Oh Nietzsche, you…

How, if some day or night, a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliness and say to you: "This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sign . . . must return to you—all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over—a grain of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never did I hear anything more godlike!" If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and everything, "Do you want this more and innumerable times more?" would weigh upon your actions as the greatest stress. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation?

Friedrich Nietzsche, Gay Science

Dr. Quantum

 

Make examples, not poor examples!(?)

Jackson, S. (1986). Building a case for claims about discourse structure. In: D. G. Ellis & W. A. Donohane (eds.). Contemporary Issues in Language and Discourse (pp. 129-147). Hillsdale: Erlbaum

 

Experimenters observe a number of individually uninteresting people in order to make general claims about individual human processes; discourse analysts observe a number of individually uninteresting messages in order to make general claims about rules or other social structures.

What is analytic induction?

The aim of discourse analysis is to discover “rules, patterns, properties and structures of natural discourse”. In order to do so, the discourse analyst proceeds as follows: (1) gathers many, many examples of what he or she believes are instances of a certain phenomenon; (2) the data is then used to build up, “inductively”, a hypothesis; (3) tests the hypothesis on the examples previously gathered; (4) searches for counter-examples. This method is named analytic induction.

Note, first, that the data need not be “real” – that is, it can be either gathered from the field or made-up – since what we need to establish is a claim about the underground structure, not about one or another instantiation of that structure. In that under-ground, the analyst needs to identify a rule or a pattern. One way of identifying such rule is to point to the fact that disregarding that rule produces (noticeable) abnormality. In other words: the rule is there since language users can detect its being disregarded. If we can find instances when the rule is not obeyed and the discourse/exchange runs normally, then we must reformulate our rule.

As neat as this may sound, the method has often been contested, especially by the ones used to the explicit rigour of quantitative research. As Jackson puts it: “to many critics, the lack of an organized body of principles indicates a lack of method” (p. 130). Jackson’s answer to this is that the abovementioned critics confuse methodology with procedure.

Method as argument

And most empirical researchers do: they try to apply the principles of the field (design and analysis procedures) as accurately as the experiment itself allows. They use control groups, randomness, they identify the independent variable(s), sample the population accordingly etc. If this, and maybe more, is achieved, then the research is acceptable.

A different view of methodology would consider these as upper-crust results of what is in fact a deeper-level problem. “Specific design and analysis procedures are seen not as guarantators of correct conclusions, but as routinized solutions to argumentative problems” (p. 131). What argumentative problems? The kind of problems a researcher would have with someone that does not accept his claim. A researcher, it would seem, is part of a difference of opinion just like any other layperson: it is a scientific difference of opinion, but a difference of opinion nonetheless. The researcher will expect counter-arguments, will expect its claims to be problematized.

In experimental science – be it social or of any other kind, so long as it deals with (causes and effects) of behaviour – these kind of counter-arguments have been routinized. The lines of argument that should undercut an antagonist’s position have been established and agreed upon: to simplify, “manipulate one variable and hold all other constant” is the deal. (Here, Jackson, points to the similarity of this and J. S. Mill’s method of difference). Of course, this can hardly ever be done in social sciences, where the similarity of principle between two human individuals is not something one could count on. The problems specific to social sciences are addressed with an eye on the same principles. For the counter-argument “inequality prior to treatment produced the effect”, for instance, or any other “rival causal claim” type of attack, a standard reply is the replication of the effect across many individuals and lack of bias in the assignment of cases to groups. Standard and routinized as they may become, of course, it is their result that matter not the procedures themselves; therefore, the design responses might be (and sometimes have been) changed over time. It is the argumentative resource that matters, not the way one exploits it. And the kind of resource one needs to access depends on (1) the kind of claim he makes and (2) the kind of criticism he is prepared to address.

It is now clearer why, according to Jackson, discourse analysis – or qualitative discourse research – is not the weird schoolboy from the back of the class. The simple fact that its procedures do not enjoy the widespread acceptance of quantitative method does not mean that they do not fight the same battle against the Generalized Sceptic. Analytic induction must take each claim on its own individual merits and, Jackson claims, insofar as it rests on data just like any normal survey, it is empirical in the fullest sense.

If the deeper structure of experimental research is a philosophical view about causation (J. S. Mill’s, for instance), the deeper structure of analytic induction “might be characterized as the nature of social structure” (Jackson, 1986, p. 133). One such structure – especially presumed in linguistics – is the interpretive structure. In their quest for explanations, social researchers presume that there is a common interpretation, a common view of language which him and his subjects/language users share.

Supporting the clam

But data sources and transcribing conventions do not define the practice of discourse analysis or of analytic induction any more than the use of random-digit dialling defines the practice of surveying.

First, surely, one must ask: “What claim am I supporting?” And this is not the question of “what type of claim” because there is no ready-made typology. This is the question of: “How clear am I?”, “What terminology am I using?”, “What would support/refute the claim?” etc. One would think this preparatory requirement is sufficiently obvious, yet as Jackson points out:

In the popular image of discourse analysis, the typical research report is a series of interesting examples of dialogue separated by an editorial comment or two. And this image is not wholly without basis.

Unless one can track down the claim, the evidence is merely aligned after a certain fashion. But it can also be the case that the claim is fairly specific, but still not empirical in its scope. Another kind of claims Jackson identifies as “merely a proposed name for an as yet unidentified set of events” are the ones that go like “There is a general class of utterances which … and which are prompts, hints, conditional disclosures etc.”

Jackson adds:

An appropriate thesis should refer to what was discovered, not to what was attempted, what was observed, or what was identified. […] What makes a statement empirical is not its topic or its form but its illocutionary force: It must commit the speaker to the existence of some state of affairs.

[Now, to be perfectly strict about it, Jackson is being rather vague here. There are plenty of claims (in a pure assertive form) that commit the speaker to the existence of some state of affairs that are not empirical because of other reasons. So, for instance, “There is a neurological connection between your childhood memories and your desire of sex” does posit the existence of some state of affairs – but that does not make it empirical. And you can add all negative existential statements to this class, starting with Wittgenstein’s duel with Russell about the hippopotamus in the room!]

But then Jackson spills the bucket all over the floor while cleaning:

As has often been noted (?!), this commitment on the part of the analyst is genuine only if the state of affairs can be either true or false, that is, if the statement is falsifiable as well as verifiable.

Regardless of who noted that (and how often) there is no scientific statement which is falsifiable as well as verifiable. Universal statements are not verifiable and particular statements (existential or otherwise) are not falsifiable. That doesn’t mean that any one of them can be – as Jackson says it – “right or wrong”. As far as the commitment goes, such meta-language predicates are applicable. But there is no method of doing both – verification & falsification for the same claim.

Using examples

So how do examples support claims in qualitative research? They certainly do not work in quantitative research; if your claim is about what happens, or about what usually happens, or typically happens, then examples cannot do much. But for “structural claims”, as Jackson calls them, claims about social structure, they might just work because examples can refute! Take a claim about what needs to be the case in order for a certain episode to be recognized as X. If your fellow researchers have said: this must be the case, then one simple example where this is not the case but the episode is recognizable as such and such will suffice.

[Here, again, Jackson goes further than I would recommend. She mentions how examples can “demonstrate that anything other than an answer following a question will receive special treatment” (p. 139). Of course, if this is turned into a 100% empirical claim, then it is a universal one and examples cannot do much. What examples can do is (a) refute the claim that “All non-answers following questions receive normal interpretation” (b) support to a certain degree that a rule does exist such that non answers receive special interpretation]

Jackson’s third category of the use of examples is just another instance of refutation , this time, about the basis for conversational interaction: “a single well-chosen example argue[s] that whatever rules organize conversation cannot operate simply on a linear, turn-by-turn basis”.

The fourth category “concerns the interpretive prerequisites for communication” – in other words, that language users make sense of conversation because there is some sort of principle they know of and on which they implicitly agreed. These are claims of the type: “They, i.e. the users, assume such and such” Again, what examples can do, is definitely refute the opposite claim – that there is no such assumption – and lend some support to what that assumption is. Jackson spells this out, maybe unwillingly, when she describes one of the instances of this partial support as a remedy against social phenomena being “difficult to explain”. And this is, indeed, what it boils down to: since T1 is not the case, and we’ve shown this by examples x, y, z, then one explanation of the phenomena in question might be T2, moreover since our examples are consistent with it. The examples, however, do not demonstrate, but merely suggest or establish provisionally the accuracy of T. So when she says that the examples

serve as evidence for general claims, either by establishing a social fact that remains unexplained if the claim is untrue, or by ruling out the logical opposite or theoretical alternative to the claim,

what I’m saying is that they cannot but do both each time, and that only the latter part is empirical. But I do agree with her when she says that examples, in this case, are more than mere illustrations.

Jackson finishes with an argument that both hypothetical and natural examples can serve an empirical purpose and their use depends on the claim the researcher tries to establish.

Conclusion

Method is not procedure, procedure is necessary but not sufficient, leave discourse analysis alone! Etc.

If discourse analysis is to contribute importantly to communication theory, it must go beyond a mere fascination with the possibility of observing structure in natural conversation.

Into intuition pumps

“If the Third World War is fought with nuclear weapons,
the fourth will be fought with bows and arrows.
”
Lord Louis Mountbatten

 

There are mainly two important problems in the philosophical discussions of thought experiments where intuitions are involved: First, there is the problem of the informativeness of thought experiments. Thought experiments provide us with new information. But where does such information come from? The problem of the informativeness of thought experiments is most controversially discussed in the debate between James Robert Brown and John D. Norton (p. 89)

Brown’s platonic account holds that thought experimentation has access to a specific type of intuition which is independent of – and irreducible to – empirical observation. These intuitions are about some a priori realm of universals. In contrast to this view, Norton holds that thought experiments are (“mere”) deductive or inductive arguments. Following this path, one should say that thought experiments are informative in the same way arguments are, that is, by making use of empirical data and inference. In this debate, Daniel Dennett stresses that, whatever thought experiments are, they can sometimes “lead to a quick and uncritical jump to a conclusion that is not really warranted” (p. 90).

Brendel is explicitly on Norton’s side and in this paper he examines the legitimacy of the method of thought experiments.

What are thought experiments?

Brendel locates the first use of the expression “thought experiments” in a paper by Hans Christian Ørsted (written in 1811). Nevertheless, he acknowledges Ernst Mach as the first man of science to have investigated this type of experimentation. According to Mach, thought experiments have a “propaedeutic function”, they are some sort of prequels to actual experimentation. Brendel agrees with this conception but stresses that thought experiments are, first and foremost, experiments and we must view them as such because of the characteristics they share with empirical experiments: (1) the study of functional dependency of variables by planned and controlled data, (2) the dependency of the practice on some background theoretical assumptions.

Counterfactuality, Brendel argues, is not a necessary condition for thought experiments. Granted, some thought experiments are such that they cannot, as far as technology stands, be put into practice (Einstein’s observer traveling alongside a beam of light, for instance). But this is not always the case. Many thought experiments can but need not be put into practice. Both the former and the latter are, in the same sense, thought experiments, not empirical ones.

Brendel identifies several functions of thought experiments:

(a) “alethic refuters” their function is to give birth to paradoxes (acc. to Sorensen); or track down hidden contradictions/inconsistencies (acc. to Kuhn), by imagining new and unusual situations, we create awareness around the criteria that govern the use of concepts

(b) thought experiments can be used to provide evidence in support of a questionable theory (Newton’s bucket experiment shows the existence of absolute space)

(c) pedagogical function of illustrating a certain theory/philosophy

(d) detect vagueness and “unstable intuitions” & then explicate

The problem of informativeness

Brown’s Platonic account in The Laboratory of Mind starts from the following definition:

A Platonic thought experiment is a single thought experiment which destroys an old or existing theory and simultaneously generates a new one; it is a priori in that it is not based on new empirical evidence nor is it merely logically derived from old data; and it is an advance in that the resulting theory is better than the predecessor theory.

Brown’s favourite example was Galileo’s “falling balls” experiment. Brendel rejects Brown’s account of the experiment because: (1) “the supposedly intuitive grasp of the conclusion that all bodies fall at the same speed does not at all follow immediately and with no help of other premises from the demonstrated contradiction”, (2) as opposed to the argument-view of thought experiments, “it remains unclear when and why an intuitive grasp of the abstract realm can go wrong”. Brendel refers to Norton’s reconstruction of Galileo’s experiment as a reduction ad absurdum argument and claims that there is no a priori argumentative gap involved.

Therefore, we should reject the view that we gain new information from thought experiments by a special epistemic capacity for intuitively perceiving the laws of nature in a Platonic realm. (p. 95)

However, Brendel does not go all the way to the other (Norton’s) extreme to claim that thought experiments are arguments; that in conducting thought experimentation one conducts argumentation. “Instead, there are some a posteriori acquired “truths” that function as implicit background knowledge, enabling us to come to a relatively quick decision in the evaluation of a thought experiment. But we can always make these premises explicit by reconstructing the thought experiment as an argument” (p. 96). The reconstruction could detect overlooked premises or unwarranted assumptions – since intuition, just like sense perception, is fallible.

Thought experiments can be dismissed because they are based on implausible, incoherent or inconsistent premises or because they involve inconclusive judgements, illogical inferences or other kinds of argumentative shortcomings like a petitio principii. (p. 97)

But aside from their argumentative features, they also “appeal to intuitions”. It is whay Daniel Dennett called them “intuition pumps”.

As Brendel mentioned, thought experiments share with empirical ones the control of data. Thus, he argues, the lack of such control is – just as with normal experiments – a fault. He cites Putnam’s twin earth[1] experiment as an illegitimate intuition pump, guilty of such fault: “since Putnam does not give us any explanation as to why the twin earth is not radically different from our world” (p. 99).

A legitimacy problem is also involved in the counterfactual assumption, which needs to be irrelevant – i.e. it’s inapplicability at the time of the thought experiment, if at all, needs to be a mere incidental property. And it can be the case that one overlooks relevant impossibilities. Brendel illustrates this with two of Einstein’s famous thought experiments: the “traveller” and the “clock in a box”. In the first, since the assumption (i.e. a person travelling at the speed of light alongside a beam of light) is not denied or in any way undermined by Maxwell’s theory, Einstein was warranted to use it in a thought experiment. In the second, the assumption that a mechanism that measures time & energy at the same time is possible is not supported by the general theory of relativity (ironically so!), and therefore it is an unwarranted assumption. (pp. 101-103).

In other words, the legitimacy of the assumption rests in its consistency with the backdrop of the presupposed theoretical framework. (Of course, ideally, this backdrop is explicit, but in reality it is hardly the case. This could be why thought experiments, unlike arguments, need explanations themselves. Even if one understands every concept involved, in order to understand the use of that experiment, one must know the theories it uses and/or refutes).

When the “setting” – i.e. the theoretical knowledge assumed – is very unfamiliar, as it is the case with teletransportation, fission process, brain transplant etc, thought experiments are closer to stipulations rather than discoveries:

In such fictional situations our intuitions are of no great help, because it is very hard to decide in a non-question-begging way what the real criteria for personal identity are. That is why a lot of philosophers are very critical about the method of thought experiments in such applications. Wiggins, for example, points out that by “denaturing the human subject” in these thought experiments, we do not learn anything about the nature of personal identity because the decision whether the concept of identity is legitimately applied is more a question of stipulation and not a matter of discovery

Among such dubitable assumptions, there is also the one that only one notion describes such and such piece of reality (i.e. personal identity) in a coherent way, and that the task of the philosopher is to choose that one from the many competing ones.

So, how to avoid intuition pumps:

(1) make sure the thought experiment is not under-determined

(2) the jump from the particular (imaginary) situation to the general conclusion

(3) the counterfactuality of the initial assumption should be irrelevant

(4) far-fetched, sience-fiction cases should be reduced to ones where our intuitons can make a difference

---

[1] Putnam’s famous twin earth thought experiment is a typical example of such an intuition pump. Putnam describes the twin earth as a planet which is exactly identical to the earth we live in except for the fact that the liquid in the rivers, lakes and seas of twin earth has the chemical structure XYZ which is different from H2O. But nevertheless, in its surface structure this liquid cannot be distinguished from water on earth. It is further assumed that every person on earth has an exact “molecular copy” on twin earth. Our “twin earth Doppelgängers” also use the word “water” to refer to the liquid in their rivers, lakes etc. But they do not have any knowledge of the concept of H2O. Putnam now argues that although there is no relevant difference between the mental states of our “twin earth Doppelgängers” and our own, the reference of the word “water” is different. Therefore, reference is not determined by psychological states. “Meanings are not in our heads”.

But thought experiments ARE what you thought

Before the short review, here's a funny motto from a paper:

The Concept of Mind is one of those books that is often cited by people who haven’t read it but
read about it, and think they know what is in it. They have read that it epitomizes two woefully
regressive schools of thought that flourished unaccountably in mid-century but are now utterly
discredited: Ordinary Language Philosophy and Behaviourism. Yes, and imbibing alcohol will
lead you inexorably to the madhouse and masturbation will make you go blind. Don’t believe it.
— Daniel C. Dennett (2000: xiv)

But ordinary language is all right.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958: 28)

Norton, J. (1996). Are thought experiment just what you thought. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 26(2), 333-336

Norton attacks the “epistemological problem” of thought experiments (if they give us knowledge about the world, where does this knowledge come from?). The purpose of this paper is to show how thought experiments are epistemologically “unremarkable”. That is to say, they do not constitute some miraculous source of knowledge, but combine rather well-known, “standard”, sources. Thought experiments, according to Norton, blend empirical observations & inference in a rather mundane manner, without affording any special glimpse into a mystifying Platonic world of ideal laws.


Supporting the “empiricist” account of thought experiments – which recognizes only two classic ingredients, namely sense-data & inference – Norton is setting himself against the Platonist account of thought experiments (Jim Brown etc.). According to Norton: “Thought experiments are merely arguments, although this character is typically disguised for rhetorical reasons”. The “disguise”, however, so the reconstruction thesis goes, can be explained away: “All thought experiments can be reconstructed as arguments based on tacit or explicit assumptions. Belief in the outcome-conclusion of the thought experiment is justified only insofar as the reconstructed argument can justify the conclusion”. (The idea that TE’s are arguments may fit very well into a critical-rationalist philosophy, according to which all successful experiments are ultimately arguments, viz. refutations).



The reconstruction of Galileo’s stone-experiment is as follows.



1. Reductio (i.e. the Aristotelian view): The speed of fall of bodies in a given medium is proportionate to their weights.

2. From 1: If a large stone falls with 8 degrees, a smaller stone half its weight will fall with 4 degrees.

3. Assumption: If a slower falling stone is connected to a faster falling stone, the slower will retard the faster and the faster speed the slower.

4. From 3: If two stones of 2 are connected, their composite will fall slower than 8 degrees of speed.

5. Assumption: the composite of two weights has greater weight than the larger

6. From 1 & 5: The composite will fall faster than 8 degrees

7. Conclusions 4 & 6 contradict

8. Therefore we must reject assumption 1

9. Therefore all stones fall alike.



The only two problems with this reconstruction are: (1) this is not a reconstruction of an argument, (2) this is not – or not immediately apparently – valid. As regards 1: Unless by “argument” Norton means “whatever happens between 1 and 9 and lends 9 certain degree of justification”, then what one should see are several arguments. This, I think, is all the more evident since there is not just one major assumption (1) but at leas three (1, 3 & 5). As regards 2: I don’t know what type of logic Norton alludes to but, at least stated in this way, the argumentation just sounds nice, and that informally.



Newton’s bucket argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_argument) and some mathematical thought experiments are discussed in the same vein. They all seem to fit, however one chooses to view their components. The definition of “argument” both authors seem to endorse is wholly absent. Everything, from mental operations to algebra is spoken about as arguments. Of course, it could be the case that, in the author’s own words “finally, a straightforward application of Occam’s razor speaks for the argument view”, but the question cannot be settled if the term “argument” is left in the murky zone of “oh, you know what I mean”.



The paper ends with a section on whether the analogy between the empirical perception of objects and Platonic perception of laws is viable…

Why are thought experiments (not) arguments

Bishop, M. (1999). Why are thought experiments not arguments. Philosophy of Science, 66(4), 534-541

Another answer to Kuhn’s puzzle: “Without any new informationfrom the world, thought experiments can yield new information about the world. Norton claims that only arguments uncontroversially have this property, since the conclusion of an argument can make explicit information that was implicit in the argument's premises. Others who identify thought experiments with arguments are Nicholas Rescher, Andrew D. Irvine, and John Forge.”

For the whole clock-in-the box thing,

The turning point seems to be marked with Einstein's thought experiment, in which a box has a shutter which opens at a precise time and lets out a single photon of light. Seemingly we can know when the photon left the box as precisely as we wish. We can also find out the energy of the photon by weighing the box before and after (since mass and energy are equivalent). This seems to contradict quantum theory, which says that the product of the uncertainty of the energy and that of the time must exceed Planck's constant. Niels Bohr answered this by saying that weighing it would mean that it would move within a gravitational field, and then Einstein's own general theory of relativity would say that the rate at which the clock ran would change, and we would end up with an uncertainty in the time. This gedanken experiment is mentioned pretty often, and the implication seems to be that Einstein couldn't even figure out the consequences of his own theory, and so his productive life was at an end.

To this, Bishop notes:

This episode raises what I believe is an insuperable problem for any attempt to identify the clock-in-the-box thought experiment with a t-argument. The problem is that Bohr and Einstein were analyzing one thought experiment, but they were proposing two different t-arguments. Therefore, the clock-in-the-box thought experiment cannot be a t-argument. To make this argument stick, let us begin with a prosaic claim: Both real and thought experiments can be, and sometimes are, repeated. For this to be so, it must be possible for there to be different tokens of one experiment-type.

If thought experiments are t-arguments, then thought experiment-typesa re t-argument-types. The argument view of thought experiments is committed to the following thesis.

(A) Two tokens of a thought experiment are tokens of the same thought experiment-type if and only if they are tokens of the same t-argument type.

The problem is that in the clock-in-the-box episode, A is false. The t-arguments proposed by Bohr and Einstein were not type-identical, but the thought experiments they proposed were type-identical. If this is correct, then the argument view of thought experiments is false.

And then the conclusion falls prophetically (note that this is the last paragraph of the article):

In the clock-in-the-box episode, there are tokens of two t-argument types but tokens of just one thought experiment-type. Thesis A is false. Since we have two different arguments but just one thought experiment, the thought experiment cannot be the arguments. Episodes like this one are not rare in the history of science. People often disagree about the results of thought experiments. Any attempt to identify thought experiments with t-arguments will lead to false and misleading characterizations of such episodes. Thought experiments are not arguments.

Some rhetorical aspects of thought experiments

In this paper, “J. J. Thomson’s Violonist” is repeatedly mentioned. It refers to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violinist_(thought_experiment)

________

Souder, L. (2003). What are we to think about thought experiments?. Argumentation, 17(2), 203-217.

“A rhetorical analysis of thought experiments? Right on!” That is what I thought when I read Souder’s abstract

Arguments from thought experiment ask the reader to imagine some hypothetical, sometimes exotic, often fantastic, scenario for the sake of illustrating or countering some claim. Variously characterized as mental experimentation, imaginary cases, and even crazy cases, thought experiments figure into both scientific and philosophical arguments. They are often criticized for their fictive nature and for their lack of grounding. Nevertheless, they are common especially in arguments in ethics and philosophy of mind. Moreover, many thought experiments have spawned variations that attempt to both affirm and refute their original arguments. These emended thought experiments exhibit a variety of styles, details, and embellishments. A rhetorical analysis of these variations suggests a reciprocal influence between the arguers’ selection of details and their philosophical commitments. I offer examples of this relationship from the variations on John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment and Judith Thomson’s unconscious violinist thought experiment.

Starting from Judith Thomson’s Famous Violonist thought experminet, and generalizing, Souder comments: “it has certain characteristics and expectations that enable it to engage the readers and encourage them to actively participate in the issue and not just passively observe. Fictional examples that engage the audience in this way are known as thought experiments” (p. 204).

Sorensen is quoted: “Sorensen says, ‘A thought experiment is an experiment that

purports to achieve its aim without the benefit of execution’” (p. 205). The impossibility of their execution has been characterized as “merely technical” – still, a downright impossibility, which is different from a mere difficulty. Does that matter?

It is noted that thought experiments can go from four pages (R. M. Hare’s If man could menstruate) to one-liners such as Xenphanes’ “If god had not made yellow honey, men would consider figs far sweeter” (see Rescher, 1991 for the latter). And that they can ‘survive’ in many forms while being shifted back and forth from philosopher to philosopher. Perelman’s (!) notion of analogy is quoted as being apt to describe this process.

Souder is interested in how the characters, the author of the experiment and the scenario itself are “represented” and what sort of influence this has on the function of the experiment altogether. The claims made, however, are quite “light” and vague: “In thought experiments (all?), it seems (?), the reader is never far away from the author’s awareness” or “During the author’s account of his own introspection, the reader is expected to replicate the author’s line of thinking and to arrive at the same conclusions. In short, the author’s ‘I’ becomes the reader’s ‘I’.” or “So by keeping the account of

the Chinese room in the first person, Searle keeps the subjective aspect of the mental implicit and thereby encourages the reader to do likewise by running the simulation in his own mind.”(p. 210) A very metaphorical (thus, opaque) rhetorical analysis. (becomes, encourages etc.). Eventually, the reason for using this or that pronoun for the main character of the Chinese room – the person locked inside – is put forward.

Short discussion about intentionality…

The reason is this: “This condition forces one to choose between the two mutually exclusive positions: (1) I’m the only conscious being in the universe and (2) All beings in the universe are conscious. In either case no one’s report suffices for proof of consciousness. Thus most functionalists avoid first-person accounts of the Chinese room thought experiment.” (p. 213)

The next analysis deals with Thomson’s unconscious violonist. Again, things start seeming. “Their contrasting modes of description [of the violonist] seem to reflect their regard for the beneficiary and the victim. Thomson’s argument presupposes greater concern for the victim than for the beneficiary; for this she portrays the former in concrete terms, the latter in abstract.” (p. 215)

I regret that the only paper on thought experiments from Argumentation is a paper consisting mainly of, to be frank, feeble conjectures about the connection between pronouns and rhetorical aims. There is an Informal Logic number dedicated to Sorensen’s Thought experiments, I hope to get more from there.

Public Speaking (2010)

You'll never believe who the director is. Actually, you will.

Infinite Monkeys and old Gedankenexperimente

Before reading this, check out the Infinite Monkey Theorem here. By the way, isn't that the coolest name for a band?

Rescher, N. (1991). Thought experimentation in pre-Socratic philosophy. In T. Horowitz & M. Gerald (Eds.) Thought experiments in science and philosophy (pp. 31-41). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield

___

For Rescher, a “thought experiment” is an attempt to draw instruction from a process of hypothetical reasoning that proceeds by eliciting the consequences of a hypothesis (p. 31). As the editors observe in the introduction of the volume, this eventually amounts to identifying, rather loosely, thought experimentation and the use of assumptions – whether one knows these assumptions to be true or false.

In natural science, thought experiments are common: e.g Einstein’s pondering the question of what the world would look like if one were to travel along a lay of light (i.e. with the exact same speed). However, regardless of the definition, the idea behind thought experiments is suspicious, and has been suspicious at least since Thomas Kuhn’s “paradox of thought experiments”: the puzzling fact that thought experiment have novel empirical import even though they are conducted entirely inside one’s head.


Rescher identifies several modes of reasoning that can be regarded as thought-experimental. First of them is explanatory and functions along these lines: “X is hard to account for, but if we assume that P, which we certainly don’t know but which is not inherently implausible, then we obtain a perfectly good explanation of X” Examples are given. One subtype of this, is the use of analogy in explanatory reasoning. Example from Aristotle: The Earth is in the centre. Why? Well, in vortices, things tend to the center. Therefore, if the world would be as a vortex, that would explain why the Earth is in the centre. (This might be restated in an argumentative form, e.g. “X is the case, since …”)
Rescher considers the following two modes of thought experimentation as different: negatively demonstrative reasoning and reduction ad absurdum. In NDR, the process is as follows: Assume (TE) not-P. Deduce Q. Observe that Q is false. Maintain P. In reduction, the process is as follows: Assume (TE) not-P. Deduce P. Observe contradiction. Maintain P. Are they that different?

A fourth method, Sceptical Thought Experiment, is instantiated by Xenophanes’ famous saying: “But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or could draw with their hands and do the works that man can do, then horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves”. In Rescher’s re-statement: We accept P. But suppose (TE) X as a state of affairs. Then we would not accept P at all, but rather P’. Hence, we aren’t really warranted in accepting P. There is also this shorter version, attributed to Xenophanes too: “If god had not made yellow honey, men would consider figs far sweeter”

Yet a fifth method. Suppose (TE) someone did X. Then, he is an F. But Y is just like X, in F-relevant regards. Therefore, someone who does Y is F (too). I fail to see the difference between this and method number 1 (the vortex example). A sixth method is described.

The article, Rescher claims, should be seen as part of the history of modes of reasoning. But what is the principle of distinguishing these modes, at least in his article, is not apparent at all.