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A Moderate Defence of the Use of Thought Experiments in Applied Ethics

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Abstract

Thought experiments have played a pivotal role in many debates within ethics—and in particular within applied ethics—over the past 30 years. Nonetheless, despite their having become a commonly used philosophical tool, there is something odd about the extensive reliance upon thought experiments in areas of philosophy, such as applied ethics, that are so obviously oriented towards practical life. Herein I provide a moderate defence of their use in applied philosophy against those three objections. I do not defend all possible uses of thought experiments but suggest that we should distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses. Their legitimate uses are determined not so much by the modal content of any actual thought experiment itself, but by the extent to which the argument in which it is nested follows basic tenets of informal logic and respects the fundamental contingency of applied ethical problems. In pursuing these ideas, I do not so much provide a set of criteria for their legitimate use, but more modestly present two significant ways in which their use can go awry.

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Notes

  1. Cf. Williams 1973, 23.

  2. Brendel argues that ‘thought experiments in which we are asked to apply a concept in an unfamiliar situation can be problematic, since we often have no stable intuitions that could guide us in finding a justified answer’ (Brendel 2004, 106).

  3. The analogy here is with pragmatics in linguistics where the focus of analysis is on the identity and intentions of the speaker and hearer and the context of discussion.

  4. Sorenson (1992) takes a similar path in the last chapter of his book on thought experiments where he provides a list of fallacies associated with the use of thought experiments.

  5. Readers should note the difference with Sorensen’s account in which the official single role of thought experiments is to test modal consequences. Sorensen’s leavens this narrow conception of function with the comment that the ‘apparent narrowness of its function eases once we realise that there are many kinds of necessity’. (Sorenson 1992, 6). On my account there is no such single function, no matter how broadly construed.

  6. We also find this ‘destructive’ aspect of thought experiments discussed by Thomas Kuhn (1997) in his article ‘A Function for Thought Experiments’.

  7. James Robert Brown (1991, 124) distinguishes, in a similar vein to my distinction between counter-examples and intuition-pumps between destructive and constructive thought experiments.

  8. See Sorenson 1992, 266–68 and Dennett 1984, 12.

  9. Brendel (2004, 106) uses the term to denote thought experiments that misuse intuitions and lead us to believe in an unjustified conclusion.

  10. We might reasonably think of it as a form of inductive reasoning.

  11. This has some resonance with what Sorensen (1992, 5) has to say about the cleansing functions of thought experiments.

  12. Nancy Davis (2001) has an insightful discussion of the various literary techniques used by Thomson that engage our attention..

  13. For a different (although not incompatible) way of cutting up the functions and purposes of thought experiments, Brendel, 2004 , 92.

  14. Elke Brendel (2004, 106) makes a similar suggestion noting that “….if an analysis or a definition of a concept is regarded as universally valid, then far-fetched imaginary scenarios that cast doubt on this general validity are legitimate”.

  15. Interestingly, Quine (1972, 490) notes that ‘The method of science fiction has its uses in philosophy but….I wonder whether the limits of the method are properly heeded.”

  16. The objection from under-description can only be directed plausibly at intuition pumps where we are trying to derive some more general conclusions.

  17. This is presumably John Stuart Mill’s point when he writes: “A test of right and wrong must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right and wrong, and not a consequence of having already ascertained it.” (Mill 1972[1861], 2).

  18. Lewis (1986, 3) distinguishes between restricted and unrestricted speaking using the example of the claim that all the beer is in the fridge. The restricted view ignores all of the beer that there is in the world that is outside of the fridge, that is all of the beer that exists simpliciter while the unrestricted view, in answering the question, does not.

  19. Dancy (1993, 64) notes that he does not reject all switching arguments, rather it is that the particularist allows far fewer to be sound than does the generalist.

  20. Martha Nussbaum (1993, 248) notes that Aristotle defends a similar contingency constraint on philosophical theory more generally. She writes that in the Politics, Aristotle “insists that only human, and not either animals or gods, will have our basic ethical terms and concepts…..because the beasts are unable to form the concepts and the gods lack the experiences of limit and finitude that give a concept such as justice its point [Politics 1, 2, 1253a1-18]”.

  21. Cf. Jacquette 1997, 307.

  22. I would like to thank Peter Forrest for his very helpful comments on this paper as well as two anonymous referees from this journal.

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Walsh, A. A Moderate Defence of the Use of Thought Experiments in Applied Ethics. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 14, 467–481 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-010-9254-7

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