Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-06T03:38:54.118Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thought Experiments Rethought—and Reperceived

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Tamar Szabó Gendler
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Contemplating imaginary scenarios that evoke certain sorts of quasi-sensory intuitions may bring us to new beliefs about contingent features of the natural world. These beliefs may be produced quasi-observationally; the presence of a mental image may play a crucial cognitive role in the formation of the belief in question. And this albeit fallible quasi-observational belief-forming mechanism may, in certain contexts, be sufficiently reliable to count as a source of justification. This sheds light on the central puzzle surrounding scientific thought experiment, which is how contemplation of an imaginary scenario can lead to new knowledge about contingent features of the natural world.

Type
The Epistemology of thought Experiments
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 71 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2002 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers , December 2004 , pp. 1152 - 1163
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

For comments and discussion, I am grateful to John Hawthorne, Ishani Maitra, and Zoltán Gendler Szabó, and to my cosymposiasts and chair at the 2002 PSA Meetings: James Robert Brown, James McAllister, Nancy Nersessian, and John Norton.

References

Bishop, Michael (1999), “Why Thought Experiments Are Not Arguments”, Why Thought Experiments Are Not Arguments 66:534–541.Google Scholar
Brown, James Robert (1991a), The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brown, James Robert (1991b), “Thought Experiments: A Platonic Account”, in Horowitz and Massey 1991, 119–128.Google Scholar
Brown, James Robert (1993), “Why Empiricism Won’t Work”, in Hull, David, Forbes, Micky, and Okruhlik, Kathleen (eds.), PSA 1992, Vol. 2. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association.Google Scholar
Brown, James Robert (2004a), “Peeking into Plato’s Heaven”, Peeking into Plato’s Heaven 71 (Proceedings): 1126–1138.Google Scholar
Brown, James Robert (2004b), “Why Thought Experiments Transcend Experience”, in Hitchcock 2004, 23–43.Google Scholar
Damasio, Antonio (1994), Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam.Google Scholar
Damasio, Antonio (1999), The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt.Google Scholar
Gendler, Tamar Szabó (1998), “Galileo and the Indispensability of Scientific Thought Experiments”, Galileo and the Indispensability of Scientific Thought Experiments 49:397–424.Google Scholar
Gendler, Tamar Szabó (2000), Thought Experiment: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases. New York: Garland/Routledge.Google Scholar
Gendler, Tamar Szabó (2002), “Thought Experiment”, Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. New York and London: Nature/Routledge.Google Scholar
Hitchcock, Christopher (ed.) (2004), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Tamara, and Massey, Gerald J. (eds.) (1991), Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy. Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst ([1926] 1976), Knowledge and Error. Dordrecht: Reidel. Translation of the 5th ed. of Erkenntnis und Irrtum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mach, Ernst ([1933] 1960), The Science of Mechanics. Translated by McCormack, Thomas J.. LaSalle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
McAllister, James (1996), “The Evidential Significance of Thought Experiments in Science”, The Evidential Significance of Thought Experiments in Science 27(2): 233–250.Google Scholar
McAllister, James (2004), “Thought Experiments and the Belief in Phenomena” Philosophy of Science 71 (Proceedings): 1164–1175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, John D. (1991), “Thought Experiments in Einstein’s Work”, in Horowitz and Massey 1991, 129–148.Google Scholar
Norton, John D. (1996), “Are Thought Experiments Just What You Always Thought?”, Are Thought Experiments Just What You Always Thought? 26(3): 333–366.Google Scholar
Norton, John D. (2004a), “On Thought Experiments: Is There More to the Argument?” Philosophy of Science 71 (Proceedings): 1139–1151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, John D. (2004b), “Why Thought Experiments Do Not Transcend Empiricism”, in Hitchcock, Christopher (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Blackwell, 44–66.Google Scholar
Reisberg, Daniel (1996), “The Non-ambiguity of Mental Images”, in Cornoldi, Cesare et al. (eds.), Stretching the Imagination: Representation and Transformation in Mental Imagery. New York: Oxford University Press, 127–131.Google Scholar
Shepard, Roger N., and Cooper, Lynn A. (1982), Mental Images and Their Transformations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Shepard, Roger N., and Metzler, J. (1971), “Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects”, Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects 171:701–703.Google ScholarPubMed
Stevin, Simon (1955), The Principal Works of Simon Stevin, Ernst Crone et al. (eds.), Vol. 1, General Introduction and Mechanics, Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (ed.). Amsterdam: C. W. Swets and Zeitlinger.Google Scholar