What is a thought experiment in philosophy?
Philosophy. In philosophy, a thought experiment typically presents an imagined scenario with the intention of eliciting an intuitive or reasoned response about the way things are in the thought experiment.
What was the point of Descartes thought experiments?
The purpose of Descartes’ “thought experiment” with the lump of wax was to show that: E. knowledge must be founded on reason rather than sense perception.
Who his ideas were an example of a thought experiment?
Albert Einstein used thought experiments for some of his most important discoveries. The most famous of his thought experiments was on a beam of light, which was made into a brilliant children’s book.
What is a thought experiment called?
By Sidney Perkowitz • Edit History. Table of Contents. Gedankenexperiment, (German: “thought experiment”) term used by German-born physicist Albert Einstein to describe his unique approach of using conceptual rather than actual experiments in creating the theory of relativity.
Who came up with thought experiment?
Ernst Mach is commonly credited with introducing the word “thought experiment” (Gadankenexperiment) and thereby coining a term for philosophical discussion (most recently Krauthausen 2015, p. 15).
Who is the proponent of thought experiment?
What is the most famous thought experiment?
One of the most well known thought experiments in the field of ethics is the “Trolley Problem,” which goes something like this: a madman has tied five innocent people to a trolley track. An out of control trolley car is careening toward them, and is moments away from running them over.
How are thought experiments used?
Thought experiments are basically devices of the imagination. They are employed for various purposes such an entertainment, education, conceptual analysis, exploration, hypothesizing, theory selection, theory implementation, etc. Some applications are more controversial than others.
How did Einstein do his thought experiments?
Einstein’s thought experiments took diverse forms. In his youth, he mentally chased beams of light. For special relativity, he employed moving trains and flashes of lightning to explain his most penetrating insights.
What does René Descartes believe?
1.4 Innate Ideas. Descartes’ commitment to innate ideas places him in a rationalist tradition tracing back to Plato. Knowledge of the nature of reality derives from ideas of the intellect, not the external senses. An important part of metaphysical inquiry therefore involves learning to think with the intellect.
What was the conclusion of Einstein’s thought experiment What were the implications of this discovery?
From the correspondence revealed by his thought experiment, Einstein concluded that “it is impossible to discover by experiment whether a given system of coordinates is accelerated, or whether…the observed effects are due to a gravitational field.” This correspondence between gravitational mass and inertial mass is …
Did Einstein know about Michelson Morley experiment?
Yes, Einstein was aware of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The Michelson-Morley experiment looked for an absolutely stationary space the Earth moves through. The near-null result is evidence the aether is not an absolutely stationary space.
Who invented thought experiments?
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.
Are thought experiments rationalistic?
The author argues for a rationalistic, or Platonistic account of thought experiments, claiming that in some (but not all) we gain a priori access to the abstract realm of laws of nature. Originally published in 1991. Brown, James Robert, and Yiftach Fehige. “Thought Experiments.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Do thought experiments support or oppose a theory?
The thought experiments that have received most of the attention are taken to provide evidence for or against a theory, putting them on a par with real-world experiments (see, e.g., Gendler 2004). The different ways to use thought experiments, of course, do not exclude one another.
What are some important questions about thought experiments?
There are several important questions about thought experiments that naturally arise, including what kinds of thought experiments there are, what roles they play, and how, if at all, they work. This last question has been the focus of much of the literature: How can we learn something new about the world just by thinking?