Eric, Lee,
I have never been a thread-fascist before, but I am glad that this is a new thread because, on the other one, I actually reported an real-life experiment and got results that disconfirmed the theory. Those gallons of water I spilled down the sink were NOT in my mind. If I have perfect knowledge of the contents of my own mind, do I also have perfect knowledge of the implications of that knowledge? So, if I know set theory, I know number theory? Etc. Somehow, I don’t think even the most enthusiastic Cartesian would buy that. By the way, I have always thought of mathematics as the field in which people do formalized thought experiments. Nick From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of ERIC P. CHARLES Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 6:01 PM To: lrudo...@meganet.net Cc: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "thought experiments" Lee, Not an answer, but more grist to the mill: Interestingly, if we believe in the cartesian theatre, then your points hold better - In a world in which I have perfect knowledge of my own mind, it should be impossible to perform a thought experiment, because I could never get a result that was not what I expected to get. While we could try to design a series of thoughts to lead someone else to a desired point, there would be nothing experimental about its effects on our own mind. On the other hand, if we deny the cartesian theatre, then a thought experiment should be possible. If we do not have clear access to our own minds, then it should be possible to "test run" a series of thoughts and to find something other than what we expected. Eric P.S. After writing this, I realize that I consider one of the key features of an honest experiment that it is possible for it to result other than as we expect (which is related to my disdain of funding agencies that only fund things with sufficient 'pilot data' to virtually guarantee the promised result). On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 04:03 PM, lrudo...@meganet.net wrote: Nick having expressed some outrage at what he perceives as (nefarious?) "thread hijacking" (what I prefer to think of as "thread drift", but, hey), I'm starting a new thread. It seems to me that "thought experiment" (and its German original) is a misleading phrase; further, it seems to me that Nick, of all people, ought to agree with me when I say that the phrase is misleading because it suggests that a "thought experiment" is a particular sort of "experiment", and that the particular sort that it is, is one performed upon reified "thoughts" on the stage of the Cartesian Theatre. What one is actually *doing* (I claim), when conducting a "thought experiment", is much more analogous to calculating than it is to experimentation. (I realize that in a group so loaded with simulators, them's likely to be fighting words; sorry, guys.) It is, in other (maybe better) words, a more-or-less systematic and more-or-less rigorous contemplation of the axioms one has adopted (more or less explicitly), and/or of the formal model one has designed, that is performed with the particular end-in-view of discovering necessary consequences of the axioms/formalities that were not obvious, and that may be surprising or "paradoxical". This description seems to me to fit Einstein's elevator Gedankenexperiment (which I take to be the archetype of thought experiments) perfectly. It fits what Nick called his own "thought experiment", about vortices, less well perhaps--how well it fits depends on how much (if at all) Nick sees in his account of that "thought experiment" what *I* saw jumping out of it, namely, that among his (implicit) axioms are some bits of intuition about physical systems (not too explicitly acknowledged as such) that, coupled with his (more or less) formal model, seem to lead ineluctibly to counter-factual predictions about some actual physical systems. Of course when I put things like that, I can see why someone who has the "key experiment" (is that the phrase? something like it) paradigm always clearly in mind (which I don't), in which the essence of an "experiment" is that it can torpedo a purported theory, might want to say "Yes, a 'thought experiment' is *precisely* a 'type of experiment', you bozo!" Yet I still feel that "thought experiments" are closer to "just-so stories" (except without the negative connotation) than they are to "real experiments" (which *my* intuition says should involve smells, and if possible explosions and huge voltages). Thoughts? Experiments? Lee Rudolph ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
