scholarly journals Gulliver and the Rabbis: Counterfactual Truth in Science and the Talmud

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Menachem Fisch
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
Gulliver's Travels ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Advance Knowledge

The paper presents Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels as the first attempt to claim that thought experiments, namely the close analysis of contrived counterfactual scenarios, are the only way we challenge normative framework assumptions and learn anything significantly new in and outside science. The standard epistemologies of his day – Baconian empiricism and Cartesian rationalism –fiercely ridiculed in the course of Gulliver's third voyage, are cruelly dismissed as powerless to advance knowledge, and keep it in normative check. The transformative effect of the clever thought experiments presented in the three other voyages (of imagining London shrunk to a twelfth of its size and enlarged to giant proportions, and a more responsible and intelligent race of beings inserted above (normally sized) humans) enable Swift to obtain critical normative distance from several major assumptions about politics, religion, aesthetics, ethics, and much more, including the limits of the thought experiment itself. In the second part of the paper, the impressivre use to which the Talmudic literature puts such imagined counterfactual scenarios, is examined, with special reference to ethics and law.

scholarly journals Gulliver and the Rabbis: Counterfactual Truth in Science and the Talmud

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Menachem Fisch
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Significant Others ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
Gulliver's Travels

The paper presents Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels as the first systematic attempt to claim that the normal methods of testing belief and opinion for clarity, consistence, coherence, and how they stand to the facts are powerless when applied to deep-seated normative commitments, or what Wittgenstein dubbed “framework truths.” To subject our norms to normative critique requires a measure of self-alienation that cannot be achieved merely by looking hard at or thinking hard about our world and ourselves. However, by closely examining the contrived counterfactual scenarios (or, as I have shown in former work, by exposure to the normative critique of significant others), that Swift is shown to claim, such normative framework assumptions can be challenged to great effect! The standard epistemologies of his day—Baconian empiricism and Cartesian rationalism—fiercely ridiculed in the course of Gulliver’s third voyage are cruelly dismissed as powerless to change the course of science and keep it in normative check. The transformative effect of the clever thought experiments presented in the three other voyages (of imagining London shrunk to a twelfth of its size and enlarged to giant proportions, and a more responsible and intelligent race of beings inserted above (normally sized) humans) enable Swift to obtain critical normative distance from several major assumptions about politics, religion, aesthetics, ethics, and much more, including the limits of the thought experiment itself. The paper then goes to show how the same kind of counterfactual scenarios are put to impressive use in the Talmudic literature, with special reference to foundational questions of ethics and law.

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.

Further Insights on Fake-Barn Cases and Intuition Variation

Episteme ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Carsten Bergenholtz ◽  
Jacob Busch ◽  
Sara Kier Praëm
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Risk Attitude ◽  
Knowledge Ascription ◽  
Underlying Factor ◽  
Demographic Group ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
Group Variation ◽  
Fake Barn

Abstract Studies in experimental philosophy claim to document intuition variation. Some studies focus on demographic group-variation; Colaço et al., for example, claim that age generates intuition variation regarding knowledge attribution in a fake-barn scenario. Other studies claim to show intuition variation when comparing the intuition of philosophers to that of non-philosophers. The main focus has been on documenting intuition variation rather than uncovering what underlying factor(s) may prompt such a phenomenon. We explore a number of suggested explanatory hypotheses put forth by Colaço et al., as well as an attempt to test Sosa's claim that intuition variance is a result of people ‘filling in the details’ of a thought experiment differently from one another. We show (i) that people respond consistently across conditions aimed at ‘filling in the details’ of thought experiments, (ii) that risk attitude does not seem relevant to knowledge ascription, (iii) that people's knowledge ascriptions do not vary due to views about defeasibility of knowledge. Yet, (iv) we find no grounds to reject that a large proportion of people appear to adhere to so-called subjectivism about knowledge, which may explain why they generally have intuitions about the fake-barn scenario that vary from those of philosophers.

scholarly journals Natural Science and Supernatural Thought Experiments

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 389
Author(s):  
James Robert Brown
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Theological Thought

Religious notions have long played a role in epistemology. Theological thought experiments, in particular, have been effective in a wide range of situations in the sciences. Some of these are merely picturesque, others have been heuristically important, and still others, as I will argue, have played a role that could be called essential. I will illustrate the difference between heuristic and essential with two examples. One of these stems from the Newton–Leibniz debate over the nature of space and time; the other is a thought experiment of my own constructed with the aim of making a case for a more liberal view of evidence in mathematics.

scholarly journals Identity Theft: A Thought Experiment on the Fragility of Identity

Conatus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
David Menčik
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Identity Theft ◽  
Psychological Continuity ◽  
Temporal Proximity ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Prestige

This paper intends to discuss some aspects of what we conceive as personal identity: what it consists in, as well as its alleged fragility. First I will try to justify the methodology used in this paper, that is, the use of allegories in ontological debates, especialy in the form of thought experiments and science fiction movies. Then I will introduce an original thought experiment I call “Who am I actually?,” one that was coined with the intent to shed light on several aspects of the issue under examination, that is, the fragility of personal identity. Then I will move on to Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige, as well as to Derek Parfit’s ‘divided minds’ thought experiment, to further discuss the fragility of personal identity; next to identity theft, the prospect of duplication is also intriguing, especially with regard to the psychological impact this might have on both the prototype and the duplicate. I will conclude with the view that spatial and temporal proximity or coexistence, especially when paired with awareness on behalf of the duplicates, would expectedly result in the infringement of the psychological continuity of one’s identity.

Thought Experiments

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Robert Brown ◽  
Michael T. Stuart
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Widespread Agreement ◽  
The World ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Insight Into

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 interchangeably. There is no consensus on a definition, but there is widespread agreement on which are standard examples. It is also widely agreed that they play a central role in a number of fields, especially physics and philosophy. 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? Answers range from “We don’t really learn anything new” to “We have some sort of a priori insight into how nature works.” In between there are a great variety of rival alternative accounts. There is still no consensus; debate is wide open on almost every question pertaining to thought experiments.

Okinawa as dystopia: panoptic monitoring systems in schools

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 251-264
Author(s):  
Kotoe Kishimoto ◽  
Eisuke Saito
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Monitoring System ◽  
Clinical Psychologist ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Critical Friends ◽  
System A ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Self Study ◽  
Teachers And Parents ◽  
The City

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate a dystopian situation with special reference to how a panoptic monitoring system emerges in schools. To satisfy this aim, there will be a close analysis of the city of Nago in Okinawa Prefecture, where there is a huge debate over the new US Marine base construction and how it greatly influences people’s lives. Design/methodology/approach This study will employ a self-study by the first author, who is a clinical psychologist under the board of education in the city. This self-study aims to examine the lived experiences of the author based on interactions with critical friends. Findings The government’s selection of the site for the new base created a schism in the community, and the introduction of compensations led to the establishment of a communal panoptic monitoring system. This communal panoptic monitoring largely influences the relationships between pupils, teachers and parents. Further, another panoptic monitoring system has developed inside the Nago schools due to the intensification of the assessment policies given by the ministry in Tokyo. Originality/value This investigation purports to analyse a dystopian situation with special reference to how a panoptic monitoring system, a key element of a dystopia, emerges in schools.

Are Thought Experiments Just What You Thought?

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Norton
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Science Writing ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Original Intent ◽  
The World

Whatever the original intent, the introduction of the term ‘thought experiment’ has proved to be one of the great public relations coups of science writing. For generations of readers of scientific literature, the term has planted the seed of hope that the fragment of text they have just read is more than mundane. Because it was a thought experiment, does it not tap into that infallible font of all wisdom in empiricist science, the experiment? And because it was conducted in thought, does it not miraculously escape the need for the elaborate laboratories and bloated budgets of experimental science?These questions in effect pose the epistemological problem of thought experiments in the sciences:Thought experiments are supposed to give us information about our physical world. From where can this information come?One enticing response to the problem is to imagine that thought experiments draw from some special source of knowledge of the world that transcends our ordinary epistemic resources.

Counter Thought Experiments

2007 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 155-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Robert Brown
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Bounce Back

Let's begin with an old example. In De Rerum Naturua, Lucretius presented a thought experiment to show that space is infinite. We imagine ourselves near the alleged edge of space; we throw a spear; we see it either sail through the ‘edge’ or we see it bounce back. In the former case the ‘edge’ isn't the edge, after all. In the latter case, there must be something beyond the ‘edge’ that repelled the spear. Either way, the ‘edge’ isn't really an edge of space, after all. So space is infinite.

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