What If?

What If?
Thought Experimentation in Philosophy

Nicholas Rescher
First published 2005 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2005043713

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rescher, Nicholas.
What if? : thought experimentation in philosophy/ Nicholas Re-
scher.
p.cm
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-7658-0292-9 (alk. paper)
1. Thought experiments. I. Title.

BD265.R47 2005
101-dc22
2005043713

ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0292-7 (pbk)

 Contents

Preface

1. Thought Experimentation
1. Suppositions
2. Thought Experimentation
3. The Need for Context
4. Logical Aspects
5. Uses of Thought Experiments
6. Problems of Subjectivity
7. Malfunction in Thought Experimentation

2. Thought Experimentation in Science and History

1. Scientific Thought Experiments
2. Historical Thought Experiments

3. Thought Experimentation in Philosophy

1. Philosophical Thought Experiments
2. Typification vs. Counterexampling
3. A Philosophical Tool
4. Analogy and Burden of Proof

4. Thought Experimentation in Pre-Socratic Philosophy

1. Thales of Miletus
2. Anaximander of Miletus
3. The Pythagoreans
4. Xenophanes of Colophon
5. Heraclitus of Ephesus
6. Coda
5. Some Classic Philosophical Thought Experiments
1. Life is but a Dream (Plato's Dreamer)
2. Plato and the Ring of Gyges
3. Buridan's Ass
4. Descartes' Deceiver
5. Descartes' Wax
6. Locke's Locked Room
7. Locke's Changelings
8. Leibniz's Mill
9. Peirce's Stone
10. James' Squirrel
1 1. Chisholm's Changeling
12. The Prisoner's Dilemma
13. Some Lessons

6. Aporetics and Cost-Benefit Analysis in Philosophical Thought

Experimentation
1. Counterfactuals
2. Validating Counterfactuals
3. The Weakest Link in Philosophical Aporetics
4. Aporetic Clusters in Philosophy
5. The Determinative Role of Systematicity Considerations

7. Issues of Speculative Ontology

1. The Difference between Actual and Merely Suppositional
Objects and States of Affairs
2. How Fictional Possibilities Differ from Real Things
3. Impossible Objects

8. Philosophically Instructive Paradoxes

1. Paradoxes
2. The Liar and His Cousins
3. Russell's Paradox
4. Goodman's GruelBleen Paradox
5. The Role of Distinctions
6. Reductio ad absurdum
7. Thomson's Lamp as an Illustration of Reductio Reasoning
8. Per Impossible Reasoning
9. Outlandish Hypotheses and the Limits of Thought
Experimentation
1. Far-Fetched Hypotheses and Diminishing Returns
2. Meaninglessness
3. Suppositions that Go Too Far: Limits of Meaningfulness
4. How Outlandish Hypotheses Pose Problems
5. Use and Usage
6. The Shipwreck of Conjectural Analysis in Philosophy

10. On Overdoing Thought Experimentation

1. Two Worlds
2. Different Priorities
3. A Fuzzy Boundary
4. Reality Respect Endangered

Bibliography

Name Index
 1

Thought Experimentation

1. Suppositions

Philosophers have often said things to the effect that people whose
experience of the world is substantially different from our own are
bound to conceive of it in very different ways-and thereby operate in
terms of very different category-schemes.
Supporting considerations for this position have been advanced from
very different points of view. One example is a thought experiment
suggested by Georg Simmel in the last century-that of envisaging an
entirely different sort of cognitive being,' intelligent and actively
inquiring creatures (animals, say, or beings from outer space) whose
experiential modes are quite different from our own. Their senses
respond rather differently to physical parameters-relatively insensi-
tive, say, to heat and light, but substantially sensitized to various elec-
tromagnetic phenomena. Such intelligent creatures, Simmel held, could
plausibly be supposed to operate within a largely different framework
of empirical concepts and categories-the events and objects of the
world of their experience would doubtless be very different from our
own. The way in which they describe the realm of their experience
might differ radically. In a similar vein, William James wrote:

Were we lobsters, or bees, it might be that our organization would have

led to our using quite different modes from these [actual ones] of appre-
hending our experiences. It might be too (we cannot dogmatically deny
this) that such categories, unimaginable by us to-day, would have proved
2 What If?

on the whole as serviceable for handling our experiences mentally as those

we actually use.'

Different cultures and different intellectual traditions, to say nothing

of different sorts of creatures, will, so it has been widely contended,
describe and explain their experience-their world as they conceive
it-in terms of concepts and categories of understanding substantially
different from ours. They may, accordingly, be said to operate with
different conceptual schemes, with different conceptual tools used to
"make sense" of experience-to characterize, describe, and explain
the items that figure in the world as they view it. And it is clear that
the substantiation of any such conclusion will crucially and unavoid-
ably rest on thought experimentation.
In intellectual regards, homo sapiens is an amphibian who lives and
functions in two very different realms-the domain of actual fact,
which we can investigate in observational inquiry, and the domain of
imaginative projection which we can explore only in thought by means
of reasoning. This second ability becomes crucially important for the
first as well, when once one presses beyond the level of a mere
description of the real to concern ourselves also with its explanation.
In the history of Western thought, this transition was first made by the
Greek nature-philosophers of pre-Socratic times. It is they-as will be
seen-who invented thought experimentation as a cognitive procedure
and practiced it with great dedication and ~ersatility.~
To us moderns, brought up on imaginative children's nursery rhymes
("If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride") exposed to mani-
fold fictions, this sort of belief-suspensive thinking seems altogether
natural. But it takes a competent logician to appreciate how complex
and sophisticated thought experimentation actually is. What it involves
is not simply drawing an appropriate conchsion from a putative fact;
rather, it exploits the higher-level consideration that a particular thesis
(be it fact or mere supposition) carries a certain conclusion in its wake.
Supposition is, of course, a commonplace device that operates via
such familiar locutions as "suppose," "assume," "what if," "let it be
that," "consider the hypothesis that," and the like. A supposition is not
an acknowledged fact, but a thesis that is accepted "provisionally" or
laid down "for the time being." A mere supposition must, as such, be
deemed if not false, then at least uncertain to some extent; if it were
deemed true there would be nothing assumptive about it.4 It is the
 Thought Experimentation 3

occurrence among the premisses of an argument of such a supposi-

tional hypothesis that renders such a piece of reasoning in which it
figures a "hypothetical."
Supposing something to be the case is conceptually more sophisti-
cated than affirming it to be the case. The person who does not grasp
what it is to accept the claim that p is in no position to suppose doing
so, even as the person who imagines finding a dollar bill must know
what actually finding a dollar bill would be like. From the logical
point of view, knowing is supposing. For consider: One can only
know so what is actually true, which is obviously not so with suppos-
ing. And one can suppose something in one context of discussion, and
something else that is incompatible with it in another whereas knowl-
edge is once and for all. Supposing is conceptually more complex
than knowing.

2. Thought Experimentation

A "thought experiment" always rests on suppositions. It is an effort

at drawing instruction from a process of hypothetical reasoning that
proceeds by eliciting the consequences of some projected supposition
which, for aught that one actually knows to the contrary, may well be
false. Such a process consists in reasoning from a supposition that is
not accepted as true, and perhaps is even known to be false, but is
assumed provisionally in the interests of making a point or answering
a q ~ e s t i o n .Such
~ reasoning is a matter of "thinking things through"
with regard to the larger implications and ramifications of the proposi-
tion being supposed. And with suppositions, two sorts of situations
can arise. The supposition that inaugurates a thought experiment may
well supplement the body of already available information by extend-
ing it into a region that was previously terra incognita. However, it
also may, alternatively, abrogate our information by way of dismissal,
replacing at least a part of it with something that is contradictory to it.
Thought experiments of the former agnostic (belief-supplemental) type
are comparatively conservative, while those of the latter (belief-con-
flicting) type are more radical in nature. Indeed, thought experiments
can go beyond this to be based on assumptions that are viewed not
imply as false but as actually impossible. And this happens even with
scientific thought experiments such as those which stipulate things
like perfectly elastic bodies, perfectly homogeneous objects, friction-
4 What If?

less surfaces, absolute vacuums, ideal market economies, social con-

tracts, and the like.
Overall, then, thought experiments fall into two principal catego-
ries. In the first instance there is:
the agnostic where we simply do not know whether or not the suppo-
sition in question is true or false. ("If that was indeed John, then he
[John] was not born in 1920.") Here it is perfectly possible that the
defining supposition is realized and the antecedent of that conditional
true: one just doesn't know, and as far as the experiment is concerned,
it just doesn't matter.

Agnostic thought experiments are perfectly genuine experiments. The

assumptions on which they pivot will involve purely speculative sce-
narios that nowise conflict with any belief to the contrary. A hired
assassin bursts into the room. With one blast of his powerful shotgun
he renders his immobile victim to smithereens. But unbeknownst to
him, this individual has just expired, killed by the poison his disaf-
fected brother slipped into his lunch. Legally, that assassin is innocent
of murder: in law one cannot murder a corpse. But surely the issue of
moral guilt remains open. Clearly-so our lesson runs-the questions
of legal and moral culpability represent quite different issues. So what
we have here is a cogent and instructive thought experiment, albeit
one that involves no recourse to counterfactuality.
However, thought experimentation is often based on suppositions
that are more "far out" than what such "agnostic" scenarios involve.
And so another important category of thought experiments is:
the disbelieved (or belief-contravening) where we actually accept some-
thing that conflicts with the supposition in question. ("If Hannibal
were alive today, he would use tanks and not elephants.")

And an important subcategory of the latter is

The fanciful where one fully realizes that the supposition is utterly
impossible. ("If 4 were a prime, there could be five prime numbers
between 2 and 12.")

The question around which it revolves is crucial to a thought ex-

periment. Thus consider the following situation: Suppose that the fol-
lowing three pieces of information are given regarding two otherwise
unspecified real numbers x and y
 Thought Experimentation 5

Now if the question is: "What are the values of x and y?" the thought
experiment must be deemed impracticable. There simply are no quali-
ties x and y for which these conditions are feasible. On the other hand,
if the question is "Will there be such numbers or are the specified
conditions unrealizable?" then the thought experiment is altogether
successful and simply issues in a negative answer.
In theory, there is no limiting the nature of the supposition at issue.
Supposing is a pretty open-ended process. In The House at Pooh Cor-
ner, Piglet anxiously asked: "Suppose a tree fell down, Pooh, when we
were underneath it?" With unaccustomed acuity, Pooh replied: Sup-
posing it didn't." Anything that can be talked about can be the subject
of suppositions. But while a thought experiment will pivot on a suppo-
sition, it will have to be one that is specifically designed to facilitate
the solution of a motivating problem. After all, we can suppose "for
the sake of discussion" or "for the sake of illustration" and so on. But
only when a supposition is made for the sake of instruction-for set-
ting some larger, more far-reaching issue-is a thought experiment at
hand. A thought experiment is thus by nature a combination of a
supposition combined with a question; it is characterized by a supposi-
tion designed to resolve some larger issue.
Thus suppose people gave up on luxury, ostentation, and frivolity,
and matters of "conspicuous consumption" in general. The resulting
collapse of economic activity might well lead to economic depression
and general impoverishment-so picturesquely argued Sir Bernard
Mandeville's Fable of the Bees. And the wider lesson he drew was
that whatever defense of rustic simplicity and abstemious virtue there
might be, its utilitarian support in terms of general advantage to the
standard of living and material well-being will not be available. (In
this regard thought experimentation resembles real experimentation.)
And so not any and every hypothesis or assumption is a thought
experiment. For example, consider
Let us suppose a windowless room that is bare except for a chair
positioned in the middle of it.
6 What If?

There is as yet no thought experiment at issue here. For there is no

indication of the point of the exercise-no indication of any larger lesson.
Only when that is supplied will the case afford us a thought experiment.
There is thus an important difference between thought experimenta-
tion and mere speculation as such. "What if one could converse with
flowers?" "What if I could project myself back to the time of Julius
Caesar?" "What if one could change base materials into Gold through
a 'Midas touch'?'These are interesting questions that invite enliven-
ing speculating. But they do not constitute thought experiments unless
and until one specifies some larger problematic issue whose solution
such speculation is able to facilitate.
Suppose that someone writes a word beginning with A. And sup-
pose someone then comes along and erases that A. What can we
conclude about the remaining inscription? The answer is: very little
indeed. If indeed anything is left it need not be an English word. Nor
can we say anything whatever about what its initial (or last) letter is.
Nothing whatever can be concluded. But still there is a lesson here,
viz. that thought experiments can be perfectly practicable and mean-
ingful without their launching suppositions themselves yielding any
substantively germane conclusions.
And there is another lesson as well. Suppositions can occur within
suppositions. Just as statements can involve further statements and
questions further questions, so suppositions can involve further suppo-
sitions. We can suppose a group of people who are aware that there
are five of them in the room. And we can then go on to suppose that
one of them supposes two of - the others to be absent. However, this is
tantamount to supposing that one of five people in a room, all of
whom are aware of there being five, one supposes that two of the
others are missing. Multiple suppositions can always be compounded
into single ones.
However, one and the same thought experimental supposition can yield
very different results. Thus suppose that telekinesis were possible. We
might go on from this to draw conclusions about the engineering of
mind-matter interactive devices. Or we might go on to draw conclu-
sions about the rule of mind in nature's scheme of things. The taxo-
nomic nature of a thought experiment (as practical say or philosophical)
does not so much hinge on the thematic nature of its launching suppo-
sition as on the nature of the lesson we propose to draw from it.
What if Anglo-American orthography abandoned capital letters and
 Thought Experimentation 7

proceeded in the manner of e. e. cummings? Think of the enormous

savings of time and effort in writing and printing. Surely on-paper
communication would be just as intelligible-after all, we do not dif-
ferentiate capitalized words in speech. All this is true enough. But
nevertheless there is no thought experiment here until such time as a
larger lesson of some sort is indicated-perhaps relating to the extent
to which man is a creature of habit.
Thought experiments often invite us to suppose a situation which
could in fact be realized if one wished to take the time and trouble. It
is simply convenience and economy of effort that leads us to thought
experimentation here. We could actually carry out the experiment at
issue but there is no real point to it-the whole lesson to be learned
here can just as readily be secured on the basis of supposition pure and
simple. But many thought experiments cannot be carried out at all.
Some rewrite history ("How would seventeenth-century philosophy
have developed if Descartes had died at childbirth), some turn on
suppositions that are unachievable in principle. ("Suppose the diago-
nal of a square commensurable with its sides"), some are physically
unrealizable ("Suppose you were moving with a ray of light at its own
speed"), etc. Thought experiments need not be "contemplations in
thought as to how an experiment would actually work out" because
they are, often as not, dealing with nonexperiments-procedures that
cannot possibly be carried out at all. They are not a matter of thinking
about experiments, but are, rather, experiments in thinking. A thought
experiment need not be an imagined experiment because when the
conditions being supposed are unrealizable in principle it will not be
possible for an actual experiment to be carried out.
On this basis, thought experiments are complex courses of hypo-
thetical reasoning. They set out from a supposition, supplementing it
with a (generally tacit) group of facilitating premises. And they then
move on to establish a conclusion by standard (generally deductive)
reasoning. Moreover, they go through this process in order to answer
some experiment-characterizing questions-not because the conclu-
sion affords an answer (which it cannot do because its basis is merely
suppositional), but rather because that question is resolved by the con-
ditional fact that that particular supposition succeeds in underwriting
that particular c o n c l ~ s i o n . ~
Effectively by definition, then, a thought experiment will have to
include: (1) the supposition that it projects; (2) the context of informa-
8 What If?

tion into which this supposition is being introduced; (3) the conclusi~n
that is then derivable by means of this supposition; (4) the larger
question it is designed to answer (i.e., the lesson that is drawn from it);
and ( 5 ) the course of reasoning through which the preceding consider-
ations are to be seen as providing the grounds for the purposed an-
swer/lesson. Accordingly, we can say that thought experimentation
involves five stages overall: supposition, context-specification, con-
clusion-deriving, lesson drawing, and synoptic reasoning. And it is
crucial to note here that the "result" of a thought experiment is not that
conclusion itself, but rather the lesson that results from the fact that a
supposition-underwritten conclusion follows from the governing sup-
position in the context of guiding beliefs. Thus take that thought ex-
periment about the flying pigs. The supposition that sets its stage is
"Pigs can fly." The supplementing information includes such beliefs
as that creatures will, on suitable occasions, exercise the capabilities
they have. The conclusion that is derived is "Pigs will sometimes fly."
And the lesson we now propose to draw is: "Not every thought experi-
ment is all that interesting." And the course of reasoning through
which this lesson is drawn is a matter of viewing this thought experi-
ment as itself providing an instructive example of this very lesson.
An actual experiment, if experiment it is, will have an actual out-
come of some sort. A thought experiment, by contrast, will generally
have not one outcome but a range of possible outcomes. And the
upshot of conducting a thought experiment need not lie in the actual
realization of one or another of these possible outcomes but a recogni-
tion that some are more plausible-more powerfully indicated-than
others. Actual experimentation is an exercise in the observation of
nature, thought experimentation is an exercise in rational reflection-
in assessing the contextual plausibility of reaching a certain
conclusion in the circumstances created by stipulative conditions. A
thought experiment is no more an experiment than a plastic flamingo
is a flamingo. There may be various points of resemblance, but there is
no kinship.
It is not, however, strictly speaking, the case that thought experiments
proceed by thought alone and use no equipment or instrumentations.
Architects may build models to shape their plans, war planners may
use miniature tanks or battleships in table exercises, physicists or as-
tronomers may use computers to carry out their thought experiments.
But all of these different ways of simulating reality by use of artifacts
 Thought Experimentation 9

afford ways of thought experimentation exactly because we are here

dealing with a symbolically thought-controlled surrogate for reality
and not with the relevant sector of reality itself.

3. The Need for Context

Suppositional reasoning will only rarely and counterfactual reason-

ing never can proceed in an informational vacuum. And throughout
thought experimentation there is recourse to key aspects of the
prevailing state of relevant fact to provide the stage setting for the
reference that we draw (in general deductively) from the informative
situation opened to view by our governing supposition.
In many cases, our suppositions may prove insufficient for mean-
ingful thought experimentation able to yield definite conclusions. Con-
sider an example: Would the predictability of human actions spell an
end to free will? Suppose that X could reliably predict all of Y's
choices. Would this put paid to Y s freedom of choice? It all depends.
To address the issue we would have to flesh out more fully the still
missing gaps of the scenario. For the crucial question arises of just
how it is that X arrives at those predictions. Thus if X makes those
predictions through his knowledge of the causal consequences of
presently detectable conditions then we enter into a realm of causal
determinism which would, arguably, render Y' s chooses unfree. But,
on the other hand, should it be that X somehow has a (doubtless
mysterious) pre-cognitive insight into the future-possibly due to some
(doubtless mysterious) backwards causation-then there is nothing
about his precognition that would render those future choices of Y s in
any way unfree. The crucial point here is that how thought experimen-
tal suppositions work out will generally depends on considerations
relating to a context larger than anything is made apparent in the
experiment-projecting supposition itself.
Consider the following set-up as a given:

And now contemplate a conditional of the format

If there were no x in that box, then -.
There is effectively nothing that we can plausibly fill into that blank
short of trivially. ("Then there would be no x in that box"). There is
10 What If?

simply too little context. The crucial question as the where we can
possibly go from here is left unaddressed. One might, to be sure, be
tempted to endorse the consequences.
then there would be one less x on the page.
But is this really so? With a bit more context along the lines of "be-
cause that x is now erased away7' or "because that x is now shifted an
inch to the right" the tenability of the counterfactual would become
settled one way or another. With more context we come to be in a
position to say something more definite. But without sufficient con-
text, there is nothing further that we can say. For thought experiments
are only meaningful within a larger context of information. Thus sup-
pose that some cigarette smoke were released in a confined perfect
vacuum. Would it eventually diffuse homogeneously? This question is
not easily resolved-and cannot in fact be settled conclusively by
actual experimentation-"perfect" is too difficult and "eventually" too
long. But in any case it is a question one cannot meaningfully address
(let alone resolve!) without a great deal of physics at one's disposal.
Contextual information is thus essential for thought experimenta-
tion. Consider the classic thought experiment devised by Galileo to
refute Aristotle's theory that heavier objects fall faster than lighter
ones. On such a theory, Galileo asked, what is to happen when a
heavier object falls while being pinned to a lighter one. Then the
composite object H & L must (by the theory) fall faster than H alone
since it is obviously heavier. But since L alone will fall more slowly
than H, joining the slower L to H must retard the speed of H's fall. To
dispel such inconsistency, objects must fall at equal speeds, regardless
of weight. So reasoned Galileo. But of course this argumentation pre-
supposed many unspoken beliefs, including the ideas that conjoining
does not transform the holistic nature of an object, making it a "big
bully" that can push its way along more rapidly. And without the
supplemental assumption that a compound object behaves as a single
unit, the thought experiment will not be able to do its work. (And of
course this assumption itself carries the main burden of the earlier
"experiment.")
In general, the more reliance a thought experiment places on the
background of information relevant to its formative suppositions, the
more informative it is. When the conclusion follows logically from the
supposition itself the thought experiment is simply trivial. ("If there
 Thought Experimentation 11

were fifty people in the room, then there would be more than forty
people there" is totally true but thoroughly trivial. But, " then the floor
would most likely collapse" is distinctly more newsworthy.)
The exact composition of the set of environing beliefs is crucial for
the sort of "conclusions" that can be drawn from a supposition. Thus if
teacher X believes that Johnny is at bottom a pretty able student, while
teacher B has a far lower opinion of Johnny's capabilities, then in
confronting the claim "Johnny has the ability to learn how to do long
division" it will transpire that X accepts this as true while Y rejects it
as false. And of course their difference in this regard will lead them to
opposite views regarding the acceptability of the counterfactual
conditionals:
If (only) Johnny had studied harder he would have passed the
examination.

(Even) if Johnny had studied harder he would not have passed the
examination.

It is clear that in thought experimentation, as elsewhere, the conclu-

sions we draw will depend on the premises we endorse.
To be sure, the background of relevant information that is at issue
would not always be clear and explicit: critical analysis may be re-
quires to bring it into focus. But for fruitful thought experimentation it
must invariably be there. Let it be that you find a (partly illegible)
manuscript note reading:
He sent her a I-tter. ..
You now confront the question: How is that missing gap to be filled
in? It must be a vowel, so in theory it could be A, E, I, 0, or U, and
you proceed to list these alternatives by supposition. Clearly the
appropriate answer will depend on the context of relevant information
that is available. If she has just been injured the answer may well be I.
But if they are lovers separated through travel it would presumably be
E. And here everything depends on just exactly what question is being
asked. If the question is changed to "How can that missing gap be
filled i n ? ' t h e answer is clearly: Either by I or by E. But if the
question is "How must that missing letter be filled in," then there
simply is no appropriate answer and the thought experiment must be
seen as flawed.
12 What If?

Of course, neither in science nor elsewhere do thought experiments

create substantive information ex nihilo. Consider some illustrations.
In Newton's spinning bucket experiment, what is deduced by way of
conclusion is that the surface of the water will assume a concave
shape owing to the action of centrifugal force. But the ultimate lesson
of the thought experiment is something quite different, viz. that-since
there are no other objects for the bucket to relate to-the operation of
physical forces proceeds in relation to an absolute (object-indepen-
dent) space.
Categorical results cannot be extracted from mere suppositions.
Whenever thought experiments succeed in yielding factually informa-
tive conclusions from suppositions-mere hypotheses-it is not and
cannot be on the basis of such assumptions alone but involves an at
least tacit recourse to a penumbra of peripheral fact or belief. With
respect to physics, this very point has been urged eloquently by John
Norton:

Thought experimentation in physics provides or purports to provide us

information about the physical world. Since they are thought experiments
rather than physical experiments, this information does not come from the
reporting of new empirical data. Thus there is only one non-controversial
source from which this information can come: it is elicited from informa-
tion we already have by an identifiable argument, although that argument
might not be laid out in detail in the statements of the thought experiment.
The alternative to this view is to suppose that thought experiments provide
some new and even mysterious rout to knowledge of the physical world.'

However, while thought experimentation certainly cannot establish mat-

ters of contingent fact, what it certainly can do is to demonstrate
matters of logico-conceptual possibility. For such possibility is a matter
of coherence and consistency-which is to say a matter of reasoning
which, after all, is what thought experimentation is all about.
One recent author on thought experimentation characterizes the pro-
cess as one of "armchair i n q ~ i r y . "But
~ it is clear in the light of the
preceding considerations that this is not quite fair. For while thought
experimentation is indeed a matter of calculation and reasoning, never-
theless the materials providing input into this process-the premises
from which it proceeds and upon whose substance it is predicated-
are bound to come form our inquiries at large and neither need nor
generally will issue from the armchair.
 Thought Experimentation 13

The larger lesson involved in a thought experiment does not lie in

the substances of the consequences that follow from its launching
suppositions, but rather in the wider ramifications of the higher-level
circumstances that, given the wider cognitive context at issue, those
consequences ensue from the supposition. Again, consider, for
example, the counterfactual supposition that we had no capacity for
foresight and prediction. It would then follow that we could not
engage in anticipation and planning-that the future consequences and
implications of our actions were something wholly outside our ken.
Relative to this consequence, there emerges the larger lesson that moral
responsibility for our acts-sorr;'ething for which a realization of their
impact upon other persons and situations is in general crucial-is
crucially dependent upon foresight, so that predictive foresight into
the ramifications and consequences of action should be seen as a
crucial precondition for morality.
Theorists disagree about the nature of the background of belief that
affords a thought experiment's stage setting. Some theorists think that
it reflects our mental model of real it^,^ possibly one that is imprinted
in our thought by e v o l ~ t i o n . 'Others
~ look to an instinctive intellectual
insight into a realm of natural necessity.I1 Still others look to a body
of historically developed awareness of theses that characterize funda-
mentals of scientific practice.I2 The best plan, however, is to see that
informative background of supposition-correlative beliefs as a mani-
fold of information that is available to us in the problem-context
before us.13 Accordingly, the "inference" at issue is simply a matter of
reasoning deductively from a supposition in conjunction with a (gen-
erally tacit) family of background belief.
Thought experiments are certainly not a means for gaining instruc-
tive insight into a special domain of otherwise inaccessible truth about
substantively factud matters. The mainstream tradition of Western
epistemology insists emphatically that abstract thought and reflection
alone cannot provide information about factual matters and insists that
thought cannot extract facts ex nihilo. But some theorists deny this
and insist that thought experiments provide a counterexample to the
idea that pure thought is informatively impotent in relation to matters
of worldly fact. Some of these theorists insist that evolution has im-
printed into our minds a capacity for insight into nature's ways in a
way that thought experimentation can bring to the fore.I4 Other theo-
rists insist that empiricist inclinations cannot account for the ability of
14 What If?

thought experiments to provide insight into the laws of nature some-

how constituting a distinctive realm of Platonic forms.I5 But of course
such developmentally grounded inclinations cannot establish facts; they
can at best indicate presumptions.I6 The circumstance that they figure
in thought experiments that we deem as somehow instructive and
illuminating does not change their epistemic status into something else
by transmuting presumptions into facts. Those necessary background
assumptions needed for a thought experiment to work out are and
remain just exactly that-background assumptions based on conjec-
tures and perceptions. They represent not deeper insight into a remote
realm of experimentally inaccessible fact but rather experimentally
grounded conjectures and presumptions which, in the end, may or may
not prove to be sustainable.

4. Logical Aspects

One theorist characterizes thought experiments as "experiments per-

formed in the laboratory of the mind."I7 And it may seem only natural
to characterize a thought experiment as some sort of actual experi-
ment, specifically one that "purports to achieve its aim without the
benefit of execution" as another theorist suggest^.'^ But this is very
problematic. For actual experimentation addresses a question to nature
in circumstances where the experiment would be pointless if there
were no uncertainty as to what the outcome will be. By contrast,
thought experimentation addresses a question to the body of inform
ation in hand and is fruitless unless this body is already in a position to
render some particular outcome a foregone conclusion through reason-
ing alone. Thought experiments are not, in fact, "performed" any
place-unlike real experiments they are not performances but courses
of reasoning from a set of suppositions.
If by way of a thought experiment we institute the supposition S
and then on its basis claim the conclusion C to be somehow warranted,
just what sort of warrant can be at issue? How can we get insight into
warranting relationships after we step outside the realm of fact and
reality into that of mere supposition? We must of course immediately
acknowledge that what we now have is not C as such, but rather C's
following from S (in the context of our background information B).
But following in what sense?
Thought experimentation is an exercise in reasoning, and reasoning
 Thought Experimentation 15

requires a functioning logic. But what of such a logic itself? Is it

sacrosanct? Can we not undertake thought experimentation that calls
even this-even logic itself-into question? Gottlob Frege certainly
thought so:

But what if beings were even found whose laws of thought flatly contra-
dicted ours and therefore frequently led to contrary results in practice? The
psychological logician could only acknowledge the fact and say simply:
those laws hold for them, these laws hold for us. I should say: we have
here a hitherto unknown type of madness. Anyone who understands laws
of logic to be laws that prescribe the way in which one ought to think-to
be laws of truth, and not natural laws of human beings' taking a thing to
be true-will ask, who is right? But whose laws of taking-to-be-true are in
accord with the laws of truth?. . . The impossibility of our rejecting a
logical law hinders is not at all in supposing beings who do reject it; where
it hinders us is in supposing that these beings are right in so doing, it
hinders us in having doubts whether we or they are right.lY

And here the result of Frege's thought experiment-that the supposi-

tion that logic should be replaced by something else, something
different, something discordant from it-is in effect a reductio ad
absurdurn. We must accept logic as we know it as a given.

5. Uses of Thought Experiments

One way of classifying thought experiments is by the thematic sub-

ject matter of that what if question: is it scientific in mathematical,
legal or philosophical, or what? For example, "What if people lived on
average of 200 years-how would the laws of taxation and the
pension for social security funding have to be revised?' is clearly a
question of political economy constituted to the thought experiment of
the supposition at issue. And thought experiments designed to answer
the question "Would it be a goodlbad thing if people were more
candid with one another?'would belong to the realm of social ethics.
Thought experiments can also be classified by the nature of the
reasoning process leading from the supposition to the derived conclu-
sion (e.g., is it deductive or probabilistic or plausibilistic).
Then too, thought experiments can be divided into those used
constructively for substantiation and those used destructively for refu-
t a t i ~ n .For
~ ~instance, the generalization that generous acts betoken
16 What If?

virtuous character in the agent can be refuted by the thought experi-

ment of supposing some monstrous malefactor-a Hitler, say, or a
Stalin-moved to some acts of generosity by a yearning for public
praise. Or again the thesis that good intentions mitigate the evil of
wrongdoing might be substantiated by a thought experiment that projects
some typical sort of transgression (lying, say) which needlessly emerges
from a thoroughly praiseworthy (such as safeguarding the potential
victim of an enraged maniac). Thus, if in supposing a condition of
type A you are constrained (in the interest of coherence and consis-
tency) to reject and exclude B, then you establish a negative result to
the effect that "A's cannot be B's." And of course in the special instance
of the latter case when A = B, then you establish that "A's cannot be
A's" or-in effect-that A's are impossible. Here, then, you have a
reductio ad absurdum that constitutes a refutation of the A's as such.
One useful and very common use of thought experimentation
relates to its explanatory employment. We here reason along the lines
of "If only such-and-such were the case, then something-or-other (which
otherwise would be very difficult to explain) now admits of a ready
and satisfying explanation." For example, Thales, the very first of the
nature philosophers of ancient Greece, proposed to explain the annual
flooding of the Nile as the result of the backing up of its outflow due
to the opposing force of the annually recurrent Etesian winds.
Again, Charles Darwin gave thought experimentation a prominent
place in his overall reasoning:

In order to make it clear how, I believe, natural selection acts, I must beg
permission to give one or two imaginary illustrations. Let us take the case
of a wolf, which preys on various animals, securing some by craft, some
by strength, some by fleetness; and let us suppose that the fleetest prey, a
deer for instance, had from any change in the country increased in num-
bers, or that other prey had decreased in numbers, during the season of the
year when the wolf is hardest pressed for food. I can under such circum-
stances see no reason to doubt that the swiftest and slimmest wolves
would have the best chance of surviving, and so be preserved or selected.
[For] . . . some of its young would probably inherit the same habits or
structure, and by the repetition of this process, a new variety might be formed
which would either supplant or coexist with the parent-form of wolf.21

Just as natural science has no monopoly on experimentation proper-

which can, of course, be conducted in such everyday affairs as
 Thought Experimentation 17

cookery or instructional management-so it has no monopoly on though

experimentation either.
In a way, even a mere analogy or metaphor can encapsulate a
thought experiment. Take, for example, the Biblical analogy of the
wifelmother to a fruitful vine. Here the following thought experiment
is implicitly at work in addressing the question: "What role does the
wifelmother play in the scheme of things?"

Suppose that we think of the wifetmother as a fruitful vine. We will

then understand better and more clearly her-role in the scheme of
things. For just as the vine bears fruit so she bears her children, and
just as the vine supports its fruit and keeps its fruit safe so does she
with her children, and just as the vine brings nourishment to its fruit
so doe she with her children.

As this example indicates, many thought experiments are not all that
interesting. Thus consider "If pigs could fly, they sometimes would"
which envisions the thought experiment of flying pigs and answers the
question "What are some of the things that will happen in these cir-
cumstances?" In thought experimentation, as elsewhere, one can rea-
son about trivial issues as well as significant ones.
Often the merit of a thought experiment lies precisely in the economy
and convenience it affords in rendering an actual experiment unneces-
sary. This is particularly evident when thought experiments are used in
the context of planning. T h u s consider, for example, an architect who
contemplates how high to position the entry floor of a building. If too
low it may flood; if too high it will be inconvenient for access. He
needs "to think through" the consequences of the various alternatives
in advance and by such thought experimentation seeks to avoid the ex-
pense and possible misfortune that a real experiment could well involve.

6. Problems of Subjectivity

As an exercise is abstract reasoning, thought experimentation falls

outside the purview of psychology. One recent writer speaks of "the
currently popular view that thought experimentation is best under-
stood in connection with the notion of mental models."22 But, popular
or not, this idea is very questionable.
Thought experiments sometimes involve the construction of models
(as in architecture) and sometimes even of mental models (as in the
18 What If?

use of differential equations to represent physical processes). But some

theorists go so far as to view thought experimentation in general as a
matter of mental modeling. But this is a mistake. There is no need for
modeling in thought experimentation: what is at issue is merely the
explanation of consequences ensuing upon the introduction of an as-
sumption into a context of beliefs.
Thought experiments certainly need not-and often do not-deal
with mental models or constructs or images or anything merely men-
tal. They address hypothesis-engendered results that yield instruction
through working out the accommodations and readjustments that have
to be made to realize some coherent and consistent group of overall
suppositions. They are in sum exercises not in model construction or
imaginative design but in processing information in rational inquiry.
After all, in typical thought experimentation the question is not (or
need not be):
What would I (be inclined to) say if -
But rather:
What would-and indeed should-one say if -
In general, the crux of thought experimentation is not a matter of
subjective inclination or personal response, for the point at issue gen-
erally is-and should be-as generic, impersonal, and objective as any
other. Thought experimentation is, to reemphasize, an exercise not in
introspection but in reasoning.
Thought experimentation requires imagination in its pliance on the
supposition of unknown conditions. And it requires reasoning because
it requires one to figure out what follows-"what is to be said7'-in
the circumstances. Moreover it requires evaluation because while there
are already different-and generally discordant-things than can be
said, they will differ in point of plausibility and the object of the
exercise is precisely to identify the optimal, maximally plausible alter-
native. Nevertheless, the process is an objective matter of dealing with
the realities of the situation.
The cogency of thought experimentation is contextual but not sub-
jective-it depends on the available information but not on the
personal attitudes or inclinations of the experimenters. The upshot of a
cogent thought experiment will pivot on establishing a thesis on the
order of "If such-and-such were the case, one would be rationally
 Thought Experimentation 19

well-advised to maintain p (rather than Q or anything else). And such

thought experimentation is not an exercise in subjectivity. Its orienta-
tion is not psychological: it does not address what you or I or any
other particular individual is inclined to say or feel or do. The key
issue in addressing these "What i f ' questions is not "What am I tempted
or inclined to assert in these conditions?" but rather "What would it
make good sense to assert in these condition^?"^^ Rather, its concern
is normative and impersonal, asking what should be said or done, what
is the proper and appropriate response.
One of the tasks that can conveniently be accomplished by thought
experiments-indeed one that is seen by some writers as their princi-
pal objective-is a matter of checking introspectively one's natural,
intuitively inclinational response towards a particular h y p ~ t h e s i s . ~ ~
This might be characterized as the "What would you say i f . . . ?" use
of thought experimental suppositions. This is not, however, a very
satisfactory account. For one thing, it makes thought experimentation
an exercise in introspective subjectivity-something which it ought
not to be and for which it can now be rescued only by the problematic
postulation of a "modal interaction" that offers quasi-objection insight
into the inner possibilities of things. And for another thing it overlooks
the fact that thought experimentation-like real experimentation-is
not a matter of idle curiosity but serves a larger function, that of
providing a means for helping to settle a more deep-rooted and far-
reaching question of some sort. A supposition projected merely for the
casual contemplation of intriguing possibilities is a matter of idle specu-
lation rather than thought experimentation.
Repeated assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, thought
experimentation need have nothing to do with i n t r o ~ p e c t i o n .To
~ ~be
sure, there can indeed be thought experiments that are explicitly intro-
spective: "If a lion came into the room what would you think/say/do?"
But other, even closely related thought experiments will have nothing
introspective about them: "If a lion came into the room what should
you do?" (Answer: leave rapidly and call the zoo for help.) There is
nothing introspective here. It is fundamentally a matter of what it
would be sensible for you-or indeed anybody-to do in the circum-
stance.
And it is also necessary to realize that the "should" at issue here is
the epistemic rather than the moral should. Consider the thought
experiment of being confronted with a cluster of green marbles and
20 What If?

asked, "What is the color of those marbles?'Clearly one should-on

moral grounds of candor and honesty reply, "Green." But this consid-
eration of moral propriety is not at issue in thought experimentation,
where that specified answer should be given simply because it is
correct, because it conveys true information rather than mis-informa-
tion, because it squares with the facts of the case.
The case is, different, to be sure, where specifically autobiographi-
cal thought experiments are involved. Again consider the following
thought experiment: "Suppose I were to wake up tomorrow without
any recollections regarding anyone whom I did not know at the age of
twenty. How would I respond?" Clearly if I am the sort of individual
to whom personal relationships matter greatly, I might well return to
the scene of my youth and try to pick up the threads with people I still
know. On the other hand, if I am the sort of person whose thoughts
dwell in the realms of generality (as a pure mathematician, say) then I
might prefer simply to carry on as before. In ways such as these,
thought experimentation can be a useful instrument in self-insight and
self-understanding. Here introspection will be our guide. But of course
this is not something that lies in the nature of thought experimentation
in general. It is the result simply of the fact that this particular thought
experiment poses a specifically introspective question about one in
particular. If the thought experiment were altered to be generic and the
question changed to "How should one respond?" we would be in a
situation of informational insufficiency. Too much hinges on the oth-
erwise unspecified aspects of the situation.
One can, of course, undertake to examine one's epistemic inclina-
tions via an introspective assessment of one's belief reactions in
conjectural matters. But such excuses in subjective self-examination
have little bearing on thought experimentation at large. For here the
aim of the enterprise is the quest for cogent answers to questions, and
the pivotal issue is not that of "What am I inclined to think?" but
rather "What is it that people should think because in the circum-
stances this is the appropriate and most cogent thing to think-that for
which there are the best and strongest reasons." Proper thought experi-
mentation is an exercise in objective rationality.
 Thought Experimentation 21

7. Malfunction in Thought Experimentation

Thought experimentation is exempt from all sorts of misfortunes

and malfunctions that can cause failure in actual experimentation:
flawed apparatus, careless observations, environmental disturbances,
and so on. Such misfortunes, inherent in operations in the physical
world, are spared to the thought experimenter, whose mishaps are
confined to the realm of deliberation which, of course, has its own
panoply of pitfalls by way of the errors of omission and commission
that can arise throughout our intellectual ventures.
As we have seen, a thought experiment involves five stages overall:
supposition, context specification, commitment adjustment, conclusion
deriving, and lesson drawing. And at each of these stages a mishap or
malfunction can in theory arise.

The supposition can turn out to be meaningless.

The context may be set up inappropriately, in relation to the purposes
of the thought experiment in particular by way of error of omission.
The commitment adjustment may fail to be realistic, in particular by
way of errors of omission that plunge matters into inconsistency.
The course of reasoning by which the intended conclusion is drawn
may be flawed and erroneous.
The wrong lesson can be drawn for the experiment by overlooking
possibilities for its interpretation.

In sum, all sorts of procedural flaws can, in theory, arise to vitiate a

thought experiment.
And, in fact, one of the most common failings of thought experi-
ments is that they prove inconclusive owing to insufficiencies in their
specification. Take the biologist's hypothesis: "Suppose a species of
organism that has no predators at all. What sorts of factors might then
limit its population?" But what sort of organism is it-is it animal or
vegetable or humanoid? Everything is left up in the air. For whenever
we draw out the implications of a supposition we must do so in the
context of the relevant information of its cognitive envisionment. And
in complex situations this context may speak with forked tongue through
acknowledging conflicting tendencies. Thus suppose people generally
told each other the unvarnished truth. Would we have then a utopia of
trust and knowing where we stood? Or would there be a hell of mutual
antagonism and rancor? A pretty good case could be made out either way.
22 What If?

The reality of it is that thought experiments will generally have to

bear the responsibility for their own failure. In particular, thought
experiments can fail:

1. From lack of information needed for bringing the launching supposi-

tion of the thought experiment into a decisive contact with the prob-
lem being addressed. (Flaw of information insufficiency.)
2. From mistakes in reasoning process that leads from the leading sup-
position of the thought experiment to a resolution of the public being
discussed. (Flaw of reasoning.)
3. From hitting the wrong target, so to speak, in drawing the wrong
lesson from the thought experiment in relation to the question being
addressed.26

The inherently controversial nature in this regard is illustrated by Isaac

Newton's famous hypothetical Spinning Bucket. Here centrifugal force
leads the water level to rise towards the edges. But when this happens
altogether in vacuo-where the basket is surrounded by nothing but
empty space-there is nothing external for the basket to relate to-its
space is absolute, relative to nothing save the (envisioning) space it-
self. But since the phenomenon is real so also is absolute space. So
resolved Newton. But Ernst Mach flatly denied these contextual
contentions. In vacuo, he insisted, the surface of the water would stay
flat as a pancake. And in reality-when the experiment is conducted
in the physical world-there indeed is something relative for
determining the bucket's envirming space, namely the manifold of the
stars set throughout the heavens.27
Can honest people perform dishonest acts? Some might suggest the
following thought experiment

Suppose X entrust a sum of money to Y. X has an identical twin

brother Z who reclaims the money. Y , being honest, gives it "back."
But in this giving that entrusted money to any person Y has done a
dishonest act.

Seeing this thought experiment seemingly provides affirmative response

to our question. But appearances are misleading. The indicated
conclusion does not follow. All that follows is that Y has performed a
mistaken or erroneous act, but not a dishonest one. Dishonestly would
occur only if that wrongful transfer were willing and deliberate. As it
 Thought Experimentation 23

stands, the thought experiment has failed to realize its objective through
being based on an erroneous premise.
One highly important class of "what if' questions is constituted by
predictive issues relating to future possibilities.

What would you do if your house burned down?

How would Anglo-Canadians respond if Quebec split off into indepen-

dence?

The difficulty with thought experiments of this sort lies in the

problems affecting the contextual information required for the estab-
lishment of any sort of cogent conclusion. People's self-insight is very
limited-they generally do not "know themselves" well enough to
achieve secure foresight into hypothetical situations. And much the
same holds for our insight into the make-up of others required for
securely predicting their responses. Moreover our contemplation of
future eventuations always leaves out of sight the vast amount of
detail that characterizes any actual course of development. (For
example, that initial question leaves out of sight the issue of whether
that fire was caused by lightning or by the malicious vandalism of an
antagonistic neighbor.) In such predictive cases the absence or indefi-
niteness of requisite information will all too often render a thought
experiment too indefinite and "speculative" for profitable contempla-
t i ~ n . ~ ~
As such examples show, one key problem for thought
experimentation lies in the possible insufficiency of circumambient
information. For the assumption at issue can prove to be under-infor-
mative and unable in and of itself to resolve the question being posed.
Assume a one-windowed room. Such suppositional stipulations merely
create an oasis of putative fact within a desert of unanswerable ques-
tions. What color are the walls in the room? Where is it located? What
is the chair made of? At what distance are the legs of the chair from
the walls of the room? Our stipulations float free in a vacuum of
missing fact. Those questions indicate missing facts of the matter.
Walls-real walls-will have to be of some color or other. But that's
just it, those presently contemplated walls aren't real. To ask for the
color of that hypothetical wall is like asking for Sherlock Holmes'
shoe size. There is no answer here-no fact of the matter-because
the question runs outside the scope of the issue-defining supposition^.^^
 In an intriguing discussion of farfetched assumptions in ethics P. H.
Nowell-Smith poses the question "What would you say if you added a
column of ten figures one hundred times and got one answer fifty
times and another fifty times?" His response is: "1 simply do not know
what 1 should say, for the logic of my language for talking
about . . . adding does not allow for this sort of thing."30 But this is
not really the best reaction. For the supposition in question here is
simply too vague. It leaves too much unsaid. We need to know the
details. Am I arithmetically challenged and incompetent? Am 1 fixated
on 222 and will offer this as one response (among others) to any
arithmetical problem. Am 1 optically weird and will at times persis-
tently read 8 as 3? That "What will you say i f ' supposition is simply
too indefinite-too lacking in detail-to make a sensible response
possible. The problem does not lie in the farfetchedness as such of the
supposition, but in its lack of informative
One major way in which a thought experiment can fail occurs when
its launching supposition is under-informative in relation to the ques-
tion being posed. This situation is standard in belief-contravening (or
counterfactual) situations. The classic example is that of the question:
If Bizet and Verdi were fellow countrymen what nationality would
Bizet be? The problem of course is that that counterfactual hypothesis
can be realized in very different ways, namely by allowing Bizet's
nationality to be that of Verdi's or conversely allowing Verdi's to that
of Bizet. And the supposition itself is underinformative with respect to
this question-decisive issue. Exactly this sort of thing is at issue with a
supposition on the order of X's exchanging memories with Y . The
exact process through which X's acquisition of Y s memories is going
to be central whether it be by hypno-suggestion and brainwashing, for
example, or by Pavlovian conditioning or by "magic." The "outcome"
of that thought experiment will very much depend on filling out the
incomplete data of its inadequate projection.
Thus in calling into question our standard practice of personal iden-
tification by assigning an individual name, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote:

Imagine, for example, that all human bodies which exist looked [ex-
actly] alike. . . . [Then]it might be useful to give name to the sets o f
characteristics [ofindividuals], and the use o f these names would now
roughly correspond to the personal names on our present language.32

But this thought experiment is quite problematic. How could its

 Thought Experimentation 25

supposition possibly be fleshed out to make sense? Would there no

longer be observable differences between the bodies of men and women,
or infants and septuagenarians, of athletes and housebound valetudinar-
ians, and anorexics and gourmands? And even if, per impossible, these
ceased to be observable differences between humans, what sorts of
characteristics are now to be at issue for differentiation? Physical
comportment (brow furrowing or chin stroking), sub-observable
physical differences (fingerprints), ways of speaking (voice pattern
identification)? Or perhaps people are simply given a serial number at
birth-much as artists number prints-and these tattooed on their arms
(in the manner of Nazi concentration camps). The point is that
Wittgenstein's supposition is totally indefinite and undeterminative.
All we could say in the sketchy circumstances at issue is that (1) we
would still need to use some way of identifying individuals, and (2)
that this would be different from the physical appearance ("mug-shot")
manner in current operation. What this would likely be-say, whether
by means of sets of descriptive characteristics of some particular sort-
is something that one simply cannot say in the insufficiently specified
conditions.
Of course the reverse situation-that of an informational
overdetermination can also occur. For consider the situation where it
is supposed that Smith was born in 1898, Jones is eight years older
than Smith, and Smith was fifteen when World War I ended (in 1918).
How old was Jones when World War I broke out (in 1914)? The
suppositional situation given here is actually overdeterminative: too
much for consistency. Again, no answer to the question being posed
can here be secured.
Sometimes it may not be altogether clear exactly what the point of a
thought experiment is. This occurs, in particular, when the question
that a thought experiment sets out to address is so indefinite that it is
hard to say just what the point of the exercise is. Thus consider such a
speculative what-if thought experiment on the order of

Suppose intelligent life existed on other planets and entered into elec-
tromagnetic communication with us. How would this affect us hu-
mans in regard to our self-image as "the crown of creation"?

Thought experiments are often used for consequence-exploration in

matters of choice. The man who concluded "I could well be happy
26 What If?

with either, were t'other sweet charmer away7' has doubtless done
some thought experimentation. Thought experimentation is a crucial
resource for planning of every kind. Thus if shooting him with my bow
and arrow is indeed the best plan for killing Cock Robin, I must compare
it in thought with such alternatives as blowing him up with dynamite.
But obviously I cannot make an experimental test both ways to see
what works out best.
All in all, then, thought experimentation can involve various sorts
of error. Thought experiments can err by relying on background infor-
mation that is misinformation. They can involve errors of reasoning to
arrive at conclusions that do not actually follow from the premises
they use. They can address questions that rest on flawed presupposi-
tions, can fall short precisely because they are suppositions projected
with a view to answering questions and resolving problems. And so,
thought experiments can fail-just as real experiments can. They can
do so by failing to provide cogently an answer to the question they are
designed to resolve. Or else they can provide the right answer to the
wrong question.
A widely discussed philosophical thought experiment was projected
by Hilary Putnam in 1975. It envisions a "twin earth" where a earth-
bound individual (Adam) had his physically indistinguishable identi-
cal twin (Twadam). Both of them use the word "water" and apply it to
items that are phenomenologically indistinguishable. But on earth wa-
ter is applied to H 2 0 while on twin earth, whose elements are consti-
tuted somewhat differently (albeit in ways lying between the threshold
of casual observation), what is there called "water7' is actually HP20-.
It now results that while the term used by Adam and Twadam have a
different "meaning" (because they apply to different sorts of sub-
stance) nevertheless everything that figures in the thought processes of
our trans-universal twins is exactly the same. And so, Putnam con-
cludes, "meanings just ain't in the head."33
But it is very much open to question whether Putnam's thought
experiment sustains his conclusion. For there are-or certainly seem
to be-two quite different sorts of "meaning," namely referential mean-
ing (which pivots on what a term actually applies to) and conceptual
meaning (which pivots on the way in which the users of a term pro-
pose to understand it in their thought and discourse). Both we and
Anixmander of Miletus use our (linguistically coordinate) term for the
moon in just the same way. But conceptually we take a very different
 Thought Experimentation 27

view of the matter, since he took the moon to be a hole in the comic
framework through which we see the all-enveloping fire beyond. And
although referential meaning is an objective matter that is not in
anybody's individual head-or any particular culture's collective head,
for that matter-this is emphatically not the case with conceptual mean-
ing. And so, while the salient suppositions of Putnam's thought ex-
periment certainly does support a point, it just is not exactly his point.

Notes

1. Georg Simmel, "Ueber eine Beziehung der Selektionslehre zur Erkenntnistheorie,"

Archiv fur systematische Philosophie und Soziologie, vol. 1 (1895), pp. 34-45 (see
40-1).
2. Pragmatism (New York: Longmans Green, 1907), p. 171. The basic line of
thought goes back to the ancient sceptics. Compare Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of
Pyrrhonism, I, 54,59-60,97, et passim.
3. Chapter 4 will substantiate this contention in detail.
4. "Supposition on the part of the Creator would be ridiculous, for supposition
implies doubt." (Alfred Guillaume [ed.], The 'Summa Philosophiae' of Al-
Shahrastani [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 19341, p. 62 of the translation). As noted
above, conditionals whose antecedents are seen as true-factual conditionals, that
is-are generally formulated with since rather than if.
5. The term "thought experiment" is based on the German Gedainken-experiment
introduced by Ernst Mach in his 1883 (see pp. 32-41 and 159-62) and 1897. (For
references of this name and date format see the bibliography at the end of the
book.)
6. In his 1991 and 1996, John Norton rightly stresses the inferential nature of
thought experimentation.
7. Norton 1996.
8. Chapter 4 of Sorenson 1992 is entitled "The Wonder of Armchair Inquiry."
9. Nercessian 1992.
10. Peirce 1935-54, Sorensen 1992.
11. Brown 1991 and Kripke 19xy.
12. McCallister 1996.
13. Rescher, 2005b (=Conditionals).
14. See for example Ernest Mach, The Science of Mechanics, (3rd ed.), tr. by Thomas
J. McCormack (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1907).
15. See for example Brown (1986) and (1991).
16. See Rescher 2005a (=Presumptions).
17. Brown 1991, p. 1.
18. Sorenson 1992, p. 205.
19. Gottlob Frege, The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, trans by Montgomery Furth (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 14-15.
20. Compare Brown 1991, p. 34.
28 What If?

21. Charles Darwin, O n the Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition (Cam-
bridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 176-77 (90-91). See further
the detailed treatment of Lennox 199 1.
22. Haggqvist 1996, p. 17.
23. In chapter 2 of Sorenson 1992 there is an extensive discussion on the question
"What is the origin of retrospection" that drives the process of thought experimen-
tation, and worries "that 'thought experiment' is just a twentieth-century empha-
sis, for the currently reviled term 'introspection."' Such worries can and should
be set aside by the realization that "interpretation" is simply not at issue here.
24. See, for example, Brown 1986 and Wilkes 1988.
25. Unger 1992 devotes the better part of a whole chapter to the matter.
26. For an informative discussion of how thought experiments in physics can go
wrong see Allen I. Janis in Horowitz and Massey 199 1.
27. For further detail regarding Newton's bucket experiment see Laymon 1978 and
1991.
28. On these issues see the author's Predicting the Future (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1998).
29. See Gale 1991.
30. Ethics (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1954), pp. 240-41.
31. The topic of farfetched thought experiments will be investigated in detail in
chapter 9.
32. Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (New York: Harper, 1958), pp.
61 -62.
33. See Putnam 1975.

Albert L. Stevens, 172
Anixmander of Miletus, 26,63-65
Archimedes, 29
Aristotle, 10, 29,61,63, 64,69, 72n2,
77,78,93n10, 129, 135n3
Arthur, Richard,l7 1
Atkinson, David, 171
Austin, J. L., 171
A vicenna, 48
Barker, Stephen, 136n7
Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, 64
Bennett, Jonathan, 46n 15
Blackmore, John, 17 1
Brown, James R., 271111, 27n15, 27n17,
27n20,28n24,45nl, 45114,45116,
93n15, 171
Broyles, James, 17 1
Bunge, Mario, 171
Buridan, Jean, 77-79,93n8,93n9
Burnet, John, 67, 68,69,70, 72n5, 72n6,
72n7,72n8, 171
Calderon, 73
Camp, Joseph, I71
Cantor, Georg, 138
Camap, Rudolf, 158117
Casey, Edward S., 171
Cervantes, 115, 116
Chammah, Albert M., 175
Chisholm, Roderick, 87, 88, 93n21,97,
108nl, 108n5, 1.591110, 171
Clarke, Samuel, 145
Cole, David, 93n18, 171
Cowley, Robert, 171
 Name Index
Dancy, Jonathan, 60n7, 172
Danly, John R., 172
Darwin, Charles, 16, 28n21, 29, 33
Davidson, Donald, 117n3
De Morgan, Augustus, 172
Dennett, Daniel, 172
Descartes, RenC, 74,75, 79-81, 87,90,
93n3, 93nl1, 134, 146, 172
Dionysius, 68
Drake, Stillman, 172
Dresher, Melvin, 88
Duhem, Pierre, 93n9, 172
Einstein, Albert, 29, 172
Ellis, Joseph L., 165
Evans, Jonathan, St. B. T., 172
Fearon, J. D., 172
Ferguson, Niall, 172
Fermat, 136n15
Flood, Merlin, M., 88
Flores, Angel, 93n10
Fodor, Jerry, 159n17, 172
Forge, John, 172
Frankfurt, Harry, 93n13
Franklin, Allan, 172
Frege, Gottlob, 15, 27n19
Gale, Richard M., 28n29, 136n14, 172
Galilei, Galileo, 10,29,30,32, 129,
136n13, 172
Gardner, Martin, 172
Gendler, T. S., 136n13, 172
Gentner, Dedre, 172
Genz, Henning, 172
178 What If?
George, Rolf, 172
Gettier, Edmund, 53
Goldman, Alvin, 172
Gooding, David C., 172
Goodman, Nelson, 108n1, 108n5, 125-
127, 135n5, 136n7, 136n8, 173
Hacking, Ian, 173
Haggvist, Soren, 28n22,94n23, 117,
158n1, 158n2, 158n3, 173 Hahn,
Hans, 33,34,45n9
Hansson, 108114, 108115
Harman, Gilbert, 155,173
Harre, Rom, 173
Heath, T. L., 136n 12
Hejjenoort, J. van, 135114
Hekataios, 69
Hempel, Carl G., 45n 12
Heraclitus of Ephesus, 67-71,72115
Hesiod, 69
Hiebert, Erwin, 173
Hippasus of Metapontum, 65,129
Hippolutus, 72n3
Hippon, 61
Hobbes, Thomas, 54
Holton, Gerald, 173
Horowitz, Tamara, 281126,45111,
171-76
Hull, David L., 173
Humphrys, Paul, 173
Irvine, Andrew D., 173
James, William, 1, 86-87, 93n20, 173
Janis, Allen 1 ., 28n26, 173
Janoff-Bulman, R., 173
Kant, Immanuel, 5 1,56, 82
Keynes, J. M., 114
Kirk, G. S., 61,63, 64,65,66, 67,68,
69,72n 1,72n2,72n3,72n4,72n5,
174
KoyrC, Alexandre, 45n6, 174
Kripke, Saul, 27n11
Kuhn, Thomas, 32,45nl,45n7,45n8,
174
Kyburg, Henry E., 136n7
Lakatos, Imre, 174
Laymon, Ronald, 281127, 174
Leibniz, G. W., 50, 73, 83-84, 87, 92n2,
93n2, 93n7,93n17, 118,145,146,
1.58115, 158116, 174
Lennox, James G., 28n21, 174
Levy, Isaac, 108115
Lewis, David, 46n15,46n16, 174
Locke, John, 81-83,93n12,93n14
Lucretius, 29,45113
Lyons, William, 174
Mach, Emst, 22, 27n5, 27n14, 29, 31, 33,
34,35,45n2,45n5, 45nl0,71,
931119, 174
Mackie, J. L., 155
MacLachlan, James, 174
Mandeville, Bernard, 5
Martensson, E., 461116
Massey, Gerald, 28n26,45n 1, 171-76
McAllister, James W., 174
McCallister, 27n 12
McCloskey, M., 174
Meinong, Alexius, 148
Mersenne, Marini, 134
Michalski, K., 93n8
Mill, John Stuart, 149
Miller, A. I., 174
Miscevic, Nenad, 175
Mohanty, J. N., 175
Morris, Edmund, 165
Myers, C. Mason, 175
Nercessian, Nancy, 27n9, 175
Newton, Isaac, 12,22, 28n27,29
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 56, 109n10
Nisbett, Richard, 175
Norton, John, 12, 27n6, 27n7, 175
Nowell-Smith, P. H., 24
Nozick, Robert, 175
Olsen, James M., 175
Parfit, Derek, 155, 159n16

Peirce, Charles Sanders, 27n 10, 34, 57,
84-86,931119. 175
Plato, 58,73, 75,76, 92,92111, 93n4,
93115, 101. 167, 175
Poincart, Henri. 124
Popper, K. R. 175
Prantl, Carl von, 135113, 175
Priestly, Joseph, 33
Putnam, Hilary, 26, 27, 281133, 151-52,
159118
Pythagoras of Sarnos, 65,69
Quine, W. V., 155, 1.58117, 159n1.5
Quinton, Anthony, 92n2
Ranke, Leopold von, 27
Rapaport, Anatol, 175
Raven, J. E., 61,63,64, 65, 66,67, 68,
69,72n1,72n2,72n3,72n4, 174
Reagan, Ronald, 165
Rescher, Nicholas, 27n12,27n16,46n 17,
108113, 108n5, 119n4,175
Roese, Neal J., 175
Rorty, Richard, 154
Ross, Lee, 175
Routley, Richard, 9 1, 92, 94n24
Routley, Valerie, 91,92,94n3-4
Russell, Bertrand, 53, 122-25, 135n2,
135114. 175
Sainsbury, R. M., 176
Searle, John, 52, 53,60n1
Sextus Empiricus, 27n2
Shoemaker, Sydney, 155, 159nl1, 176
Name Index 179
Simmel, George, 1, 27n 1
Socrates, 76,77, 101
Sorensen, Roy, 27n8,27n9,27n103
27n18,28n23,45nll, 60n2.60n6,
117, 136nl1, 158nl, 159nl4, 176
Spinoza, B. de, 102, 109118
Stalker, Douglas, 135n5, 136n10, 176
Stevin, Simon, 30
Stove, D. C., 176
Strawson, P. F., 117nl
Thales of Miletus, 16, 61, 62, 63
Thomason, Sara G., 176
Thompson. James F., 13 1. 132, 1361114,
176
Thomson. Judith James, 53
Tsouras, Peter G., 46n14
Unger. Peter, 281125, 158111, 176
Urbaniec. Jacek. 176
Vaihinger, Hans, 176
Welles, Orson, 166
Whitehead, A. N., 135n4
Wiggins, David, 155
Wilkes, Katherine, 281124, 60118, 142,
158114, 159n
Williams, Bernard, 83, 152, 159n9
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 24, 25,281132,
158117 Wolff, Christian, 156, 157
Xenophanes of Colophon, 65-67,68,69,
72n4