Marek Picha: What are thought experiments for?
Associate Professor Marek Picha from the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, is visiting the department through the Erasmus exchange programme and will give a guest lecture while here. Please see abstract below.
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Abstract
I will present two approaches to structural analysis of imaginary examples - experimentalism and reasonism -, and confront them with the minimalist view about thought experiments. The experimentalism strenghtens the critical role of hypothetical cases and takes every thought experiment as an instance of reductio. On the contrary, the reasonism focuses on the heuristic use of hypothetical cases and describes every thought experiment in terms of a lesson-learned. I will argue that minimalism offers simple yet more plausible analytical framework balancing between restrictive experimentalism and overly liberal reasonism. i will also point out some non-trivial consequences regarding the nature of Galileo's famous Pisa experiment.