Rationally Speaking #12 - What About Thought Experiments?

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2010

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

Philosophers are often accused of engaging in armchair speculation, as far removed from reality as possible. The quintessential example of this practice is the thought experiment, which many scientists sneer at precisely because it doesn’t require one to get one’s hands dirty. And yet scientists have often engaged in thought experiments, some of which have marked major advances in our understanding of the world. Just consider the famous example of Galileo’s thought experiment demonstrating (rather counter intuitively) that two objects of different weight must fall at the same speed. And, perhaps more famously, Einstein's light thought experiments, which lead him to the formulation of the theory of relativity.

And then, there are the other kind, like philosopher David Chalmers' famous thought experiment about zombies and the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness. Chalmers comes up with an (admittedly ingenious) little story, and we are supposed to deduce from it the momentous conclusion that there is more than matter/energy to the universe? Still, there are plenty of good thought experiments in philosophy, beginning with the so-called trolley dilemmas meant to probe our moral intuitions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.5	For more information, please visit us at NYCCEptics.org.
0:35.8	Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:41.5	I am your host, Massimo Piliucci, and with me as always is my co-host Julia Galev.
0:46.4	Julia, what are we going to talk about today?
0:48.5	Massimo, today we're going to talk about the thought experiment, the process of constructing an imaginary situation to help shed light on
0:56.3	how things really are. It's an indispensable tool in the philosopher's toolbox, and it's
1:01.4	even got a long history in science as well. But while some thought experiments help clarify an
1:06.6	issue, others are totally worthless and can even be misleading. So I'd like to talk about some
1:12.9	examples of thought experiments in science and philosophy and ask, what are they good for? And what
1:19.0	distinguishes a valid thought experiment from an invalid one? Good question. By the way, before we go
1:24.0	ahead, I'd like to say that what you just said about thought experiments,
1:28.3	which is that some of them are, you know, interesting and bring up interesting, you know, conclusions or points.
1:34.5	And either on the other hand, they're misleadinging or downright wrong.
1:38.0	Pretty much that applies to real experiments as well, right?
1:40.5	Sure.
1:41.5	And in fact, it would be kind of interesting to figure out, whether it applies to real
1:44.4	experiments for similar reasons, or is it because of a completely different structure of the two?
1:50.2	I actually think there are some similarities in the way that real experiments and thought
1:53.9	experiments can fail, but let's leave that as a bit of a teaser and get to that in a bit.
1:59.2	For starters, maybe we should talk about the more successful thought experiments,
2:02.3	because there have been some pretty illuminating thought experiments that have been used.
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