Thought Experiment: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases

by Gendler,Tamar Szabo

• ISBN13: 9780815336563
• ISBN10: 081533656X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-02
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book offers a novel analysis of the widely-used but ill-understood technique of thought experiment. Thought experiment, which is a process of reasoning carried out within the context of a well-articulated imaginary scenario in order to answer a specific question about a non-imaginary situation, is extensively employed in fields as diverse as physics, computer science, law, and philosophy. The author argues that the powers and limits of this methodology can be traced to the fact that when the contemplation of an imaginary scenario brings us to new knowledge, it does so by forcing us to make sense of exceptional cases. Though primarily written for a philosophical audience, this volume is also likely to interest cognitive scientists, psychologists, and historians of science. At the present time, only two other book-length studies of this topic are available in English.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Revisions Made	x
Summary of Contents	xi
Introduction	xii
Galileo (First Case Study)	xiii
The Ship of Theseus (Second Case Study)	xiii
Personal Identity (Third Case Study)	xiv
Conclusion	xiv
Acknowledgments	xvi
Introduction	1	(32)
Exceptional Cases	2	(12)
Characterization of ``Exceptional Case''	2	(1)
Exceptional Cases in Theories with Privileged Characteristics	2	(4)
Exceptional Cases in Theories without Privileged Characteristics	6	(2)
Ways of Accounting for Exceptional Cases	8	(1)
Patterns of Accounting	9	(3)
Application to the Question at Hand	12	(2)
Imaginary Cases	14	(4)
Thought Experiments	18	(10)
What is a Thought Experiment?	18	(3)
The Tripartite Structure of Thought Experiments	21	(4)
Three Sorts of Thought Experiments	25	(3)
Appendix to Chapter 1	28	(5)
Galileo	33	(32)
Argumentative Reconstruction	33	(6)
The Elimination Thesis	34	(1)
Clarification of Terminology	34	(2)
The Negative Argument and the Positive Argument	36	(1)
The Dispensability Thesis and the Derivativity Thesis	37	(2)
Galileo's Thought Experiment and its Reconstruction	39	(8)
Galileo's Thought Experiment	39	(2)
Reconstruction of the Galileo Case	41	(1)
Four Ways out for the Aristotelian	42	(3)
What the Reconstruction Misses	45	(2)
Denying the Dispensability and Derivativity Theses	47	(15)
Rejecting Reconstruction: What the Thought Experiment Does	47	(2)
Rejecting the Positive Argument: What Makes these Beliefs New?	49	(4)
Rejecting the Negative Argument: What Makes these Beliefs Knowledge?	53	(3)
Constructivism and the Contrast with Norton and Brown	56	(6)
Conclusion	62	(3)
Theseus	65	(46)
Conceptual Thought Experiments	65	(2)
The Story	67	(1)
The Puzzle	68	(2)
Is the Ship of Theseus an Exceptional Case?	70	(9)
Automatic and Specially-Secured Identity	70	(2)
Organisms, Artifacts, and Exceptional Cases	72	(7)
Attempts to Dissolve the Problem	79	(9)
Van Inwagen	79	(3)
Identity Under a Sortal	82	(2)
Summary	84	(1)
Parfit	85	(3)
Attempts to Solve the Problem	88	(9)
A Traditional Solution: Hirsch	88	(3)
A Meta-solution: Nozick	91	(6)
The Proposed Diagnosis	97	(14)
Some Very General Candidate Principles	99	(2)
Remarks on the Candidates	101	(3)
A Messier Puzzle	104	(2)
The Proposed Diagnosis	106	(5)
Personal Identity	111	(38)
Introduction: The Facts of Life	111	(4)
Setting the Stage	115	(5)
A Context for Parfit's Argument	115	(1)
What Fission Might Show	116	(4)
The Argument and its Crucial Assumptions	120	(10)
Parfit's Fission Argument	120	(5)
Four Crucial Distinctions	125	(2)
Comments on these Distinctions	127	(2)
The Intrinsicness Premise	129	(1)
Summary	129	(1)
Two Unsuccessful Strategies	130	(4)
An Unsuccessful Attack on the Intrinsicness Premise	130	(1)
An Unsuccessful Defense of the Intrinsicness Premise	131	(3)
Why is the Fission Argument so Compelling?	134	(4)
The Casewise Explanatory Difference Principle	134	(2)
The Casewise Explanatory Principle and the Method of Agreement	136	(1)
Fission and the Method of Agreement	136	(2)
How Absent Features can be Explanatory	138	(8)
Human Bodies and Borrowed Luster	138	(1)
Explaining Valuation	139	(3)
Exceptions, Norms and Local Adaptation	142	(1)
Prudential Concern in a World of Fission	143	(3)
Conclusion	146	(3)
Summary	146	(1)
Larger Lessons	147	(2)
Conclusion	149	(12)
Factive Thought Experiments: Galileo	150	(4)
Conceptual Thought Experiments: The Ship of Theseus	154	(2)
Valuational Thought Experiments: Personal Identity	156	(5)
Bibliographies	161	(90)
Bibliography of Works Cited	161	(28)
Bibliography on Galileo, Experiment and Thought Experiment	189	(5)
Bibliography on Personal Identity and Identity	194	(35)
Bibliography on Thought Experiment and Experiment	229	(22)
Index	251