What is collected thought experiments in philosophy?
Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy is a brief collection of over 100 classic and contemporary "thought experiments," each exploring an important philosophical argument. These thought experiments introduce students to the kind of disciplined thought required in philosophy, and awaken their intellectual curiosity.
What would philosophy be without thought experiments?
Philosophy, even more than the sciences, would be severely impoverished without thought experiments. These observations partly explain why it has been argued that a more “unified” account of thought experiments is desirable (see Boniolo 1997; Cooper 2005, pp. 329–330; Gähde 2000).
Where did the term thought experiment come from?
The English term thought experiment was coined (as a calque) from Mach's Gedankenexperiment, and it first appeared in the 1897 English translation of one of Mach’s papers. Prior to its emergence, the activity of posing hypothetical questions that employed subjunctive reasoning had existed for a very long time (for both scientists and philosophers).
What are the best 9 philosophical thought experiments to keep you awake?
9 Philosophical Thought Experiments That Will Keep You Up at Night. 1 1. Prisoner’s Dilemma. This is the classic game theory problem in which a suspect is confronted with a rather difficult decision: Stay silent or ... 2 2. Mary the Colorblind Neuroscientist. 3 3. The Beetle in the Box. 4 4. The Chinese Room. 5 5. The Experience Machine. More items
What is a thought experiment psychology?
thought experiment a mental exercise in which a hypothesis or idea is put to the test without actually conducting an experiment or research project. The purpose is to explore the logical consequences of the hypothesis or idea.
What are the purpose of thought experiments?
The purpose of a thought experiment is to encourage speculation, logical thinking and to change paradigms. Thought experiments push us outside our comfort zone by forcing us to confront questions we cannot answer with ease. They demonstrate gaps in our knowledge and help us recognize the limits of what can be known.
What is a thought experiment in philosophy quizlet?
A thought experiment is an experiment carried out in our imagination. This is where we Imagine a certain situation, Follow through some of the consequences of that situation, and draw a general conclusion.
What is an example of a thought experiment?
Examples of thought experiments include Schrödinger's cat, illustrating quantum indeterminacy through the manipulation of a perfectly sealed environment and a tiny bit of radioactive substance, and Maxwell's demon, which attempts to demonstrate the ability of a hypothetical finite being to violate the 2nd law of ...
How do you conduct a thought experiment?
0:051:47What are Thought Experiments? - Gentleman Thinker - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipExamines what their responses would be or what actions. And ideas would be appropriate to given theMoreExamines what their responses would be or what actions. And ideas would be appropriate to given the circumstances. Or what would follow from the experiment.
Do you think thought experiment is still useful in the science in the present time?
The thought experiment is useful in all aspects of life, not just science. Thought experiments allow us to explore possibilities, ponder scenarios, while applying what we already know about the world in order to give structure and order to our “experiments”.
Which of the following best summarizes Searle's response to the robot reply?
Which of the following best characterizes Searle's response to the Robot Reply? Putting the program into a robot concedes that merely running a program is not sufficient for understanding.
Are thought experiments useful in philosophy?
Philosophers love thought experiments. Many of us deploy them as our version of the scientific method. They isolate some feature of our experience and evoke intuitions about it, and these revealed verdicts enable us to adjust relevant theories in light of what we find.
Why did Einstein do thought experiments?
A hallmark of Albert Einstein's career was his use of visualized thought experiments (German: Gedankenexperiment) as a fundamental tool for understanding physical issues and for elucidating his concepts to others. Einstein's thought experiments took diverse forms. In his youth, he mentally chased beams of light.
Do you think thought experiment is still useful?
The thought experiment is useful in all aspects of life, not just science. Thought experiments allow us to explore possibilities, ponder scenarios, while applying what we already know about the world in order to give structure and order to our “experiments”.
What is Schrodinger's cat trying to prove?
Schrödinger's cat arose out of his musings on the peculiarities of EPR entanglement. Schrödinger wanted to show how Bohr's notion that nothing is fixed until it is measured could lead to logical absurdity if we imagined blowing entanglement up to everyday size.
What is thought experiment?
Thought experiments are performed in the imagination. We set up some situation, we observe what happens, then we try to draw appropriate conclusions. In this way, thought experiments resemble real experiments, except that they are experiments in the mind. The terms “thought experiment,” “imaginary experiment,” and “Gedankenexperiment” are used ...
What is the central claim of the book "Thought Experiments"?
One of the author’s central claims is that thought experiments are experiments that merely have not been performed. Develops a theory of the epistemic power of thought experiments in terms of Darwinian evolution.
What is Gendler's PhD thesis?
A revised version of Gendler’s PhD thesis, which discusses the role of imagination in thought experiments that use “exceptional cases” to generate new knowledge. Focuses on three case studies: Galileo’s falling bodies, Theseus’s Ship, and Parfit’s fission thought experiment concerning personal identity.
Who edited the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?
Brown, James Robert, and Yiftach Fehige. “Thought Experiments.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2019.
Who edited the model based reasoning experiment?
Arcangeli, Margherita. “Thought Experiments in Model-Based Reasoning.” In Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science. Edited by Lorenzo Magnani and Tommaso Bertolotti, 463–495. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2017.
Is stems from a conference out of print?
Stems from a conference at the University of Pittsburgh in 1986 and contains several excellent and influential articles on a wide range of topics. It is currently out of print, but fortunately, a PDF of the whole book is available online.
What if collection of thought experiments?
.Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy is a brief collection of over 100 classic and contemporary "thought experiments," each exploring an important philosophical argument. These thought experiments introduce students to the kind of disciplined thought required in philosophy, and awaken their intellectual curiosity. Featuring a clear and conversational writing style that doesn't dilute the ideas, the value of the book is in its simplicity-in both format and tone. Each thought experiment is accompanied by commentary from the author that explains its importance and provides thought-provoking questions, all encapsulated on two pages.
Who wrote the Five Minute Hypothesis?
: Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy". Books by Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell was a highly influential philosopher. Here are some books by and about the famous thinker.
What is the mad scientist's invention?
A mad scientist invents a machine that would allow you to live in a personalized simulation, similar to a video game or the Matrix. The scientist can guarantee that you will be happy in this machine as it caters to your every whim and fantasy, and while you are in the machine, you won't even know it is a simulation. All that said, every person and thing you encounter within the machine is simply a programmed simulation and nothing and no one you encounter will be real. The catch is this... if you choose to live in the simulation, you can never go back to the real world. What would you do? Spend the rest of your life where you are happy in a fantasy world? Or choose to live your life in the real world? Why?
Who wrote the book "The trolley problem"?
In this book, David Edmonds, coauthor of the bestselling Wittgenstein's Poker, tells the riveting story of why and how philosophers have struggled with this ethical dilemma, sometimes called the trolley problem. In the process, he provides an entertaining and informative tour through the history of moral philosophy.
Who wrote the book The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle?
The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle by Peter Singer. Here is the original article in which Peter Singer discusses "The Drowning Child" problem. Practical Ethics by Peter Singer. This is a widely read book on ethics by Peter Singer, who came up with this thought experiment.
Is it possible that the world sprang into being five minutes ago?
"There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago , exactly as it then was, with a population that “remembered” a wholly unreal past." -- From What if... Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy
What does all of this have to do with thought experiments?
What does all of this have to do with thought experiments? According to Brown, thought experiments are genuine examples of how the human mind can ‘perceive’ laws of nature by simply thinking about reality. This was the goal of rationalist (as opposed to empiricist) philosophers since Plato: to discover things about the world by sheer intellectual power, independently of empirical evidence, which was seen as unreliable.
Do thought experiments really work?
Whatever thought experiments really are, they have been instrumental in the progress of both philosophy and science, and they constitute a powerful tool for understanding the world. True, sometimes they don’t work, but the same can be said for physical experiments. In both cases it’s all in the soundness of the premises and the rigor with which the conclusions are derived.
What is the thought experiment?
The thought experiment: This thought experiment occurs in several of Ibn Sina (Avicenna)’s writings. We should imagine a man who is brought into existence as an adult, out of thin air, so he has no earlier memories. He is floating in the air, his eyes are closed, he doesn’t hear anything, and his limbs and fingers are spread out so he does not feel his own body either. Now the question is: Would this man be aware of himself?
What is the thought experiment Mengzi concludes?
This would not be because you hoped to gain the favor of the parents, praise from neighbors and friends, because you dislike the cries of the child, or because your reputation would suffer if you did not try to help the child. From this, Mengzi concludes that the feeling of compassion is fundamental to humans.
Why did Hume come up with this thought experiment?
Significance: Hume came up with this thought experiment as a counterexample to his idea that we learn about the world through experience. If that’s the case, we should not be able to fill in the missing shade of blue but it seems we can. Curiously though, when I presented this drawing to friends, they thought the man’s sweater was the missing shade of blue, but it isn’t! So perhaps it is not so easy to fill in the gap after all.
What is the Sleeping Beauty experiment?
Sleeping beauty. The thought experiment: Sleeping Beauty takes part in an experiment, where researchers put her to sleep. She is told that a fair coin will be flipped. At each waking, she is put back to sleep with a drug that will make her forget that waking. They toss a fair coin.
What do philosophers use to learn?
Philosophers use thought experiments, short stories that bring out intuitions. It is often not possible to do these experiments in real life, but by doing them in our heads we can learn something new about the nature of reality, about right and wrong, the existence of God and many other topics.
Does consciousness cease to exist?
consciousness ceases to exist only if the consciousness is the body itself .. but that is not the fact..consciousness is independent of the body , without consciousness the body is dead ....therefore , experience is came from consciousness not from the body..
Why is this bizarre thought experiment disturbing?
Why is this bizarre thought experiment disturbing? The mental experiment points out that the beetle is like our minds, and that we can’t know exactly what it is like in another individual’s mind. We can’t know exactly what other people are experiencing, or the uniqueness of their perspective. It’s an issue that’s very much related to the so-called hard problem of consciousness and the phenomenon of qualia.
Where does philosophy go?
Philosophy goes where hard science can't, or won't. Philosophers have a license to speculate about
What is the game theory problem in which a suspect is confronted with a rather difficult decision: Stay silent?
Top image: Isaac Gutiérrez Pascual; published with permission. 1. Prisoner’s Dilemma. This is the classic game theory problem in which a suspect is confronted with a rather difficult decision: Stay silent or confess to the crime. Trouble is, the suspect doesn’t know how their accomplice will respond.
Who was the first philosopher to write about abortion?
Here’s one for the ethicists — and you can blame the renowned moral philosopher Philippa Foot for this one. This thought experiment, of which there are now many variations, first appeared in Foot’s 1967 paper, “Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect.”
Who wrote the experience machine?
Philosopher Robert Nozick’ s Experience Machine is a strong hint that we should probably just plug ourselves into a kind of hedonistic version of The Matrix.
When do scientists use thought experiments?
Scientists also use thought experiments when particular physical experiments are impossible to conduct ( Carl Gustav Hempel labeled these sorts of experiment " theoretical experiments-in-imagination "), such as Einstein's thought experiment of chasing a light beam, leading to special relativity. This is a unique use of a scientific thought experiment, in that it was never carried out, but led to a successful theory, proven by other empirical means.
Why are thought experiments important?
However, they may make those theories themselves irrelevant, and could possibly create new problems that are just as difficult, or possibly more difficult to resolve.
What is the most ancient pattern of mathematical proof?
The ancient Greek deiknymi ( δείκνυμι ), or thought experiment, "was the most ancient pattern of mathematical proof ", and existed before Euclidean mathematics, where the emphasis was on the conceptual, rather than on the experimental part of a thought-experiment.
What did Ernst Mach use the Gedankenexperiment for?
Much later, Ernst Mach used the term Gedankenexperiment in a different way, to denote exclusively the imaginary conduct of a real experiment that would be subsequently performed as a real physical experiment by his students.
How can an experiment be interactive?
Thought experiments can also be interactive where the author invites people into his thought process through providing alternative paths with alternative outcomes within the narrative, or through interaction with a programmed machine, like a computer program.
How many types of thought experiments are there?
Generally speaking, there are seven types of thought experiments in which one reasons from causes to effects, or effects to causes:
How do we gain new information from thought experiments?
In thought experiments, we gain new information by rearranging or reorganizing already known empirical data in a new way and drawing new (a priori) inferences from them or by looking at these data from a different and unusual perspective. In Galileo's thought experiment, for example, the rearrangement of empirical experience consists of the original idea of combining bodies of different weights.
Why do philosophers use thought experiments?
As Helen explains, many philosophers use thought experiments to contextualize and reveal the intuitions behind their ideas. Thought experiments are basically like short stories that help give meaning to ideas that can be difficult to grasp.
Who came up with the idea of the thought experiment?
Philosopher David Hume came up with this thought experiment while developing his idea that people learn about the world by experiencing it. This experiment is meant to be a counterexample of his argument.
What is the belief that pleasure alone is all you need to be happy?
The belief that pleasure alone is all you need to be happy is known as hedonism , and the experience machine offers a direct challenge to hedonism.
Why did Robert Nozick believe in the idea of a machine?
The philosopher Robert Nozick believed this is because humans know that we want more than just pleasure in our journeys. We have dreams and goals that go far beyond anything being plugged into a machine can offer us.
What can experience machines convince you about?
The experience machine can convince you that whatever you want is really happening. If you want to believe you are racing a horse, you will be. Amazing!
What color has the man seen in the thought experiment?
In this thought experiment, the man pictured has seen every color except for one specific shade of blue. However, if he’s seen other gradations of blue, he could arrange them in his mind and understand that one is missing.
Is Inga's belief about the location of the museum more or less useful than Otto's belief?
It can be reasonably argued that Inga’s belief about the location of the museum is no more or less useful than Otto’s belief, though one is based on memory and one is based on information in a notebook.
Who invented the thought experiment?
This is one of the most famous thought experiments in physics invented during 1935 by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger as his argument against the theory of Quantum Superposition that was proposed by other scientists at that time.
How many types of thought experiments are there?
If you fancy yourself a kind of genius or if you just want to have some fun thinking about strange things; here are fifteen types of thought experiments that are mind-blowing. If you come up with a new unique answer then you may be the next Einstein!
What is the holographic universe?
The thought experiment about the holographic universe notes that everything in the universe is contained and replicated on a different scale in any smaller piece of it. Just like each part of a laser-made hologram contains the entire image, the holographic universe theorem says that everything is simply a fully contained copy of everything else. The only difference is scale .
What was Albert Einstein's job?
When Albert Einstein was a lowly patent clerk, the job was so easy for him to do. It was so boring that he finished his work quickly each day and then spent the rest of the time staring out the window and considering his thought experiments.
Why are thought experiments not solvable?
Other times you will end up with a thought experiment that is not solvable because the answer lies beyond human understanding. No matter the frustrations with these issues, thought experiments are useful to stretch the mind in ways that most people rarely do and geniuses do all the time.
Who said a philosopher is like a person freed from the cave?
In the dialogue written by Plato, Socrates says that a philosopher is like a person freed from the cave. The philosopher sees the true nature of reality, not the manufactured reality of the shadows that are thought to be the reality by those held in the cave. 2.
Who said that people lived in caves?
In this thought experiment, Plato has Socrates explain that some people have lived all their lives in a cave held in place by chains and facing a blank wall. They watch the shadows on the wall of things passing by the front of a fire, which is behind them. They create names for the shadows.