scholarly journals Power and Limits of a Picture: On the Notion of Thought Experiments in Philosophy of Literature

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-82
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Philosophy Of Literature

Epistemological Status of Models and Thought Experiments in Economics

2015 ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Koshovets ◽  
T. Varkhotov
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Theoretical Modeling ◽  
Epistemological Status ◽  
Epistemological Analysis ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

The paper considers the analogy of theoretical modeling and thought experiment in economics. The authors provide historical and epistemological analysis of thought experiments and their relations to the material experiments in natural science. They conclude that thought experiments as instruments are used both in physics and in economics, but in radically different ways. In the natural science, a thought experiment is tightly connected to the material experimentation, while in economics it is used in isolation. Material experiments serve as a means to demonstrate the reality, while thought experiments cannot be a full-fledged instrument of studying the reality. Rather, they constitute the instrument of structuring the field of inquiry.

Epistemic Intuitions in Fake-Barn Thought Experiments

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Colaço ◽  
Wesley Buckwalter ◽  
Stephen Stich
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Fake Barn

Setting Health-Care Priorities

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torbjörn Tännsjö
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Life Extension ◽  
Weighted Sum ◽  
Absolute Priority ◽  
Abstract Thought

The three most promising theories of distributive ethics are presented: Utilitarianism, with or without a prioritarian amendment. The maximin/leximin theory. Egalitarianism. Utilitarianism urges us to maximize the sum-total of happiness. When prioritarianism is added to utilitarianism we are instead urged to maximize a weighted sum of happiness, where happiness weighs less the happier you are and unhappiness weighs more the more miserable you are. The maximin/leximin theory urges us to give absolute priority to those who are worst off. Egalitarianism gives us two goals: to maximize happiness but also to level out differences with regard to happiness between persons. All of these theories are justifiable. In abstract thought experiments they conflict. When applied in real life they converge in an unexpected manner: more resources should be directed to mental health and less to marginal life extension. It is doubtful if the desired change will take place, however. What gets in its way is human irrationality.

What is—or, for that Matter, isn’t—‘Experimental’ Semantics?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Natural Language Semantics ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Language Semantics ◽  
Experimental Semantics

This chapter examines the currently fashionable notion of ‘experimental semantics’, and argues that most work in natural language semantics has always been experimental. The oft-cited dichotomy between ‘theoretical’ (or ‘armchair’) and ‘experimental’ is bogus and should be dropped form the discourse. The same holds for dichotomies like ‘intuition-based’ (or ‘thought experiments’) vs. ‘empirical’ work (and ‘real experiments’). The so-called new ‘empirical’ methods are often nothing more than collecting the large-scale ‘intuitions’ or, doing multiple thought experiments. Of course the use of multiple subjects could well allow for a better experiment than the more traditional single or few subject methodologies. But whether or not this is the case depends entirely on the question at hand. In fact, the chapter considers several multiple-subject studies and shows that the particular methodology in those cases does not necessarily provide important insights, and the chapter argues that some its claimed benefits are incorrect.

Zombies and Dolls

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcello Massimini ◽  
Giulio Tononi
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Turing Test ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter uses thought experiments and practical examples to introduce, in a very accessible way, the hard problem of consciousness. Soon, machines may behave like us to pass the Turing test and scientists may succeed in copying and simulating the inner workings of the brain. Will all this take us any closer to solving the mysteries of consciousness? The reader is taken to meet different kind of zombies, the philosophical, the digital, and the inner ones, to understand why many, scientists and philosophers alike, doubt that the mind–body problem will ever be solved.

Narrow Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Yli-Vakkuri ◽  
John Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Central Topic ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Narrow Content

Narrow mental content, if there is such a thing, is content that is entirely determined by the goings-on inside the head of the thinker. A central topic in the philosophy of mind since the mid-1970s has been whether there is a kind of mental content that is narrow in this sense. It is widely conceded, thanks to famous thought experiments by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, that there is a kind of mental content that is not narrow. But it is often maintained that there is also a kind of mental content that is narrow, and that such content can play various key explanatory roles relating, inter alia, to epistemology and the explanation of action. This book argues that this is a forlorn hope. It carefully distinguishes a variety of conceptions of narrow content and a variety of explanatory roles that might be assigned to narrow content. It then argues that, once we pay sufficient attention to the details, there is no promising theory of narrow content in the offing.

Truth-conditionality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Yli-Vakkuri ◽  
John Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Truth Values ◽  
Narrow Content ◽  
Radical Form

In Chapter 2 we argue that internalists are committed to a kind of relativism, and that theirs is a particularly radical form of relativism. Thought experiments involving certain symmetries across space and/or time play a starring role. If the kinds of symmetries featured in them are possible, we argue, the truth values of narrow content must be relative to some very unusual parameters.

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