Naming as a Method of Philosophical Thought Experiment: Focusing on Students’ Presentation Cases in Aesthetics Courses

Kant Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 171-204
Author(s):  
Hee Jin Yang
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Philosophical Thought

scholarly journals The Trolley and the Pinto

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryant Walker Smith
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Cyber Physical Systems ◽  
Trolley Problem ◽  
Automated Driving ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
Physical Systems ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Automated driving has attracted substantial public and scholarly attention. This brief Article describes how that attention has brought new fame to a classic philosophical thought experiment (the “trolley problem”), critiques how this thought experiment has been applied in that context, proposes a more practical extension of that experiment based on risk rather than harm, notes that this extension may still involve programming value judgments, argues with reference to the Ford Pinto debacle that these judgments could inflame juries or the public at large, and emphasizes the need for appropriately focused public discussion of these issues. The Article may be especially relevant to developers and regulators of cyber-physical systems, including the automated driving systems that operate self-driving vehicles.

scholarly journals ExperiencingForce Majeure

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Christopher Falzon
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Philosophical Text ◽  
Force Majeure ◽  
The Human Condition

This article looks at the 2014 Swedish comedy-drama Force Majeure as a kind of moral thought experiment, but also insofar as it might not fit such a model. The idea of a cinematic ethics, of cinema as providing an avenue for thinking through ethics and exploring ethical questions, finds at least one expression in the idea of film as experimental in this sense. At the same time, simply subsuming film to the philosophical thought experiment risks forgetting what film itself brings to the proceedings; and how the cinematic medium might allow for an experimentation that goes beyond what can be done within the philosophical text. As experimental in a broad sense, Force Majeure evokes an experience, the extraordinary event beyond one's control, capable of putting a moral agent to the test, challenging one's sense of who one is and what one stands for. The film unfolds as a reflection on the results of this encounter with experience, and on the kind of moral self this experiment brings to light; and in the course of this reflection, it suggests some general conclusions about the human condition.

Film as Argument

Film Studies ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Wartenberg
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Counter Example

Film theorists and philosophers have both contended that narrative fiction films cannot present philosophical arguments. After canvassing a range of objections to this claim, this article defends the view that films are able to present philosophical thought experiments that can function as enthymemic arguments. An interpretation of Michel Gondry‘s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is given in which the films criticism of the technology of memory erasure is just such a thought experiment, one that functions as a counter-example to utilitarianism as a theory for the justification of social practices.

scholarly journals The Right to an Artificial Reality? Freedom of Thought and the Fiction of Philip K. Dick

2021 ◽  
pp. 377
Author(s):  
Marc Blitz
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Experience Machine ◽  
Real People ◽  
Freedom Of Thought ◽  
The Right

n Anarchy, State, and Utopia, the philosopher Robert Nozick describes what he calls an “Experience Machine.” In essence, it produces a form of virtual reality (VR). People can use it to immerse themselves in a custom-designed dream: They have the experience of climbing a mountain, reading a book, or conversing with a friend when they are actually lying isolated in a tank with electrodes feeding perceptions into their brain. Nozick describes the Experience Machine as part of a philosophical thought experiment—one designed to show that a valuable life consists of more than mental states, like those we receive in this machine. As Nozick says, “we want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them.” An 80-year sequence of experiences generated by the machine would not be of equivalent value to the lifetime of the identical set of experiences we derive from interactions with real people (who are not illusions, but have minds of their own), and with a physical universe that lies outside of us. On the contrary, says Nozick, a solipsistic life in the Experience Machine is a deeply impoverished one.

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.

A Politics of Intensity: Some Aspects of Acceleration in Simondon and Deleuze

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-517
Author(s):  
Yuk Hui ◽  
Louis Morelle
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
The Other ◽  
Generic Concept ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Ontological Ground ◽  
Shed Light

This article aims to clarify the question of speed and intensity in the thoughts of Simondon and Deleuze, in order to shed light on the recent debates regarding accelerationism and its politics. Instead of starting with speed, we propose to look into the notion of intensity and how it serves as a new ontological ground in Simondon's and Deleuze's philosophy and politics. Simondon mobilises the concept of intensity to criticise hylomorphism and substantialism; Deleuze, taking up Simondon's conceptual framework, repurposes it for his ontology of difference, elevating intensity to the rank of generic concept of being, thus bypassing notions of negativity and individuals as base, in favour of the productive and universal character of difference. In Deleuze, the correlation between intensity and speed is fraught with ambiguities, with each term threatening to subsume the other; this rampant tension becomes explicitly antagonistic when taken up by the diverse strands of contemporary accelerationism, resulting in two extreme cases in the posthuman discourse: either a pure becoming, achieved through destruction, or through abstraction that does away with intensity altogether; or an intensity without movement or speed, that remains a pure jouissance. Both cases appear to stumble over the problem of individuation, if not disindividuation. Hence, we wish to raise the following question: in what way can one think of an accelerationist politics with intensity, or an intensive politics without the fetishisation of speed? We consider this question central to the interrogation of the limits of acceleration and posthuman discourse, thus requiring a new philosophical thought on intensity and speed.

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