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Why Thought Experiments Are Not Arguments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Michael A. Bishop
Michael A. Bishop*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Iowa State University
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Abstract

Are thought experiments nothing but arguments? I argue that it is not possible to make sense of the historical trajectory of certain thought experiments if one takes them to be arguments. Einstein and Bohr disagreed about the outcome of the clock-in-the-box thought experiment, and so they reconstructed it using different arguments. This is to be expected whenever scientists disagree about a thought experiment's outcome. Since any such episode consists of two arguments but just one thought experiment, the thought experiment cannot be the arguments.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , December 1999 , pp. 534 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, 402 Catt Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011; e-mail: mikebish@iastate.edu.

‡

I would like to thank John Norton, Niall Shanks, Jonathan Sutton, Loretta Torrago, David Rudge, and an anonymous referee for very helpful comments.

References

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