文档介绍：Thought Experiments
Roy A. Sorensen Professor of Philosophy, New York University
Introduction
Roy A. Sorensen
This book presents a general theory of thought experiments: what they are; how they
work; their virtues and vices. Since my aim is synoptic, a wide corpus of thought
experiments has been incorporated. There is a special abundance of examples from ethics
and the metaphysics of personal identity because thought experiments in these areas have
recently attracted mentary. But the emphasis is on variety, rather than quantity.
Thus, the discussion ranges over thought experiments from many disparate fields, from
aesthetics to zoology.
Scientific thought experiments—especially those in physics—are the clear cases, so my
primary goal is to establish true and interesting generalizations about them. ess here
will radiate to my secondary goal of understanding philosophical thought experiments.
The reason for this optimism is subscription to a gradualistic metaphilosophy: philosophy
differs from science in degree, not kind. Understand science, understand the parameters
to be varied, and you understand philosophy.
My basic means of reaching these two goals is to let the surface grammar of ‘thought
experiment’ be my guide and to pitch this book as part of the growing literature on
experiment. Philosophers and historians of science have long followed the elder
statesmen of science in concentrating on theory; experimentation has been dismissed as a
rather straightforward matter of following directions and looking at gauges. Within the
last ten years, the “just look and see” picture has been rejected in favor of one that assigns
deeper roles for experimenters: creating and stabilizing phenomena; atheoretical
exploration; and defining concepts by immersion in laboratory practice. Sympathy with
this movement, coupled with the belief that thought experiments are experiments, led me
to suspe