Scientific Reasoning and Philosophical Argumentation (Kf250)

Compensations

Content

LECTURE 1. What if? So what? (Wednesday 28th of April 2010, 9-11, U40 sr A121) In this lecture, the central theme of hypothetical and, more specifically, counterfactual reasoning is introduced. We take into account findings in social and/or cognitive psychology on how people reason counterfactually about their own past, and discuss their ramifications for the indispensable, goal-directed use of hypothetical and counterfactual reasoning by professional historians in their attempts to reconstruct the past “as it really was”.

LECTURE 2. Scientific thought experiments (Wednesday 28th of April 2010, 11-13, U40 sr A121) In science, counterfactual reasoning is often recruited to think through “thought experiments”. In this lecture, two examples are analyzed. Firstly, we discuss Kuhn’s paradox of thought experiments in physics, taking Galileo’s thought experiment on free fall as our main example. Secondly, we argue that William Harvey’s quantitative argument is in fact the thought experiment on the basis of which Harvey brought not only himself, but also the scientist of his age to postulate blood circulation.

LECTURE 3. Philosophical thought experiments (Thursday 29th of April 2010, 9-11, U40 sr A121) In philosophy, two kinds of thought experiments flourish: conceptual and evaluative thought experiments. In this lecture, we see that scientific thought experiments and philosophical thought experiments have much in common, and we discuss whether and to what extent we can infer criteria for the successful use of thought experiments in philosophy, from our understanding of how scientific though experiments “really” work.

LECTURE 4. A fieldtrip to possible worlds (Thursday 29th of April 2010, 11-13, U40 sr A121) The use of counterfactual reasoning and thought experiments in scientific and philosophical contexts, is based on a number of controversial logical, metaphysical, epistemological and methodological assumptions about modality. In this lecture, we discuss some of the fundamental issues, in particular (1) the existence of possible worlds, (2) the problem of identity over possible world, and (3) the question whether conceivability implies possibility.

PAPER IN RESEARCH SEMINAR (Thursday 29th of April 2010, 18-20, U40 sr A110) How to do things with thoughts: The functions of thought experiments in science

ABSTRACT. The views on thought experiments that most philosophers of science have developed and defended hitherto, primarily aim to explain the role they play in theory choice. Although it is of course mesmerizing that thought experiments seem somehow to be able to have demonstrative force or to acquire evidential significance, they do fulfill other functions as well. Another disadvantage of the debate has been that it has focused almost exclusively on examples from physics, eclipsing clear-cut examples from other sciences and their telling resemblances and differences with the examples from physics. In this paper I propose a new typology that tries to do justice to the functional and structural variety of thought experiments in science, distinguishing between a number of workable “explications” and revealing that the kind of thought experiments most philosophers of science have put under close scrutiny hitherto, are in fact limiting cases. I then argue that the philosophical debate on thought experiments in science should be restructured accordingly, “deproblematizing” some of the issues and pinpointing new theoretical desiderata.