Whyexperiments matter.Arnon Levy &Adrian Currie -2019 -Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (9-10):1066-1090.detailsABSTRACTExperimentation is traditionally considered a privileged means of confirmation. However, why and howexperiments form a better confirmatory source relative to other strategies is unclear, and recent discussions have identifiedexperiments with various modeling strategies on the one hand, and with ‘natural’experiments on the other hand. We argue thatexperiments aiming to test theories are best understood as controlled investigations of specimens. ‘Control’ involves repeated, fine-grained causal manipulation of focal properties. This capacity generates rich knowledge (...) of the object investigated. ‘Specimenhood’ involves possessing relevant properties given the investigative target and the hypothesis in question. Specimens are thus representative members of a class of systems, to which a hypothesis refers. It is in virtue of both control and specimenhood thatexperiments provide powerful confirmatory evidence. This explains the distinctive power ofexperiments: although modelers exert extensive control, they do not exert this control over specimens; although naturalexperiments utilize specimens, control is diminished. (shrink)
Thoughtexperiments and philosophical knowledge.Edouard Machery -2011 -Metaphilosophy 42 (3):191-214.details: While thoughtexperiments play an important role in contemporary analytic philosophy, much remains unclear about thoughtexperiments. In particular, it is still unclear whether the judgments elicited by thoughtexperiments 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 thoughtexperiments is correct, then many thoughtexperiments in philosophy fail to provide any evidence for the premises (...) of philosophical arguments. (shrink)
ThoughtExperiments in Experimental Philosophy.Kirk Ludwig -2017 - In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown,The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge. pp. 385-405.detailsMuch of the recent movement organized under the heading “Experimental Philosophy” has been concerned with the empirical study of responses to thoughtexperiments drawn from the literature on philosophical analysis. I consider what bearing these studies have on the traditional projects in which thoughtexperiments 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 new interdisciplinary (...) field that uses methods normally associated with psychology to investigate questions normally associated with philosophy” (Knobe et al. 2012), or whether its relation to philosophy consists, as some have suggested, in no more than the word ‘philosophy’ appearing in its title, or whether the truth lies somewhere in between these two views. I first distinguishes different strands in Experimental Philosophy, negative and positive x-phi, and x-phi pursuing philosophy as opposed to x-phi as cognitive science. Next I review some ways in which Experimental Philosophy has been criticized. Finally, I consider what would have to be true for Experimental Philosophy to have one or another sort of relevance to philosophy, whether the assumptions required are true, how we could know it, and the ideal limits of the usefulness Experimental Philosophy to philosophy. I conclude x-phi cannot in principle be a replacement for traditional first person approaches because it yields the wrong kind of knowledge and that it can nonetheless be a practical aid in conducting philosophical thoughtexperiments. n. (shrink)
Thoughtexperiments in ethics.Georg Brun -2017 - In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown,The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge. pp. 195–210.detailsThis chapter suggests a scheme of reconstruction, which explains how scenarios, questions and arguments figure in thoughtexperiments. It then develops a typology of ethical thoughtexperiments 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, thoughtexperiments may involve intuitive as well as explicitly argued judgements; they can be used (...) to generate moral commitments, to explore consequences of moral theories, and to show inconsistencies within or between moral commitments and moral theory; but the results of thoughtexperiments by themselves do not settle what is epistemically justified and may also be rejected. Finally, some prominent challenges are discussed: do unrealistic scenarios undermine epistemic thoughtexperiments? Are ethical thoughtexperiments misleading? Do they rely on weak analogies? Are there specifically moral objections to ethical thoughtexperiments? (shrink)
(1 other version)How ThoughtExperiments Increase Understanding.Michael T. Stuart -2017 - In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown,The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge. pp. 526-544.detailsWe might think that thoughtexperiments are at their most powerful or most interesting when they produce new knowledge. This would be a mistake; thoughtexperiments 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 explicating the (...) different ways that thoughtexperiments increase three important kinds of understanding: explanatory, objectual and practical. (shrink)
ThoughtExperiments.Roy A. Sorensen -1992 - Oxford and New York: Oup Usa.detailsIn this book, Sorensen presents the first general theory of the thought experiment. He analyses a wide variety of thoughtexperiments, ranging from aesthetics to zoology, and explores what thoughtexperiments are, how they work, and what their positive and negative aspects are. Sorensen also sets his theory within an evolutionary framework and integrates recent advances in experimental psychology and the history of science.
Experiments in Distributive Justice and Their Limits.Michael Bennett -2016 -Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 28 (3-4):461-483.detailsMark Pennington argues political systems should be decentralized in order to facilitate experimental learning about distributive justice. Pointing out the problems with Pennington's Hayekian formulation, I reframe his argument as an extension of the Millian idea of 'experiments in living.' However, the experimental case for decentralization is limited in several ways. Even if decentralization improves our knowledge about justice, it impedes the actual implementation of all conceptions of justice other than libertarianism. I conclude by arguing for the compatibility of (...) egalitarian redistribution with the epistemic virtues of markets pointed out by Hayek. (shrink)
Thoughtexperiments and personal identity in africa.Simon Beck -2021 -Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (4):239-452.detailsAfrican perspectives on personhood and personal identity and their relation to those of the West have become far more central in mainstream Western discussion than they once were. Not only are African traditional views with their emphasis on the importance of community and social relations more widely discussed, but that emphasis has also received much wider acceptance and gained more influence among Western philosophers. Despite this convergence, there is at least one striking way in which the discussions remain apart and (...) that is on a point of method. The Western discussion makes widespread use of thoughtexperiments. In the African discussion, they are almost entirely absent. In this article, we put forward a possible explanation for the method of thought experiment being avoided that is based on considerations stemming from John Mbiti’s account of the traditional African view of time. These considerations find an echo in criticism offered of the method in the Western debate. We consider whether a response to both trains of thought can be found that can further bring the Western and African philosophical traditions into fruitful dialogue. (shrink)
ThoughtExperiments.Nenad Miscevic -2021 - Springer Verlag.detailsThis book offers a readable introduction to the main aspects of thought experimenting in philosophy and science. It presents the main options in understanding thoughtexperiments, from empiricism to Platonism, and discusses their strengths and weaknesses. However, it also provides some original perspectives on the topic. Firstly, it provides a new definition and analysis of thought experimenting that brings it closer to laboratory experimenting. Secondly, it develops the author’s earlier theory of “mental modelling”, proposed some decades ago by him, (...) and some other researchers in the field as the crucial procedure in thought experimenting. The mental modelling approach links work with thought experimenting to cognitive science and to research on mental simulation which is a hot topic in present-day research. Thirdly, it proposes a principled way to respond to criticism of thought experimenting by “experimental philosophers” as they have been dominating the present-day debates. The response suggests a possible ameliorative, self-help project for thought experimenting. Finally, the book provides a way to systematize the history of important thoughtexperiments in science and philosophy and thus connects, in an original way, the systematic investigation of experimenting to the historical work of famous thoughtexperiments. It is of interest to scholars interested in history of ideas and philosophy of science. (shrink)
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ThoughtExperiments, Semantic Intuitions and the Overlooked Interpretative Procedure.Krzysztof Sękowski -2024 -Episteme 21 (2):443-460.detailsIn the paper I introduce and discuss the interpretative procedure; a stage of investigation in thoughtexperiments in which it is determined which states of affairs are genuine realizations of the described story. I show how incorporating the interpretative procedure to the reconstruction of a certain kind of thoughtexperiments, i.e., the method of cases, provides a solution to the so-called problem of deviant realizations. According to this problem it is hard to formulate the logical structure of the (...) method of cases that excludes far-fetched interpretations of a particular thought experiment's description that are inconsistent with the expected conclusion of the experiment. As I show, if we agree that the interpretative procedure precedes the act of establishing whether the thing which is at issue (e.g., knowledge) appears within a certain state of affairs, deviant realizations could be ruled out, since within interpretative procedure we establish the set of states of affairs that are compatible with the intentions of the author of the thought experiment. In the paper I provide a general explanation of how this task could be fulfilled by semantic intuitions and discuss their contextual dependence. (shrink)
The Other Human-SubjectExperiments.C. D. Herrera -1997 -Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 22 (2):161-171.detailsAlthough deceptive psychologyexperiments receive less attention than some forms of medical research, they pose similar moral challenges. These challenges mainly concern the use of human subjects and intentional deception. Psychologists provide an argument to justify this deception. But what is an essentially utilitarian argument too often includes faulty comparisons and dubious accounts of risks and benefits. Commentators in other areas of humansubject research might examine this argument and the assumptions behind it. Bioethics commentators seem especially well-positioned for this (...) task. (shrink)
Experiments on the acceptability and possible readings of questions embedded under emotive-factives.Alexandre Cremers &Emmanuel Chemla -2017 -Natural Language Semantics 25 (3):223-261.detailsEmotive-factive predicates, such as surprise or be happy, are a source of empirical and theoretical puzzles in the literature on embedded questions. Although they embed wh-questions, they seem not to embed whether-questions. They have complex interactions with negative polarity items such as any or even, and they have been argued to preferentially give rise to weakly exhaustive readings with embedded questions. We offer an empirical overview of the situation in threeexperiments collecting acceptability judgments, monotonicity judgments, and truth-value judgments. (...) The results straightforwardly confirm the special selectional properties of emotive-factive predicates. More interestingly, they reveal the existence of strongly exhaustive readings for surprise. The results also suggest that the special properties of emotive-factives cannot be solely explained by their monotonicity profiles, because they were not found to differ from the profiles of other responsive predicates. (shrink)
Metaphysicalexperiments: physics and the invention of the universe.Björn Ekeberg -2019 - London: University of Minnesota Press.detailsBased on author's thesis (Ph. D., University of Victoria, 2010).
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The Epistemology of ThoughtExperiments: First Person versus Third Person Approaches.Kirk Ludwig -2007 -Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31 (1):128-159.detailsRecent third person approaches to thoughtexperiments and conceptual analysis through the method of surveys are motivated by and motivate skepticism about the traditional first person method. I argue that such surveys give no good ground for skepticism, that they have some utility, but that they do not represent a fundamentally new way of doing philosophy, that they are liable to considerable methodological difficulties, and that they cannot be substituted for the first person method, since the a priori knowledge (...) which is our object in conceptual analysis can be acquired only from the first person standpoint. (shrink)
ThoughtExperiments and SimulationExperiments: Exploring Hypothetical Worlds.Johannes Lenhard -unknowndetailsBoth thoughtexperiments and simulationexperiments apparently belong to the family ofexperiments, 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 insight by (...) considering what the two types of experiment share, and what they do not. A close look reveals at least one fundamental methodological difference between thought and simulationexperiments: while thoughtexperiments are a cognitive process that employs intuition, simulationexperiments rest on automated iterations of formal algorithms. It will be argued that this difference has important epistemological ramifications. (shrink)
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Experiments in Thought.Walter Hopp -2014 -Perspectives on Science 22 (2):242-263.details. What are thoughtexperiments, and how do they generate knowledge? More specifically, what sorts of intentional acts must one perform in order to carry out a thought experiment, what sorts of objects are such acts directed toward, and how are those objects made present in such acts? I argue on phenomenological grounds that the proper objects of thoughtexperiments are, in certain cases, uninstantiated universals and relations among them. I will also argue that, in the best of (...) cases, we intuit or “see” these universals and their relations to one another, and respond to some objections to this view. (shrink)
Experiments on Human Beings.C. K. Grant -1973 -Philosophy 48 (185):284 - 287.detailsIn one way or another the theory and practice of modern medicine is confronting us with many dilemmas, chiefly, though not exclusively, of a moral character; the transplantation of organs, abortion, and euthanasia are examples, and closely associated with these are more obviously conceptual problems such as the definition of death and, for that matter, of life itself. Contemporary moral philosophers have been strangely silent on these matters, and have been content to leave the field to lawyers and churchmen and (...) those few medical men both able and willing to reflect upon their practices. (shrink)
Simulatedexperiments: Methodology for a virtual world.Winsberg Eric -2003 -Philosophy of Science 70 (1):105-125.detailsThis paper examines the relationship between simulation and experiment. Many discussions of simulation, and indeed the term "numericalexperiments," invoke a strong metaphor of experimentation. On the other hand, many simulations begin as attempts to apply scientific theories. This has lead many to characterize simulation as lying between theory and experiment. The aim of the paper is to try to reconcile these two points of viewto understand what methodological and epistemological features simulation has in common with experimentation, while at (...) the same time keeping a keen eye on simulation's ancestry as a form of scientific theorizing. In so doing, it seeks to apply some of the insights of recent work on the philosophy of experiment to an aspect of theorizing that is of growing philosophical interest: the construction of local models. (shrink)
ThoughtExperiments, Formalization, and Disagreement.Sören Häggqvist -2019 -Topoi 38 (4):801-810.detailsIn the last decade, philosophers have offered a number of proposals concerning the logical form of hypothetical cases, or thoughtexperiments, 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 meets (...) this desideratum than competing proposals. I also sketch how this proposal may be extended into more fine grained analyses, employing counterfactual conditionals yet avoiding certain problems due to so-called "deviant realizations". (shrink)
The EPR-BellExperiments: The Role of Counterfactuality and Probability in the Context of Actually ConductedExperiments.Anthony J. Leggett -2024 -Philosophies 9 (5):133.detailsSome aspects of the concepts of counterfactuality and probability are explored as they apply to the specific example of the famous “EPR-Bell”experiments realized by physicists over the last half-century. In particular the question is raised: what hypotheses about actually conductedexperiments do the results exclude? It is argued that the answer depends on both whether these hypotheses are deterministic or stochastic, and on the “cardinality” of the experiment relative to the theory.
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ThoughtExperiments in Philosophy of Religion.Elliot Knuths &Charles Taliaferro -2017 -Open Theology 3 (1):167-173.detailsWe present a criterion for the use of thoughtexperiments as a guide to possibilia that bear on important arguments in philosophy of religion. We propose that the more successful thoughtexperiments 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 thoughtexperiments of life after death by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman with an idealist thought experiment. In terms of (...) realism and values we contrast an exemplary thought experiment by Iris Murdoch with one we find problematic by William Irwin. (shrink)
ThoughtExperiments Rethought--and Reperceived - Philosopher's Index - ProQuest.Jon McGinnis -2016 -.detailsThe study begins with the language employed in and the psychological basis of thoughtexperiments as understood by certain medieval Arabic philosophers. It then provides a taxonomy of different kinds of thoughtsexperiments used in the medieval Islamic world. These include purely fictional thoughtexperiments, idealizations and finally thoughtexperiments using ingenious machines. The study concludes by suggesting that thoughtexperiments provided a halfway house during this period between a staunch rationalism and an emerging empiricism.
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Can ThoughtExperiments Solve Problems of Personal Identity?Lukas J. Meier -2022 -Synthese 200 (3):1-23.detailsGood physicalexperiments conform to the basic methodological standards of experimental design: they are objective, reliable, and valid. But is this also true of thoughtexperiments? 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 these (...) thoughtexperiments not adhering to the methodological standards that guide experimental design in nearly all other disciplines. I also show how empirically unwarranted background assumptions about human physiology render some of the hypothetical scenarios that are employed in the debate about personal identity highly misleading. (shrink)
Experiments on the Accuracy of Algorithms for Inferring the Structure of Genetic Regulatory Networks from Microarray Expression Levels.Joseph Ramsey &Clark Glymour -unknowndetailsAfter reviewing theoretical reasons for doubting that machine learning methods can accurately infer gene regulatory networks from microarray data, we test 10 algorithms on simulated data from the sea urchin network, and on microarray data for yeast compared with recent experimental determinations of the regulatory network in the same yeast species. Our results agree with the theoretical arguments: most algorithms are at chance for determining the existence of a regulatory connection between gene pairs, and the algorithms that perform better than (...) chance are nonetheless so errorprone as to be of little practical use in these applications. (shrink)
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Experiments on the folk theory of consciousness.Justin Sytsma -unknowndetailsIt is not uncommon to find assumptions being made about folk psychology in the discussions of phenomenal consciousness in philosophy of mind. In this article I consider one example, focusing on what Dan Dennett says about the “folk theory of consciousness.” I show that he holds that the folk believe that the sensory qualities that we are acquainted with in ordinary perception are phenomenal qualities. Nonetheless, the shape of the folk theory is an empirical matter and in the absence of (...) empirical investigation there is ample room for doubt. Fortunately, experimental evidence on the topic is now being produced by experimental philosophers and psychologists. This article contributes to this growing literature, presenting the results of six new studies on the folk view of colors and pains. I argue that the results indicate against Dennett’s theory of the folk theory of consciousness. (shrink)
ThoughtExperiments in Philosophy.Soren Haggqvist -1998 -Philosophical Review 107 (3):480.detailsPhilosophy and science employ abstract hypothetical scenarios- thoughtexperiments - to illustrate, defend, and dispute theoretical claims. Since thoughtexperiments 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 thoughtexperiments in philosophy are discussed and criticized. The thesis that thoughtexperiments in science provide a priori knowledge through non-sensory grasping of abstract entities is (...) discussed and rejected. The thesis that thought experimentation consists in manipulations of mental models is examined and found to be of limited epistemological relevance. It is argued that thoughtexperiments are associated with characteristic arguments in a manner similar to ordinaryexperiments. It is further argued that thoughtexperiments function in the same way asexperiments in general: by providing premises for their associated arguments. Like otherexperiments, a thought experiment is successful when the premises it provides are true. This holds both for philosophical and scientific thoughtexperiments. An argument schema is proposed and shown to be a formal analogue to that associated with ordinaryexperiments; similar in being subject to epistemological holism; but differing in being modal: in employing statements about possibility and necessity. The evaluation of thoughtexperiments thus depends on how modal statements may be justified. Intuition and conceivability are discussed as sources of modal justification and found problematic. Instead it is suggested that evaluation proceed by accommodation of the statements describing the experiment's hypothetical scenario. The method of accommodation is developed and applied to five influential thoughtexperiments in philosophy: the brain in a vat; Putnam's Twin Earth; Burge's arthritis example; Searle's Chinese Room; and Newcomb's problem. Its application shows some of these to be failed, others to be successful only relative to controversial philosophical doctrines. (shrink)