When Are Thought Experiments Poor Ones?

Peijnenburg, Jeanne; Atkinson, Doug

doi:10.1023/b:jgps.0000005164.26228.f7

Cited by 16 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…We then conclude that the best way of developing a theory of falling bodies is by doing real experiments. None of this is to say that Galileo's Pisa-argument is poor in the sense of the criteria that we formulated in Peijnenburg and Atkinson (2003). It is not.…”

mentioning

confidence: 85%

On poor and not so poor thought experiments. A reply to Daniel Cohnitz

Peijnenburg

Atkinson

2007

J Gen Philos Sci

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confidence: 85%

On poor and not so poor thought experiments. A reply to Daniel Cohnitz

Peijnenburg

Atkinson

2007

J Gen Philos Sci

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“…Hence, practitioners would benefit from an effective way to untangle the philosophical debate, and reach a clearer view of the way forward. Currently, the debate centres essentially around thought experiments, but these have their obvious difficulties (Häggqvist, 1996;Gendler, 2000;Peijnenburg and Atkinson, 2003;Souder, 2003;Damper, 2006). We believe that thought experiment alone is inadequate to reach definitive conclusions and, difficult as it might be, empirical data bearing on the controversy need to be collected.…”

Section: Searle 1980)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Symbolism and enactivism: an experimental test of conflicting approaches to artificial intelligence

Worgan

Damper

2009

Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligen

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One does not have to go very far into the subject of artificial intelligence (AI) before deep philosophical issues start to surface. The Turing test, the frame problem, the Chinese room argument, symbol grounding, the role of representation: these are just a few of the topics that have generated intense discussion and debate over the years. One particular controversy surrounds symbolism: whether or not it is necessary to have explicit symbol representation and, if so, the mechanism(s) by which these symbols came into existence.How are such questions to be answered? Generally, they are considered to lie in the realm of philosophy and not to be easily amenable to experimental test. However, when even limited experimental test is feasible, it can offer valuable insight. In this paper, we present an empirical test designed to explore some important foundational issues in AI. An artificial agent inhabits a digital world (a cellular automaton) in which its cognitive abilities vary in three dimensions (size of symbol memory, percentage of symbols that are innate, planning depth), allowing us to position it in a space that reflects degree of commitment to key philosophical standpoints. One plane of this space corresponds to pure symbol attachment, another plane corresponds to pure symbol grounding, and the origin of coordinates corresponds to pure enactivism. We find that an enactivist (purely reactive) agent architecture can perform as well as one employing planning in this scenario, if properly designed. Planning has strengths when task/environment complexity make design difficult but weaknesses if an inappropriate world model is acquired (e.g. as a result of mismatch between model and task/environment complexity).However, the main claim of the paper is that empirical exploration of the kind presented here could usefully form the initial phase of the design of many practical AI systems, and forms a valuable alternative to simply declaring a priori adherence to a particular philosophical position.

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“…7 Wie wir sehen werden, sieht das nahezu jeder so, der sich zu diesem Thema geäußert hat. Hierunter fallen auch praktisch all diejenigen Autoren, die zunächst versichern, dass sie "im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen" auch einige naturwissenschaftliche Gedankenexperimente kritisch sehen (wie etwa Peijnenburg und Atkinson [252] oder Bunzl [46]). 8 Vgl.…”

Section: Das Problemunclassified

“…32 Vgl. hierzu Kühne [175], 149-157; denselben Vorwurf erheben Peijnenburg und Atkinson [252] gegen Einsteins Umgang mit Newtons Experiment.…”

Section: Newtons Eimerversuchunclassified

Gedankenexperimente in der Philosophie

Cohnitz¹,

Häggqvist²

2005

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Mein Interesse an philosophischen Gedankenexperimenten und ihrer Methodologie erwuchs in erster Linie aus Ulrich Kühnes Enthusiasmus für Gedankenexperimente in den Naturwissenschaften und den skeptischen Fragen meiner Studierenden in meiner ersten Vorlesung über personale Identität an der Universität Tartu.Ulrich arbeitete damals an seiner Dissertation über Gedankenexperimente in den Naturwissenschaften. Seine Dissertation ist seit Kurzem im Buchhandel erhältlich (Kühne [176]). Ich habe von Ulrichs gründlicher historischer Arbeit an vielen Stellen profitiert, auch wenn ich letztlich in manchen Punkten zu anderen Schlussfolgerungen komme. Diese Unterschiede sollte man vielleicht nicht überbewerten, mir geht es hauptsächlich um Gedankenexperimente in der Philosophie.Dass dieses Thema problematisch ist, wurde mir erst so richtig klar, als meine Studierenden in Tartu nach dem dritten Gedankenexperiment zu Gehirntausch und Teleportation nachbohrten, weshalb eine Argumentation, die auf ausgedachte und abwegige Situationen Bezug nimmt, überhaupt ernst genommen werden sollte. Ich wusste damals nur eine relativ unbefriedigende Antwort zu geben. Ich hoffe, dass die Antwort, die ich hier präsentiere, etwas besser ist.Wenn es bisweilen Spaß machte, die Methodologie von Gedankenexperimenten zu untersuchen, dann weil es Kollegen gab, die das Interesse an diesen seltsamen Gebilden teilten und mit Rat, Preprints, Reprints und freundlichem Interesse zur Verfügung standen. Ich möchte an dieser Stelle davon zumindest denen explizit danken, die mir jetzt gerade einfallen:

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When Are Thought Experiments Poor Ones?

Cited by 16 publications

References 16 publications

On poor and not so poor thought experiments. A reply to Daniel Cohnitz

On poor and not so poor thought experiments. A reply to Daniel Cohnitz

Symbolism and enactivism: an experimental test of conflicting approaches to artificial intelligence

Gedankenexperimente in der Philosophie

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