Links in the below time-table activate MP3 audio recordings of the
corresponding talks. Talk recordings and supporting material are
also linked from talk summaries further below.
Peter Gibson: Introduction: Problems with Thought Experiments Audio recording (MP3 format)
Talk text (PDF format)
Ryan Meade: Thought Experiments
Philosophers may have perfected the thought experiment but it is a
tool used across disciplines. For example, a thought experiment
precedes every scientific experiment, and every law drafted. Memorable
thought experiments involve fanciful facts, but more mundane thought
experiments are in daily use in critical reasoning and conjecture.
Along with the contribution of philosophy, this paper will sketch the
history of thought experiments and explore their utility across
disciplines. The lecturer will draw on his use of thought experiments
in teaching law, ethics, and legal theory.
Audio recording (MP3 format)
Janet Cox: The Beetle in the Box
In the Philosophical Investigations (§293), Wittgenstein asks us to
consider a situation where everyone has a box containing something (or perhaps
nothing) which we call a "beetle". Each of us can see inside only
our own private box – no one else's. We all talk to each other about
"beetles". How do we make sense of "beetle" How does this
use of "beetle" work? Although this thought experiment has prompted
many analyses, the talk will concentrate on Saul Kripke's account in
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.
Audio recording (MP3 format)
Slides (PDF format)
Mike Donnan: Grue
Suppose that every emerald that has ever been observed up until
midnight, 31st December 2016, has been green. You predict that the
first emerald to be observed in 2017 will be green too, whereas your
chum - who speaks a dialect which avoids 'green' but employs the
unfamiliar predicate 'grue' – predicts (after we have translated his
dialect utterance) that the emerald will be blue. Yet you both have the
same evidence and employ analogous reasoning. That looks to be a riddle
worth discussing.
Audio recording (MP3 format)
Slides (PDF format)
Handout (JPEG format)
Marianne Talbot: Twin Eart
I shall be talking about the Twin Earth thought experiment which
purports to show, as Hilary Putnam put it, that 'thoughts ain't in the
head' (Putnam 1975). I shall look at the objection that the thought
experiment is not 'scientifically respectable' because it is simply
not possible for something that looks, tastes and (in particular)
behaves like water to be anything other than H20.
Audio recording (MP3 format)
Slides (PDF format)
Peggy Verrall: The Ship of Theseus
The Ship of Theseus thought experiment (or Trigger's Broom) concerns
an old ship which is preserved by the gradual replacement of its
deteriorating planks. If parts of the ship are gradually replaced, at
what point does the original cease to be itself? What relevance, if
any, does this have with reference to who we are?
Audio recording (MP3 format)
Slides (PDF format)
Bob Stone: The Trolley Problem
After outlining a few of the best-known examples – e.g. the
one where you can save three people tied to the line only by pushing a
fat man off a bridge into the trolley's path – I'll discuss a) the
purpose and 'results' of the thought experiments, b) the conflict
between what seems the rational course of action and the strong
intuition that it is wrong, c) the degree to which intuition is a guide
to what is right, d) a rule-utilitarian approach, and e) fundamental
drawbacks with the problems as thought experiments.
Audio recording (MP3 format)
Talk text (PDF format)
Handout (PDF format)
Slides (PDF format)
The Speakers
Ryan Meade
is the Director of Regulatory Compliance Studies at Loyola
University Chicago, teaching law courses related to health policy and
clinical research. His interests include philosophy of law, history of
Anglo-American law, and medieval legal theory (particularly Aquinas and
Suarez). He received a B.A. from Northwestern University, a J.D. from
Cornell University, and is an LLM candidate at the University of
Edinburgh.
Janet Cox
has taken philosophy courses with the OU, a Diploma
with Warwick University and, most recently, courses with OUDCE.
Inspired by last year's Necessity and Possibility weekend, Janet joined
the OUDCE Philosophy Society to have more interaction with other
philosophy lovers. She hopes to study the later Wittgenstein in more
depth.
Mike Donnan
Having graduated in chemistry, despite a certain maladroitness in
the laboratory, Michael stumbled into the world of intellectual property
and eventually qualified as a patent attorney. In his 40s and purely
out of curiosity, he enrolled on an introductory course in philosophy at
Birkbeck College, became captivated, and after some procrastination
studied there for a BA, and then an MA.
Marianne Talbot
has been Director of Studies in Philosophy at
OUDCE since 2001. In 2017 she will have lectured for the colleges of
the University of Oxford for 30 years. She is delighted to find herself
President of the Philosophical Society, probably the largest (and
certainly the best!) amateur philosophy society in the UK.
Peggy Verrall
studied some philosophy as part of reading modern history at
St Anne's (1959). She has reignited her interest since retirement from
teaching full time in 1996.
Bob Stone
is a retired classics teacher, who specialised at
university in ancient Greek philosophy and got interested in the
new-fangled stuff too. Since retiring, he's resumed that interest with
a vengeance. His philosophy in a nutshell: "For every complex problem
there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" (H.L.
Mencken).
Bibliography
Tamar Gendler (2000) Thought Experiment:
On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary
Cases.
Martin Cohen (2005) Wittgenstein's Beetle and Other
Classic Thought Experiments
Goodman, Nelson, Fact, Fiction, and
Forecast, 4th ed., Harvard (1983), esp Ch III, is the primary
source. For a useful introduction see Bortolotti, Lisa, An
Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Polity Press (2008), pp.
68-71.
