Questions tagged [thought-experiment]
The thought-experiment tag has no usage guidance.
44
questions
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1answer
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Thought experiment: The distorted brain in a vat
[This is the second version of another question: How does consciousness depend on spatiality?]
I admit that the technical details of the following thought experiment sound completely weird but that's ...
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votes
0answers
43 views
Thought experiment: How does consciousness depend on spatiality?
Assuming that conscious experience has to do with information processing and integration (see here and here) and that information is coded and processed by the firing of neurons, I wonder what the ...
4
votes
2answers
145 views
Why does Searle's room receive three batches of Chinese characters and two English instruction manuals as input?
Searle's Chinese room receives input in the form of a batch of chinese characters, then twice after receives a batch of Chinese. The second batch of Chinese comes with English instructions for "...
2
votes
4answers
309 views
If you are predictable do you have free will?
Let there be a person that acted in some way. Also there is another person who had predicted that behaviour of first person.
Does the first person has free will? Is it just possible to do something ...
1
vote
2answers
137 views
Why should we even think about determinism?
So I've browsed through some questions here but none of them really fits my thought process: If you assume that determinism is not the case, your actions will therefore be the right decision. If ...
23
votes
19answers
6k views
Can time exist without change?
Imagine an event of one second in length, like two hands clapping. Suppose that another interval of time elapses between the clap, a period in which nothing happens in the whole universe (or in all ...
2
votes
1answer
56 views
Mach and Norton thought experiments in science
Both Mach and Norton hold empiricist views on the notions of the role of thought experiments.
Could someone please explain the difference? Have done some reading but it’s not totally clear.
3
votes
3answers
96 views
Can a single thought experiment have multiple outcomes?
Is it possible for a particular thought experiment to have multiple outcomes based on the view point of the person conducting said experiment? Or can a thought experiment never yield multiple ...
4
votes
2answers
141 views
Thought experiments and empiricism
The debate between Norton and Brown regarding whether thought experiments transcend empiricism is interesting with Norton suggesting that thought experiments do not transcend empiricism.
If one had ...
3
votes
5answers
287 views
If time is discrete, does moving means teleporting?
Please follow this thought experiment:
1) A ball moves one centimeter in one unit of time.
2) A ball disappears. Then, after a unit of time, it reappears one centimeter far away.
By now we don't ...
0
votes
4answers
229 views
Would we choose to become psychopaths if we could?
Deep Brain Stimulation to stop major depression is a reality in its infancy hence let’s make a thought experiment:
Presume a much more advanced version of it was created and everybody
could ...
1
vote
1answer
29 views
Is it okay to have multiple aims? [closed]
From childhood we were told to have only one aim. All the stories we were told were around this concept (for example, Arjuna and Fish Eye from the Mahabharata). If we vacillate between different ...
1
vote
1answer
86 views
Is complete isolation possible?
Imagine an ideal box, whose contents are perfectly isolated. Whatever is inside it, it has not, has had or will have any relations with the rest of the universe. We could say that its content does not ...
3
votes
1answer
132 views
Is this event undetermined?
You toss a coin in an ideal, perfectly isolated box. If nothing and no one will ever check what face it shows, is this event objectively undetermined?
(My guess is yes – if the isolation is perfect ...
0
votes
2answers
155 views
Is this a paradox about clairvoyance?
You play a game with a fortune teller. There are two cards with the face down on the table; he wins if you raises the card's suit he foresees, you win if his prediction turns out to be wrong. Suppose ...
2
votes
7answers
322 views
Consciousness doesn't need your body - a thought experiment
1) During a deep sleep, your consciousness deactivates to reactivate upon awakening
2) During a deep sleep, you are narcotized and killed, to be replaced instantly by an identical copy, which wakes ...
0
votes
1answer
59 views
Authors on the philosophical impact of the discovery of an Extraterrestrial civilization [closed]
Consider the following thought experiment:
Some kinds of spiders species while mating the female eats the male.
Sometimes when female puts and egg and later when it hatches the baby spiders eat ...
1
vote
7answers
621 views
Does life imply death or the other way around? [closed]
I just heard that good ol' statement in a song and I automatically started wondering, since what's more logical to me is that death implies life? Any thoughts?
2
votes
3answers
282 views
Wanted: literature on the ethics of creating a fake world (The morality of God)
WARNING (reader discretion is advised. Don't do these experiments if you are not familiar with existential philosophy or if you suffer from some mental disorder)
This question is subtle. I think ...
7
votes
7answers
3k views
What ethical studies have been performed on what would happen if a government raises kids without parents?
This is a thought experiment that deals with morality and ethics:
Due to low natality governments decide to create schools in which kids
are raised by professional caregivers and people trained ...
3
votes
4answers
136 views
Is your phone a natural product?
We are part of this natural system where we live and that we named. Our cities, our trains, our streets, some beautiful and some disgraceful, are all part of our natural world, of what we have built ...
12
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12answers
5k views
How do materialists respond to the thought experiment of the perception of blue and red colors being swapped?
By materialism, I mean the belief that the totality of all in existence is material. That is, particles/waves/energy in the space-time fabric.
If one were to construct a thought experiment that ...
-2
votes
1answer
105 views
What makes a great scientific question for and/or against a stupid idea?
While I am taking a walk I have come up with quotes, questions and philosophy to motivate and route myself.
I recently discovered/invented a new quote which really can have multiple meaning to it (...
4
votes
1answer
188 views
Schrödinger: order and perception
In a book called What is life? the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger ask himself why we don't perceive atoms, and says:
The reason for this is, that what we call thought is itself an
orderly ...
1
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2answers
67 views
Is epistemological potential relational?
There was a thought experiment that came to me.
Suppose there would only be a cube, and you as an observer. These are the restrictions.
You do not have any knowledge of yourself. i.e. questions ...
3
votes
4answers
3k views
How would a Utilitarian and a Kantian solve this thought experiment?
In this thought experiment, you are a doctor, and you work on a roadside hospital. Only you and another doctor are working in the hospital, and a woman who tried to commit suicide arrives at the ...
4
votes
5answers
2k views
Why can't I doubt that I am doubting?
Assume that doubt is meaningfully defined. Or let's say we define doubt as , both the statement under doubt, and it's complement can be true or false, we do not know, the uncertainty exists.
Imagine ...
2
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0answers
58 views
Philosophy as recreation?
What do you think about recreational philosophy. Is it different from academic philosophy or professional philosophy?
Or can anyone (or anywhere even) formulate philosophical statements?
2
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4answers
292 views
Is the phrase “trust but verify” self-contradictory?
Imagine two scenarios:
1) I distrust Bob because he has betrayed me in the past. Bob tells me that "rojo" is the Spanish word for red. I don't trust Bob, so I go and look up "rojo" in a Spanish-...
2
votes
2answers
86 views
Exploring potential relationships between logical behavior and moral scrutiny
I apologize if this question has already been asked, however, after searching through several posts, I didn't find anything that was a duplicate.
I'm currently taking biomedical ethics (my first ...
2
votes
1answer
130 views
Aggregate utility and the sadistic theatre
Situation A: 12-year-old Emma leads a happy life and gains U > 0 utility.
Situation B: Emma is continually raped and tortured for an online audience of consumers of sadistic child pornography. She ...
1
vote
2answers
333 views
The Ethics of Brainwashing [closed]
It is widely agreed upon that slavery and forced labour are unethical. However, consider the following situation:
A group of explorers, returning home from a tropical island, brings a boat full of ...
0
votes
1answer
42 views
how does desire can kill your focus? [closed]
I often experience my focus dropped when my desire increases. How does both related?
1
vote
8answers
315 views
Whatever unites people divides them in the next level
I've been thinking lately that if people are united at level N, that intrinsically makes them divide at level N+1.
Let me make myself clear. At level 0 I'm alone - myself. Level 1 might be my family. ...
0
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2answers
90 views
What is a hypothesis in this context?
Though I know what is a hypothesis, I'm not sure to fully really understand it and thus outlines the hypothesis in my context. I am abstracting my real problem in a common world problem.
Suppose I ...
1
vote
1answer
351 views
How is this premises and conclusion to refute Searle's CR experiment?
So I've been digging into this topic for days now. I've gone through his paper and also some threads here, which I found were very helpful.
I came up with these premises and following conclusions in ...
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votes
1answer
137 views
Could some of our conceptions about the physical universe be wrong? [closed]
I managed to create cold fission by placing a carbon crucible into a polysyrene cut out, put a few small sticks of glow stick stuff from the dollar store, put the lid on and generated a 5 meter field ...
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votes
2answers
1k views
“Jim and the Indians” and killing someone to harvest organs, is it equivalent?
Imagine these two thoughts experiments
The first one, slightly modified from "Jim and the Indians" by Bernard Williams: You come upon twenty people taken hostage by an armed group. The groups's ...
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votes
1answer
107 views
Zombified Consciousness
Suppose a universe absolutely identical to ours. Suppose then a Earth-like world inhabited by zombie-like creaures (they can be depicted as conceived by Chalmers), but having a one-minute-long “flash” ...
1
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2answers
404 views
My thought experiment on consciousness
Scenario 1:
Somebody removed your brain, destroyed it, and then replaced it with another which was identical (and replaced all the connections as they were). Essentially every atom/molecule would be ...
0
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4answers
188 views
Eternalism - Is it possible that something measured only with a circle can be a block?
A clock is round. A circle has no beginning and no end.
Round is shaped like or approximately like a circle or cylinder.
A
cycle is a series of events that are regularly repeated in the ...
6
votes
1answer
1k views
Was the Brain-in-a-Vat thought experiment explored philosophically before Putnam?
On SciFi.SE there's a question about the origins of "captive brains" in literature. Upon seeing the question I presumed it originated as a philosophical thought experiment (and then made it's way to ...
12
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3answers
2k views
How does Putnam's twin earth thought experiment disprove functionalism?
In the twin Earth thought experiment Putnam determines that meanings are not in the head. Later interpretations, by himself and by others, take it to falsify functionalism.
It seems to me that the ...
12
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4answers
5k views
Is Galileo's argument about falling bodies logically flawed?
Galileo's famous argument against the Aristotle's theory of falling bodies goes like this. "Let's say heavy objects do fall faster than light ones. Then it seems the heavier weight will fall with the ...
