THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

(Thought Experiments Workshop, 18-20 April 1985)

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction ................................................................................................................1

SECTION 1 - THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

1. Nicholas Rescher: Thought Experimentation inPresocratic Philosophy..................... 31

2. Peter King: Mediaeval Thought-Experiments: The Metamethodology of
    Mediaeval Science.................................................................................................. 43

3. Lilli Alanen: Descartes, Conceivability, andLogical Modality....................................... 65

SECTION 2 - THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS IN LOGIC AND MATHEMATICS

4. D. A. Anapolitanos: Thought Experiments Conceivability Conditions........................ 87

5. Barbara D. Massey: Do All Rational Folk Reason As We Do? Frege's Thought     Experiment Reconsidered ...................................................................................... 99

SECTION 3 - THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS IN THE SCIENCES

6. Allen I. Janis: Can Thought Experiments Fail?....................................................... 113

7. James Robert Brown: Thought Experiments:A Platonic Account ........................... 119

8. John Norton: Thought Experiments in Einstein's Work......................................... 129

9. Andrew D. Irvine: On the Nature of Thought Experiments in Scientific          Reasoning ........................................................................................................... 149

10. Ronald Laymon: Thought Experiments of Stevin Mach and Gouy: Thought       Experiments as Ideal Limits and as Semantic Domains....................................... 167

11. Mark Wilson: Reflections on Strings................................................................... 193

12. John Forge: Thought Experiments in the Philosophy of Physical Science............. 209

13. James G. Lennox: Darwinian Thought Experiments:
      A Function for Just-So Stories............................................................................. 223

14. Sarah G. Thomason: Thought Experiments in Linguistics.................................. 247

SECTION 4 - THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS IN PHILOSOPHY

15. J. N. Mohanty: Method of Imaginative Variation in Phenomenology...................... 261

16. Rolf George: The Tradition of Thought Experiments in Epistemology....................273

17. Gerald Massey: Backdoor Analyicity................................................................... 285

18. Richard M. Gale: On Some Pernicious Thought-Experiments............................... 297

19. Tamara Horowitz: Newcomb's Problem as a Thought Experiment........................305

20. Stephen Cade Hetherington: Conceivability and ModalKnowledge..................... 317

21. Joseph L. Camp, Jr.: The Ballad of Clyde the Moose........................................... 327

Contributors ........................................................................................................... 335