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Understanding Thought Experiments

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Thought Experiments

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Abstract

How should we understand TEs and the usual verdicts-intuitions resulting from them? In this chapter we briefly summarize the leading theories of TEs, hoping to do justice at least to the main ideas and arguments characterizing the present debate.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Here is a longer quote: the thought experiments that interest me here are those of the natural sciences that do yield contingent knowledge of the natural world. According to empiricism, they can only do so if knowledge of the natural world is supplied to the thought experiment; that is, if this knowledge comprises a portion of the premises upon which the argument proceeds. It may enter as explicitly held knowledge of the world. We assert on the authority of an empirical theory, special relativity, that a moving rod shrinks in the direction of its motion. Or it may enter as tacit knowledge. We just know that the space of our experience never runs out; we have never seen a boundary in space beyond which we could not pass, unless there is already something past the boundary to obstruct us. I do not seek here to argue for empiricism; the debate between empiricism and other epistemologies is as ancient as philosophy itself and not likely to be advanced fundamentally here. However, empiricism is overwhelmingly the predominant epistemology in philosophy of science, so that an account that accommodates thought experiments to empiricism in a simple and straightforward manner ought to be accepted as the default, as opposed so some more extravagant account. I claim this default status for the view advocated here 2004:49.

  2. 2.

    Formulated in the famous paper by Benacerraf (1973).

  3. 3.

    Let me mention an additional problem about history of famous TEs. As far as Galileo goes there are serious problems with Platonism about his TEs. The research done by Stillman Drake (above all his (1978) book) has changed our picture of Galileo, and it now looks different - with stress on real experiment, exact measurement etc. Drake has shown that the material from Dialogues and Discourses is just the tip of the iceberg. Galileo has not revised his opinions just on the strength of few TEs, but thanks to the impressive amount of his actual, carefully performed experiments. (Generally, to make Galileo into a champion of platonic or aprioristic physics is now a bit implausible.).

  4. 4.

    See for instance Boghossian and Peacocke (Eds) (2000), Szabo Gendler, T. and Hawthorne, J. (Eds.): Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford University Press, 2002.

  5. 5.

    Let me just point to the work of Sorensen (1992), who has in early nineties already discussed the counterfactual nature of TE-scenarios.

  6. 6.

    Thanks go to Tim for discussions at yearly conferences in Dubrovnik.

  7. 7.

    Thanks go to Edi Pavlović for discussing these matters with me.

  8. 8.

    In symbols: \( (3*)\exists \times \exists _{{\rm{p}}} {\rm{GC}}({\rm{x,p}})\square \to \forall _{{\rm{x}}} \forall _{{\rm{p}}} \left( {{\rm{GC(x,p)}} \to {\rm{(JTB(x,p)\& }}\neg {\rm{K(x,p))}}} \right)(185) \).

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  1. University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia

    Dr. Nenad Miscevic

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Correspondence to Nenad Miscevic .

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Miscevic, N. (2022). Understanding Thought Experiments. In: Thought Experiments. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81082-5_3

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