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    Any thought experiment is really a (possibly disguised) a... — Carmelics
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    Home/Skepticism
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    Any thought experiment is really a (possibly disguised) argument.

    SkepticismTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.A thought experiment starts with premises grounded in experience.
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    • 2.A thought experiment follows deductive or inductive rules of inference in arriving at its conclusion.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Thought experiments like Galileo's falling bodies generate knowledge through imaginative intuition, not explicit inferential steps.
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    • 2.If the epistemic work is done by phenomenal imagination rather than inference, the argument-reconstruction is post-hoc rationalization, not the experiment itself.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Brown argues that thought experiments give us direct a priori access to Platonic laws of nature, bypassing argument entirely.
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    • 2.If some thought experiments yield conclusions that outstrip any premises the experimenter could have articulated beforehand, they cannot be reconstructed as arguments without circularity.
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    Related

    A thought experiment follows deductive or inductive rules of inference in arrivi...A thought experiment starts with premises grounded in experience.Brown argues that thought experiments give us direct a priori access to Platonic...If some thought experiments yield conclusions that outstrip any premises the exp...
    +2 moreShow less
    If the epistemic work is done by phenomenal imagination rather than inference, t...Thought experiments like Galileo's falling bodies generate knowledge through ima...

    Similar

    A thought experiment that is presented in argument form loses its typi...89%Aristotle uses thought experiments for argumentative persuasion85%Every real world experiment can be rephrased as an argument84%Aristotle employs thought experiments where insight cannot be readily ...80%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: thought-experiment
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    John D. Norton is the most influential advocate of what we call “the argument view” of thought experiments (see Norton 1991, 1993, 1996, 2004a,b, 2008). Even though the argument view seems to be a natural option for empiricists, it seems that most empiricists find Norton’s argument view too strong. For this reason, many participants in the debate about thought experiments place themselves between the extremes of Norton and Brown, who function as useful foils for apparently more moderate outlooks
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit