Philosophical thought experiments as heuristics for theory discovery

Praëm, Sara Kier; Steglich‐Petersen, Asbjørn

doi:10.1007/s11229-015-0684-6

Cited by 29 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 38 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Thought-experiments are performed only occasionally, one after the other, without coordinating them with each other and with theorizing. At most they follow the scheme "question → theory → hypothesis → experiment → analysis → revision to theory → repeat," as for instance Gettier experiments in epistemology (Gettier, 1963;Praëm & Steglich-Petersen, 2015). They are not systematically controlled for variables like implicit biases of the experimenter.…”

Section: Test Many Theories In Many Waysmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These issues are not sufficiently discussed in the literature. The latter addresses what a thought-experiment is (Sorensen, 1992), how thought-experiments are processed (Nersessian, 2007), whether and how they can provide evidence without empirical observation (Brown, 1991), what their function and scope is (Praëm & Steglich-Petersen, 2015), how they relate to arguments (Norton, 2004), and how to formalize them (Dohrn, 2018;Williamson, 2007). If incommensurability problems are discussed, then mostly with a sceptical twist (Machery, 2017).…”

Section: Test Many Theories In Many Waysmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Beyond Playing 20 Questions with Nature: Integrative Experiment Design in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The dominant paradigm of experiments in the social and behavioral sciences views an experiment as a test of a theory, where the theory is assumed to generalize beyond the experiment's specific conditions. According to this view, which Alan Newell once characterized as “playing twenty questions with nature,” theory is advanced one experiment at a time, and the integration of disparate findings is assumed to happen via the scientific publishing process. In this article, we argue that the process of integration is at best inefficient, and at worst it does not, in fact, occur. We further show that the challenge of integration cannot be adequately addressed by recently proposed reforms that focus on the reliability and replicability of individual findings, nor simply by conducting more or larger experiments. Rather, the problem arises from the imprecise nature of social and behavioral theories and, consequently, a lack of commensurability across experiments conducted under different conditions. Therefore, researchers must fundamentally rethink how they design experiments and how the experiments relate to theory. We specifically describe an alternative framework, integrative experiment design, which intrinsically promotes commensurability and continuous integration of knowledge. In this paradigm, researchers explicitly map the design space of possible experiments associated with a given research question, embracing many potentially relevant theories rather than focusing on just one. The researchers then iteratively generate theories and test them with experiments explicitly sampled from the design space, allowing results to be integrated across experiments. Given recent methodological and technological developments, we conclude that this approach is feasible and would generate more-reliable, more-cumulative empirical and theoretical knowledge than the current paradigm—and with far greater efficiency.

show abstract

Section: Test Many Theories In Many Waysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Test Many Theories In Many Waysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Playing 20 Questions with Nature: Integrative Experiment Design in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Section: Test Many Theories In Many Waysmentioning

confidence: 99%

The elephant's other legs: What some sciences actually do

Baron

2024

Behav Brain Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Integrative experiments, as described, seem blindly empirical, as if the question of generality of effects could not be understood through controlled one-at-a-time experiments. But current research using such experiments, especially applied research, can resolve issues and make progress through understanding of cause–effect pathways, leaving to engineers the task of translating this understanding into practice.

show abstract

“…also Praëm and Steglich-Petersen (2015) for a discussion of constructive and destructive thought experiments in both philosophy and in science.…”

Section: The Structure Of Thought Experiments and The Evidential Role Of Judgementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Armchair physics and the method of cases

Schindler

Saint‐Germier

2021

Inquiry

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The method of cases, i.e., the informal elicitation of judgements in thought experiments for the purpose of philosophical theorising, has been much criticised in recent years. In this paper we point out that the method of cases is not peculiar to philosophy: it can also be found in physics, where it has made a more limited, but still valuable contribution to the probing and formulation of theories. The method of cases per se should therefore not be treated as intrinsically methodologically flawed. This paper has also a narrower goal: to show that when the analogy underlying the so-called 'expertise defence' is drawn between judgements in thought experiments in philosophy and in physics, several objections can be avoided.

show abstract

Philosophical thought experiments as heuristics for theory discovery

Cited by 29 publications

References 38 publications

Beyond Playing 20 Questions with Nature: Integrative Experiment Design in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

Beyond Playing 20 Questions with Nature: Integrative Experiment Design in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

The elephant's other legs: What some sciences actually do

Armchair physics and the method of cases

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About