Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
    Thought experiments are responsible for several major intellectual revolutions throughout history. Given their importance it is surprising that they are not used more frequently as teaching tools. The history of thought experiments, their applications to disciplines across academia, and their practical classroom uses are examined in this book.
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  11.  44
    Thought Experiments and Simulation Experiments: Exploring Hypothetical Worlds.Johannes Lenhard - unknown
    Both thought experiments and simulation experiments apparently belong to the family of experiments, though they are somewhat special members because they work without intervention into the natural world. Instead they explore hypothetical worlds. For this reason many have wondered whether referring to them as “experiments” is justified at all. While most authors are concerned with only one type of “imagined” experiment – either simulation or thought experiment – the present chapter hopes to gain new (...)
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  12. (1 other version)How Thought Experiments Increase Understanding.Michael T. Stuart - 2017 - In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge. pp. 526-544.
    We might think that thought experiments are at their most powerful or most interesting when they produce new knowledge. This would be a mistake; thought experiments that seek understanding are just as powerful and interesting, and perhaps even more so. A growing number of epistemologists are emphasizing the importance of understanding for epistemology, arguing that it should supplant knowledge as the central notion. In this chapter, I bring the literature on understanding in epistemology to bear on (...)
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  13.  46
    Thought experiments in personal identity: A dialogue with Beck, Wagner and Wilkes.Alfonso Muñoz-Corcuera - 2017 - South African Journal of Philosophy 36 (4):456-469.
    In a recent series of papers, Beck and Wagner have been arguing about the general role that thought experiments can play in the debate on personal identity, showing their disagreement about the famous criticisms that Wilkes’ launched against their use. In this article I come back to Wilkes’ criticisms to show that her position is deeply problematic. If we adopt instead the mental model account of thought experiments, we can accommodate Wilkes’ criticisms and justify the use (...)
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  14. Thought experiments and philosophical knowledge.Edouard Machery - 2011 - Metaphilosophy 42 (3):191-214.
    : While thought experiments play an important role in contemporary analytic philosophy, much remains unclear about thought experiments. In particular, it is still unclear whether the judgments elicited by thought experiments can provide evidence for the premises of philosophical arguments. This article argues that, if an influential and promising view about the nature of the judgments elicited by thought experiments is correct, then many thought experiments in philosophy fail to provide (...)
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  15. Thought experiments in ethics.Georg Brun - 2017 - In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge. pp. 195–210.
    This chapter suggests a scheme of reconstruction, which explains how scenarios, questions and arguments figure in thought experiments. It then develops a typology of ethical thought experiments according to their function, which can be epistemic, illustrative, rhetorical, heuristic or theory-internal. Epistemic functions of supporting or refuting ethical claims rely on metaethical assumptions, for example, an epistemological background of reflective equilibrium. In this context, thought experiments may involve intuitive as well as explicitly argued judgements; they (...)
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  16.  47
    Thought Experiments Rethought--and Reperceived - Philosopher's Index - ProQuest.Jon McGinnis - 2016 - .
    The study begins with the language employed in and the psychological basis of thought experiments as understood by certain medieval Arabic philosophers. It then provides a taxonomy of different kinds of thoughts experiments used in the medieval Islamic world. These include purely fictional thought experiments, idealizations and finally thought experiments using ingenious machines. The study concludes by suggesting that thought experiments provided a halfway house during this period between a staunch rationalism (...)
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  17. Why Thought Experiments are Not Arguments.Michael A. Bishop - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (4):534-541.
    Are thought experiments nothing but arguments? I argue that it is not possible to make sense of the historical trajectory of certain thought experiments if one takes them to be arguments. Einstein and Bohr disagreed about the outcome of the clock-in-the-box thought experiment, and so they reconstructed it using different arguments. This is to be expected whenever scientists disagree about a thought experiment's outcome. Since any such episode consists of two arguments but just one (...)
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  18. Computational Thought Experiments for a More Rigorous Philosophy and Science of the Mind.Iris Oved, Nikhil Krishnaswamy, James Pustejovsky & Joshua Hartshorne - 2024 - In Larissa Samuelson, Stefan Frank, Mariya Toneva, Allyson Mackey & Eliot Hazeltine (eds.), Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. pp. 601-609.
    We offer philosophical motivations for a method we call Virtual World Cognitive Science (VW CogSci), in which researchers use virtual embodied agents that are embedded in virtual worlds to explore questions in the field of Cognitive Science. We focus on questions about mental and linguistic representation and the ways that such computational modeling can add rigor to philosophical thought experiments, as well as the terminology used in the scientific study of such representations. We find that this method forces (...)
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  19.  15
    Thought Experiments as an Error Detection and Correction Tool.Igor Bascandziev - 2024 - Cognitive Science 48 (1):e13401.
    The ability to recognize and correct errors in one's explanatory understanding is critically important for learning. However, little is known about the mechanisms that determine when and under what circumstances errors are detected and how they are corrected. The present study investigated thought experiments as a potential tool that can reveal errors and trigger belief revision in the service of error correction. Across two experiments, 1149 participants engaged in reasoning about force and motion (a domain with well‐documented (...)
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  20. Externalist Thought Experiments and Direction of Fit.Casey Woodling - 2017 - Argumenta 3 (1):139-156.
    The classic thought experiments for Content Externalism have been motivated by consideration of intentional states with a mind-to-world direction of fit. In this paper, I argue that when these experiments are run on intentional states with a world-to-mind direction of fit, the thought experiments actually support Content Internalism. Because of this, I argue that the classic thought experiments alone cannot properly motivate Content Externalism. I do not show that Content Externalism is false in (...)
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  21. Thought experiments and personal identity.Stephen Coleman - 2000 - Philosophical Studies 98 (1):51-66.
    Thought experiments are profitably compared to compasses. A compass is a simple but useful device for determining direction. Nevertheless, it systematically errs in the presence of magnets ...it becomes unreliable near the North Pole, in mine shafts, when vibrated, in the presence of metal ...experts will wish to use the compass as one element in a wider portfolio of navigational techniques. Analogously, thought experiments are simple but useful devices for determining the status of propositions. Sadly, they (...)
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    (1 other version)On thought experiments and the Kantian a priori in the natural sciences: a reply to Yiftach J.H. Fehige.Marco Buzzoni - 2013 - Epistemologia 36 (2):277-293.
    This paper replies to objections that have been raised against my operational-Kantian account of thought experiments by Fehige 2012 and 2013. Fehige also sketches an alternative Neo-Kantian account that utilizes Michael Friedman’s concept of a contingent and changeable a priori. To this I shall reply, first, that Fehige’s objections not only neglect some fundamental points I had made as regards the realizability of TEs, but also underestimate the principle of empiricism, which was rightly defended by Kant. Secondly, in (...)
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  23.  97
    Are thought experiments “disturbing”? The case of armchair physics.Samuel Schindler & Pierre Saint-Germier - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (9):2671-2695.
    Proponents of the “negative program” in experimental philosophy have argued that judgements in philosophical cases, also known as case judgements, are unreliable and that the method of cases should be either strongly constrained or even abandoned. Here we put one of the main proponent’s account of why philosophical cases may cause the unreliability of case judgements to the test. We conducted our test with thought experiments from physics, which exhibit the exact same supposedly “disturbing characteristics” of philosophical cases.
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  24.  26
    Thought Experiments as Model-Based Abductions.Selene Arfini - 2006 - In Lorenzo Magnani & Claudia Casadio (eds.), Model Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. Logical, Epistemological, and Cognitive Issues. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
    In this paper we address the classical but still pending question regarding Thought Experiments: how can an imagined scenario bring new information or insight about the actual world? Our claim is that this general problem actually embraces two distinct questions: how can the creation of a just imagined scenario become functional to either a scientific or a philosophical research? and how can Thought Experiments hold a strong inferential power if their structures “do not seem to translate (...)
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  25. Thought Experiments and the Problem of Deviant Realizations.Thomas Grundmann & Joachim Horvath - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 170 (3):525-533.
    Descriptions of Gettier cases can be interpreted in ways that are incompatible with the standard judgment that they are cases of justified true belief without knowledge. Timothy Williamson claims that this problem cannot be avoided by adding further stipulations to the case descriptions. To the contrary, we argue that there is a fairly simple way to amend the Ford case, a standard description of a Gettier case, in such a manner that all deviant interpretations are ruled out. This removes one (...)
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  26. Thought Experiment: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases.Tamar Gendler - 2000 - New York: Routledge.
    This book offers a novel analysis of the widely-used but ill-understood technique of thought experiment. The author argues that the powers and limits of this methodology can be traced to the fact that when the contemplation of an imaginary scenario brings us to new knowledge, it does so by forcing us to make sense of exceptional cases.
     
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  27.  49
    Thought experiments in aesthetics.Paisley Nathan Livingston & Carl Mikael Pettersson - 2016 - In Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee & David Coady (eds.), A Companion to Applied Philosophy. Malden, MA: Wiley. pp. 501–513.
    In the burgeoning literature on thought experiments, examples are drawn from almost all areas of philosophy, one exception, however, being aesthetics. There are good reasons why this is so: there are very few interesting theory-oriented thought experiments in aesthetics, which is unsurprising since there are few well-developed theories to test in this field. After evaluating some aesthetic thought experiments in light of some general epistemic questions regarding thought experiments, we argue that theory-centred (...)
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    Arts-based thought experiments for a posthuman Earth: a Touchstones companion.Alexandra J. Cutcher & Amy Cutter-Mackenzie (eds.) - 2022 - Boston: Brill.
    Arts-Based Thought Experiments is a highly visual offering that engages visual arts, photography, poetry, creative non-fiction, memoir and speculative fiction. In this novel book, the authors lean deeply into concepts of the imaginary, and through artful experiments with thought, trouble the tensions between the human, the posthuman and the more than human. In the Anthropocene, with its intractable challenges and cataclysms, engaging posthuman positions when thinking of learning in socioecological terms is paramount to human survival. In (...)
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  29. Tracing the Development of Thought Experiments in the Philosophy of Natural Sciences.Aspasia S. Moue, Kyriakos A. Masavetas & Haido Karayianni - 2006 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 37 (1):61-75.
    An overview is provided of how the concept of the thought experiment has developed and changed for the natural sciences in the course of the 20th century. First, we discuss the existing definitions of the term 'thought experiment' and the origin of the thought experimentation method, identifying it in Greek Presocratics epoch. Second, only in the end of the 19th century showed up the first systematic enquiry on thought experiments by Ernst Mach's work. After the (...)
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  30.  11
    Thought Experiment and Logic.Irina Griftsova - 2016 - Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 49 (3):48-52.
    This paper considers the article by V.P. Filatov from the perspective of the role played by logic in a thought experiment. It is shown that this role depends on the way reasoning ant its correlation with logical inference are interpreted. It is suggested to view a model developed within informal logic as the most relevant to the role V.P. Filatov assigns to a thought experiment (turning the layer of implicit knowledge into explicit).
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  31. Thought Experiment, Definition and Literary Fiction.McComb Geordie - 2013 - In Mélanie Frappier James R. Brown (ed.), Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Science, and the Arts. pp. 207-222.
    I introduce a middle route between giving a sharp definition and examples to explain what a thought experiment is. It comprises an account of the concept thought experiment that we can rightly apply to different extents. Three explanatory virtues of this account include (i) that we can use it to explain why one thing may seem to be less of a thought experiment than another, (ii) that it provides for a fine-grained explanation of the relation between literary (...)
     
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  32. Thought Experiments: State of the Art.Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown - 2017 - In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge. pp. 1-28.
  33. Thought Experiments in Aesthetics.Paisley Livingston & Mikael Pettersson - 2016 - In Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee & David Coady (eds.), A Companion to Applied Philosophy. Malden, MA: Wiley. pp. 501–513.
    In the burgeoning literature on thought experiments (e.g., Cohen 2005; Freese 1995; Gendler 2000; Häggqvist 1996, 2009; Ierodiakonou and Roux 2011; Sorensen 1992), examples are drawn from almost all areas of philosophy. One exception, however, is aesthetics. There are good reasons why this is so: there are very few interesting theory‐ oriented thought experiments in aesthetics, which is unsurprising since there are few well‐developed theories to test in this field (see Chapter 34, Applied Aesthetics). We argue (...)
     
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  34. Counterfactuals, thought experiments, and singular causal analysis in history.Julian Reiss - 2009 - Philosophy of Science 76 (5):712-723.
    Thought experiments are ubiquitous in science and especially prominent in domains in which experimental and observational evidence is scarce. One such domain is the causal analysis of singular events in history. A long‐standing tradition that goes back to Max Weber addresses the issue by means of ‘what‐if’ counterfactuals. In this paper I give a descriptive account of this widely used method and argue that historians following it examine difference makers rather than causes in the philosopher’s sense. While difference (...)
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  35. Thought Experiments in Philosophy of Religion.Elliot Knuths & Charles Taliaferro - 2017 - Open Theology 3 (1):167-173.
    We present a criterion for the use of thought experiments as a guide to possibilia that bear on important arguments in philosophy of religion. We propose that the more successful thought experiments are closer to the world in terms of phenomenological realism and the values they are intended to track. This proposal is filled out by comparing thought experiments of life after death by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman with an idealist thought (...)
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  36. Thought Experiments in Einstein's Work.John D. Norton - 1982 - In John Norton (ed.).
    Preface: This volume originated in a conference on "The Place of Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy" which was organized by us and held at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, April 18-20, 1986. The idea behind this conference was to encourage philosophers and scientists to talk to each other about the role of thought experiments in their various disciplines. These papers were either written for the conference, or were written after (...)
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  37.  89
    Thought Experiments, Ontology, and Concept-Dependent Truthmakers.Howard Robinson - 2004 - The Monist 87 (4):537-553.
    Thought experiments are usually employed by philosophers as a tool in conceptual analysis. We pose ourselves questions such as “Would it be the same F if p?” or “Would it count as knowledge if q,” where p and q state some bizarre circumstances that are unlikely actually to occur and may even be beyond current technical possibility. The answers we are inclined to give to such questions are held to throw light on the nature of our concepts of, (...)
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  38. Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy.Tamara Horowitz & Gerald J. Massey (eds.) - 1991 - Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
    Despite their centrality and importance to both science and philosophy, relatively little has been written about thought experiments. This volume brings together a series of extremely interesting studies of the history, mechanics, and applications of this important intellectual resource. A distinguished list of philosophers and scientists consider the role of thought experiments in their various disciplines, and argue that an examination of thought experimentation goes to the heart of both science and philosophy.
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  39. Thought Experiments Considered Harmful.Paul Thagard - 2014 - Perspectives on Science 22 (2):122-139.
    Thought experiments have been influential in philosophy at least since Plato, and they have contributed to science at least since Galileo. Some of this influence is appropriate, because thought experiments can have legitimate roles in generating and clarifying hypotheses, as well as in identifying problems in competing hypotheses. I will argue, however, that philosophers have often overestimated the significance of thought experiments by supposing that they can provide evidence that supports the acceptance of beliefs. (...)
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  40. Can Thought Experiments Solve Problems of Personal Identity?Lukas J. Meier - 2022 - Synthese 200 (3):1-23.
    Good physical experiments conform to the basic methodological standards of experimental design: they are objective, reliable, and valid. But is this also true of thought experiments? Especially problems of personal identity have engendered hypothetical scenarios that are very distant from the actual world. These imagined situations have been conspicuously ineffective at resolving conflicting intuitions and deciding between the different accounts of personal identity. Using prominent examples from the literature, I argue that this is due to many of (...)
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    Thought Experiment more geometric.Daria Drozdova - 2016 - Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 49 (3):43-47.
    Thought experiments can be used in various ways. A part of them seems to have a special epistemic value: they can give us a new, unknown information about reality. One of the most famous thought experiments of that kind is the thought experiment of Galileo which demonstrates that two bodies of the same kind should fall with the same speed. However, an analysis of this argument shows that it is based on several ontological presuppositions. Therefore (...)
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    Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts.Katerina Ierodiakonou & Sophie Roux (eds.) - 2011 - Brill.
    Thought experiments being central to contemporary philosophy and science, the following questions were asked in recent literature. What is their definition? Are they heuristic devices, arguments, paradoxes? Are they comparable to real experiments? Do intuition and conceivability intervene? Equally imaginative thought experiments are found in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance texts. Paying attention to prime historical examples of thought experiments, we show that historical perspectives help answer these general questions.
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  43.  27
    Thought Experiments, Epistemology & our Cognitive Capacities.Kenneth R. Westphal - 2017 - In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge.
    Does epistemology collapse for lack of resources other than logic, conceptual analysis and descriptions of one’s own apparent experiences, thoughts and beliefs? No, but understanding how and why not requires, Kant noted, a ‘changed method of thinking’. Some of these methodological changes are summarised in §2 in order to identify a philosophical role for thought experiments to help identify logically contingent, though cognitively fundamental capacities and circumstances necessary to human thought, experience and knowledge. As Kant also noted, (...)
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  44. “Platonic” thought experiments: how on earth?Rafal Urbaniak - 2012 - Synthese 187 (2):731-752.
    Brown (The laboratory of the mind. Thought experiments in the natural science, 1991a , 1991b ; Contemporary debates in philosophy of science, 2004 ; Thought experiments, 2008 ) argues that thought experiments (TE) in science cannot be arguments and cannot even be represented by arguments. He rest his case on examples of TEs which proceed through a contradiction to reach a positive resolution (Brown calls such TEs “platonic”). This, supposedly, makes it impossible to represent (...)
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    Thought Experiments and The Pragmatic Nature of Explanation.Panagiotis Karadimas - 2024 - Foundations of Science 29 (2):257-280.
    Different why-questions emerge under different contexts and require different information in order to be addressed. Hence a relevance relation can hardly be invariant across contexts. However, what is indeed common under any possible context is that all explananda require scientific information in order to be explained. So no scientific information is in principle explanatorily irrelevant, it only becomes so under certain contexts. In view of this, scientific thought experiments can offer explanations, should we analyze their representational strategies. Their (...)
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  46. Transplant Thought-Experiments: Two costly mistakes in discounting them.Simon Beck - 2014 - South African Journal of Philosophy 33 (2):189-199.
    ‘Transplant’ thought-experiments, in which the cerebrum is moved from one body to another, have featured in a number of recent discussions in the personal identity literature. Once taken as offering confirmation of some form of psychological continuity theory of identity, arguments from Marya Schechtman and Kathleen Wilkes have contended that this is not the case. Any such apparent support is due to a lack of detail in their description or a reliance on predictions that we are in no (...)
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  47. Thought Experiments in Philosophy.Soren Haggqvist - 1998 - Philosophical Review 107 (3):480.
    Philosophy and science employ abstract hypothetical scenarios- thought experiments - to illustrate, defend, and dispute theoretical claims. Since thought experiments furnish no new empirical observations, the method prompts two epistemological questions: whether anything may be learnt from the merely hypothetical, and, if so, how. Various sceptical arguments against the use of thought experiments in philosophy are discussed and criticized. The thesis that thought experiments in science provide a priori knowledge through non-sensory grasping (...)
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  48. Thought Experimenting with God. Revisiting the Ontological Argument.Yiftach J. H. Fehige - 2009 - Neue Zeitschrift für Systematicsche Theologie Und Religionsphilosophie 51 (3):249-267.
    The ontological argument is one of the most intriguing lines of reasoning in Western thought. Leaving behind debates over the proper relation between science and religion, it makes a simple move from conceptual analysis to existence in order to prove the existence of god. The ontological argument will be reviewed against the background of the contemporary debate on thought experiments. Assuming that the ontological argument fails as a philosophical proof, I will argue that its move from concept (...)
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  49. Thought experiments in current metaphilosophical debates.Daniel Cohnitz & Sören Häggqvist - 2017 - In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge. pp. 406-424.
    Although thought experiments were first discovered as a sui generis methodological tool by philosophers of science (most prominently by Ernst Mach), the tool can also be found – even more frequently – in contemporary philosophy. Thought experiments in philosophy and science have a lot in common. However, in this chapter we will concentrate on thought experiments in philosophy only. Their use has been the centre of attention of metaphilosophical discussion in the past decade, and (...)
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  50. Thought Experiments in Experimental Philosophy.Kirk Ludwig - 2017 - In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge. pp. 385-405.
    Much of the recent movement organized under the heading “Experimental Philosophy” has been concerned with the empirical study of responses to thought experiments drawn from the literature on philosophical analysis. I consider what bearing these studies have on the traditional projects in which thought experiments have been used in philosophy. This will help to answer the question what the relation is between Experimental Philosophy and philosophy, whether it is an “exciting new style of [philosophical] research”, “a (...)
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