Edouard Machery doesn’t believe that thought experiments have any place in philosophy. That’s about the hottest hot take you can make in philosophy. The ground of philosophy is positively littered with thought experiments. Some of those are thousands of years old and others are quite recent. Machery does have the credentials to make the claim….
I’m currently writing something about capacities and how they relate to morality. I thought of a scenario and just assumed it had been written about and discussed before. So, I tried to find some of the discussion. Unfortunately, I came up empty. This scenario is so obvious that I can’t believe I’m the first person…
I’ve had a little thought experiment I’ve done since college. Imagine Michelangelo were brought back to life, in his prime, right now. He is given as much time as he needs to study all of the art and all of the artists who have come after him. At the end of his studies, he starts…
Apparently, I’ve been living in a fantasy world lately. The fantasy that I want to share this time is quite unrealistic. It is like hoping that we elect a wise unicorn to the presidency. It simply cannot happen. So, if I were getting paid to philosophize, I’d call this a thought experiment. But, since no…
Robert Paul Wolff writes a very entertaining blog called The Philosopher’s Stone. Even when he is just bragging about his grandchildren, it is still utterly charming. A little while ago, I read a post called Ein Gedankenexperiment A La Rawls. In this post, he describes a thought experiment to determine what jobs would be worth…
