This is Philosophy Bytes with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy Bites is available at www. www.com.

When philosophers use thought experiments, they usually assume that their own responses are typical

and that others will share their intuitions.

Eduard Mascheri has explored cultural differences in response to thought experiments

and come up with some interesting results.

Sometimes responses are more or less universal, but sometimes they're not.

Edward Mashari, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thanks for the invitation. It's a real pleasure to talk to you as well as your listener today.

We're talking today about variations in response to thought experiments. Before we begin, do you have a neat definition of what a thought experiment is?

Oh, defining a thought experiment is, of course, not easy.

It's part of philosophy, so just like everything else, it is bound to be controversial.

But still, I believe we can have a simple description of what one does when one engage in a

thought experiment.

One imagines a situation that's not actual.

That's why it's a thought experiment and not a real experiment.

And one think about what would happen in that situation. And what would happen in that situation then matters for some scientific or philosophical purposes.

It's worth noting that thought experiments have been in philosophy for centuries.

In fact, in Plato, we already have thought experiments.

And they've been very important in science as well.

Einstein and many others have been very fond of thought experiments.

And we're talking today about philosophical, not scientific thought experiments.

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