The ‘If’ in the ‘What If’
| Autor: | Daniele Sgaravatti |
|---|---|
| Přispěvatelé: | Sgaravatti, Daniele |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
Thought experiment
Structure (mathematical logic) Generality Philosophy of science Counterfactual conditional Thought Experiment 05 social sciences suppositional thought 06 humanities and the arts 0603 philosophy ethics and religion 050105 experimental psychology Epistemology Strict conditional Philosophy conditionals 060302 philosophy Logical form 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Sociology Philosophy of technology |
| Popis: | In this paper, I defend the view that any good account of the logical form of thought experiments should contain a conditional. Moreover, there are some reasons to think it should be a counterfactual conditional. First, I defend Williamson’s account of the logical form of thought experiments against a competing account offered by Ichikawa and Jarvis. The two accounts have a similar structure, but Williamson’s posits a counterfactual conditional where Ichikawa and Jarvis’ posits a strict conditional. Williamson’s motivation is related to the problem of deviant realizations, and Ichikawa and Jarvis propose to take care of this problem by enriching the content of the thought experiment in the way we enrich the content of a text of fiction. However, this sort of enrichment is also compatible with Williamson’s account. I then consider a different view, defended by Malmgren, on which a complex possibility claim exhausts our reasoning on typical thought experiments. I argue that this account, leaving out a conditional, fails to represent an important part of our reasoning with thought experiments. This is brought out by reflection on the relationship between thought experiments and similar actual cases and by reflection on the requirement, formulated by Malmgren herself, that our reasoning should have an adequate level of generality. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|