Philosophy and Thought Experiments | Timothy Williamson | Methods of Philosophy: Lecture 4

Part of Prof. Timothy Williamson's ten-lecture series 'Methods of Philosophy', organised by Prof. Chen Bo of Peking University, which sponsored and hosted the lectures. ABSTRACT Another supposed contrast between philosophy and natural science is that philosophers do thought experiments while natural scientists do real experiments. Philosophers have done thought experiments since ancient times: for example, Plato discussed a ring of invisibility. However, natural scientists such as Galileo Galilei and Albert Einstein have also used thought experiments. Philosophical thought experiments are much less distinctive and unusual than many of their defenders and critics suggest. They involve considering hypothetical examples, and imaginatively eliciting consequences of initial suppositions. This cognitive use of the imagination is not distinctive to philosophy: it is a basic human method of thinking through possible situations, which we often use in everyday decision-making. It is the offline application of cognitive capacities which we apply online to actual situations we encounter. Both defenders of thought experiments and critics—such as experimental philosophers—obscure the nature of thought experiments by describing them in terms of a mysterious faculty of intuition. By contrast, intuitive judgments in the psychological sense of ones made without conscious reflection are present in all human cognitive; relying on them is not a distinctive method we could do without. RESPONDENTS Prof. Li Qilin (Peking University) Dr Wang Hongguang (Peking University) SECTIONS 0:00 Lecture 1:28:15 Comments I 1:45:50 Comments II 1:51:22 Replies