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Added by: Andrea BlomqvistAbstract: Contemplating imaginary scenarios that evoke certain sorts of quasi?sensory intuitions may bring us to new beliefs about contingent features of the natural world. These beliefs may be produced quasi?observationally; the presence of a mental image may play a crucial cognitive role in the formation of the belief in question. And this albeit fallible quasi?observational belief?forming mechanism may, in certain contexts, be sufficiently reliable to count as a source of justification. This sheds light on the central puzzle surrounding scientific thought experiment, which is how contemplation of an imaginary scenario can lead to new knowledge about contingent features of the natural world.Comment: This is a good introductory reading to the philosophy of thought experiements. It would work well as a required reading on the topic.
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Added by: Andrea BlomqvistAbstract: By carefully examining one of the most famous thought experiments in the history of science - that by which Galileo is said to have refuted the Aristotelian theory that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones - I attempt to show that thought experiments play a distinctive role in scientific inquiry. Reasoning about particular entities within the context of an imaginary scenario can lead to rationally justified concluusions that - given the same initial information - would not be rationally justifiable on the basis of a straightforward argument.Comment: This paper would be good to put as further reading in a week focusing on thought experiments. Suitable for a third year module.
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Added by: Petronella RandellAbstract:
David Lewis has argued that “having an experience is the best way or perhaps the only way, of coming to know what that experience is like”; when an experience is of a sufficiently new sort, mere science lessons are not enough. Developing this Lewisian line, L.A. Paul has suggested that some experiences are epistemically transformative. Until an individual has such an experience it remains epistemically inaccessible to her. No amount of stories and theories and testimony from others can teach her what it is like to have it, nor is she able to achieve this knowledge by way of imaginative projection. It’s this last claim that is the focus of this paper. In particular, I explore the case for the claim that some experiences are in principle imaginatively inaccessible to someone who has not undergone the experience itself or one relevantly similar. As I will suggest, this case is not as strong as is often thought. Close attention to the mechanisms of imagination, and in particular, to cases of skilled imaginers, suggests how techniques of imaginative scaffolding can sometimes be used to give us epistemic access to experiences we have not had, even ones that are radically different from any that we have had before. As a result, considerably fewer experiences remain imaginatively out of reach than proponents of transformative experience would have us believe. Experience may well be the best teacher, but this paper aims to show that imagination comes in a close second.
Comment: This paper would be an excellent essential or further reading for a week on transformative experiences, or challenges to Paul's concept of transformative experience. It could also be used in a module on the imagination in general, as the argument that the imagination is a skill which can be practiced (and is not as limited as most believe it to be) is interesting to engage with outside of the transformative experience debate.