Section 1.3The Laboratory of the Mind

Thought Experiments

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Philosophical Theories andThought Experiments

Philosophical theories explain how it’s possible (or why it’s impossible) for a concept to apply by identifying the conditions for applying it.

Thought experiments test such theories by determining whether the conditions identified are necessary or sufficient.

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Thought Experiment

A thought experiment describes a possible situation in which a concept should apply or a condition should be met if the theory in question is true.

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Test Implication

A conditional or if-then statement indicating what should be the case if the theory is true.

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Counterexample

An example that runs counter to or conflicts with a theory. For example, suppose that someone

claimed that all crows are black. A non-black crow, then, would be a

counterexample to that claim.

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Aristotle’s Human Being

Human beings are rational animals.

Test implication: If all and only human beings are rational animals, then infants are rational animals, because infants are human beings.

Counterexample: Human infants are human beings, but they are not rational.

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Aristotle’s Human Being (revised)

Revised theory: All human beings are animals that have the capacity to be rational.

Thought experiment: Can you conceive of a human being that does not have the capacity to be rational or of a non-human animal that has the capacity to be rational?

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Aristotle’s Human Being (revised)

The argument against Aristotle goes like this: (1) If human beings are rational animals,

then human infants must be rational animals. (2) But human infants aren’t rational animals. (3) Therefore it’s not necessarily true that

human beings are rational animals. The form of this argument is denying the

consequent.

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Thought Probe: Platonic Humans

Plato once claimed that human beings are featherless bipeds (creatures that walk on two legs).

Can you conceive of a featherless biped that is not a human being or a human being that is not a featherless biped?

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Case Study: Explaining How Moral Abortions Are Possible

Murder is the unjust killing of a person. So to determine whether abortion is

murder, we have to determine whether a fetus is a person.

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Persons

Persons are beings with full moral rights, including the right to life.

What makes something a person? Why do normal adult humans have full moral rights but not cows, pigs, and chickens?

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Thought Experiment: Warren’s Moral Space Traveler

“Imagine a space traveler who lands on an unknown planet and encounters a race of beings utterly unlike he has ever seen or heard of. If he wants to be sure of behaving morally toward these beings, he has to somehow decide whether they are people, and hence have full moral rights….” What should he look for?

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Warren’s Criteria for Personhood

Consciousness Reasoning (the developed capacity to

solve new problems) Self-motivated activity The capacity to communicate messages

of an indefinite variety of types Self-consciousness

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Thought Probe: Robot Rights

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots believes that it is causally possible for robots to possess Warren’s criteria for personhood.

Is it causally possible? If they possessed those criteria, should

they be given the same rights as human persons?

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How are thought experiments possible? We may have a concept and not be able

to state the criteria for applying it. Philosophical inquiry tries to make

explicit what’s implicit in our understanding of a concept.

Thought experiments test theories about the conditions under which concepts apply.

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Criticizing Thought Experiments The value of any experiment is

determined by the amount of control with which it is executed.

If an imaginary situation is not described in sufficient detail, the results of the experiment may be questionable.

The best way to show that an experiment is unreliable is to conduct a better one.

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Coherent Imaginability and Time Travel

A situation is coherently imaginable when its details can be filled in and its implications drawn out without running into a contradiction.

Time travel is not coherently imaginable because it implies that statements about the past can be both true and false, and that’s logically impossible.

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Conceivability and Possibility

The best evidence that a situation is possible is that it’s conceivable (coherently imaginable).

But from the fact that something seems conceivable, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is actually conceivable, for it may imply a contradiction that we have not yet uncovered.

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Scientific Thought Experiments

Any theory that implies a contradiction cannot be true.

Scientists use thought experiments to test for contradictions.

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Thought Experiment: Aristotle’s Theory of Motion

Aristotle thought that a heavier object would fall faster than a lighter one.

Imagine that a heavy cannonball is attached to a light musket ball by means of a rope. Now imagine that both this combined system and an ordinary cannonball are dropped from a height at the same time. What will happen?

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Thought Experiment: Tooley’s Cat Do potential persons have the

same rights as actual persons? Suppose a cat was

accidentally given an injection that would cause its brain to develop into one with the same capabilities as ours.

Would it be wrong to kill the cat before the brain was fully developed?

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Thought Experiment: Thomson’s Diseased Musician

Do persons have the right to use your body against your will? Suppose that a musician with a fatal

kidney ailment had his bloodstream attached to yours because you are the only person with the right blood type.

If you allow him to stay plugged in for nine months, he will lead a normal life.

Are you morally obligated to stay plugged in?

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Thought Probe:The Terri Schiavo Case A person is conscious, self-aware, and

capable of reasoning, communicating, and engaging in self-motivated activity.

If Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state, and if people in PVS have permanently lost the ability to think, was Terri Schiavo still a person?

If Terri Schiavo was not a person, was removing the feeding tube an act of murder?