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A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, [a] or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences.
A thought experiment, or gedanken experiment, is a proposal for an experiment that would test or illuminate a hypothesis, theory, or principle. Subcategories. This ...
The Twin Earth thought experiment was one of three examples that Putnam offered in support of semantic externalism, the other two being what he called the Aluminum-Molybdenum case and the Beech-Elm case. Since the publication of these cases, numerous variations on the thought experiment have been proposed by philosophers.
Thought experiments invoke particulars that are irrelevant to the generality of their conclusions. It is the invocation of these particulars that give thought experiments their experiment-like appearance. A thought experiment can always be reconstructed as a straightforward argument, without the irrelevant particulars.
Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to incentivize said advancement.
In 2017, a group led by Michael Stevens performed the first realistic trolley-problem experiment, where subjects were placed alone in what they thought was a train-switching station, and shown footage that they thought was real (but was actually prerecorded) of a train going down a track, with five workers on the main track, and one on the ...
Quantum suicide is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics and the philosophy of physics.Purportedly, it can falsify any interpretation of quantum mechanics other than the Everett many-worlds interpretation by means of a variation of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, from the cat's point of view.
Wigner introduced the thought experiment in a 1961 article "Remarks on the Mind-Body Question". [1] He begins by noting that most physicists in the then-recent past had been thoroughgoing materialists who would insist that "mind" or "soul" are illusory, and that nature is fundamentally deterministic. He argues that quantum physics has changed ...