The debate between Norton and Brown regarding whether thought experiments transcend empiricism is interesting with Norton suggesting that thought experiments do not transcend empiricism. — ADG
If one had to choose a thought experiment to defend Norton's view, would Galileo's thought experiment that two falling bodies fall with the same acceleration be a suitable thought experiment since it can be empirically tested and it also can be written in a premise and conclusion argument form. I am not sure whether this would be a deductive argument though. — ADG
Also, wouldn't the assumption that connecting the heavier (H) and lighter ( L ) body makes one body of weight (H + L) mean that one of the premises of the argument would be false. — ADG
Given that Empiricism, the doctrine that knowledge is derived from the senses, is objectively false, I would hope we could get beyond it, if not transcend it. — Inis
Inconsistencies are the greatest flaw in any theory, rendering them immediately problematic. Famously, right now, we have inconsistencies between theories, rendering each problematic, despite there being zero empirical evidence that either theory has problems, and no one can even come up with a suitable thought experiment. — Inis
This kind of statement sounds really unthinking. Making such grandiose statements as if they were trivialities is not a very good way to argue. If empiricism were objecrively false one would expect this to be represented amongst philosophers views — MindForged
No one would talk about views in, say, quantum mechanical interpretations this way so doing so here frankly sounds stupid. — MindForged
This doesn't seem quite true. Several inconsistencies between the theories results in false predictions when applied in each other's domains, yes? Applying general relativity at quantum scales results in infinities we can't renormalize and applying quantum mechanics as cosmological scales predicts fields with energy levels that would result in enormous black holes, and neither of these are observed. — MindForged
You mean philosophers like Popper, who wrote literally books refuting empiricism? - — Inis
GRW is not quantum mechanics, Bohm has been refuted so many times it's getting boring, Copenhagen is psychology. These are all standard views in foundations of QM. — Inis
I hope you appreciate the irony in your appeal to thought experiments to defend empiricism! — Inis
You are confusing the two theories, for which there is zero empirical evidence against, with theoretical problems encountered in the attempts to unify them. Empirical evidence is literally irrelevant at this point, it's all about theoretical consistency. Ask a String theorist. — Inis
So, the doctrine that "knowledge is derived from the senses" is well and truly a dead doctrine, and I am thoroughly surprised if anyone is wasting their time on it. — Inis
GRW is not quantum mechanics, Bohm has been refuted so many times it's getting boring, Copenhagen is psychology. These are all standard views in foundations of QM.
And, you call me "stupid"? — Inis
Thought experiments are nothing but a form of empirical simulation. For any thought experiment can be substituted for a publicly demonstrable virtual reality simulation. But a simulation isn't a simulation of anything until it is actively compared against some other empirical process by using some measure of similarity. — sime
Once this is grasped it is trivial to understand, for instance, how Zeno's paradoxes fail as thought experiments concerning motion. The lunacy becomes clear when a proponent of the argument is forced to demonstrate the paradox with an actual arrow. — sime
Zeno's arguments are better understood to be a thought experiments for Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. You can analyse the arrow's exact position at any given time, but in order to do so you first have to stop the arrow and thereby destroy it's actual motion. But these argument's are still not a priori or "non-empirical" whatever that means, rather they are phenomenological and involve memories and imagined possibilities. — sime
The paradox arises from treating space and time as composed of discrete elements of any kind, rather than recognizing space-time as a true continuum, such that motion is the fundamental reality--not positions or instants, which we arbitrarily mark for the purpose of measurement and analysis.Zeno's paradox even applies to each of the infinitesimally small elements of a supposed hyper-task. — sime
Thought experiments are nothing but a form of empirical simulation. For any thought experiment can be substituted for a publicly demonstrable virtual reality simulation. — sime
Can you keep track of your own points? You mentioned the inconsistencies between QM and Relativity and claimed there was no empirical evidence against either but that's not true. The empirical evidence against them isn't even up for debate in the domains they weren't made for (Relativity for quantum scale events and QM for macroscopic events). This point had nothing to do with QM interpretations, that was the previous point regarding your ridiculous way of speaking and dismissing other theories (or interpretations) in a way no professional would. That's on the level of ideological attachment (or rejection, in this case). — MindForged
Sadly one cannot appeal to mathematics without begging the question — sime
But the only way of assigning time intervals to each term of the associated geometric sequence, say {0.5,0.25,0.125...} is to ignore the application of zeno's argument to each and every term. — sime
And the only way to reach the value of the bound is to literally sum an infinite number of terms, which assumes the existence of a hyper-task that mathematicians do not possess -unless , say, motion is considered to represent such a hyper-task, which is precisely what Zeno's argument calls into question. — sime
If one had to choose a thought experiment to defend Norton's view, would Galileo's thought experiment that two falling bodies fall with the same acceleration be a suitable thought experiment since it can be empirically tested and it also can be written in a premise and conclusion argument form. I am not sure whether this would be a deductive argument though.
Also, wouldn't the assumption that connecting the heavier (H) and lighter ( L ) body makes one body of weight (H + L) mean that one of the premises of the argument would be false. — ADG
At that point we can treat the two bodies as one (again, a physical intuition). This combined body, if it stays whole (which it won't, but let's disregard that) will, according to Aristotle, eventually acquire a higher speed than either of the two separate bodies had before they combined. But as long as it behaves as one body, we cannot compare its motion to the motion of its parts, since the parts are not separate and independent, nor have they been falling side by side with the combined body: there was a discontinuous transition from two falling bodies to one. — SophistiCat
(notice how we are already importing our physical intuitions into the thought experiment!) — SophistiCat
It seems you have missed the point entirely. According to Aristotle: — Inis
Right back at you. As I said right before the paragraph that you quoted, Aristotle (as per Galileo) does not treat of bound systems - his law concerns separate bodies. Galileo wants to stretch Aristotle's premises in a way that is, admittedly, physically intuitive, but strictly speaking, he cannot trap Aristotle in a contradiction by changing his premises. — SophistiCat
I largely agree with your treatment of this question, Sophisticat. However, the above assumption (i.e. that the falling bodies behave as if they're separate bodies until the string is taut) seems debatable to me: as the weights were connected by the tether prior to their being dropped, they've always been "one body," and thus it could be argued that the composite body comprising the two weights plus tether would always fall faster than either body alone, given that they've always been one object for the purposes of this experiment. (I am familiar with this thought experiment, but not well-versed in its detailed treatment in the literature. I wonder how much of a point of contention this particular issue is.)Consider Galileo's setup: two bodies of unequal weight tied by a light string and dropped from a height. If at first the string is loose, the two bodies behave as separate bodies (notice how we are already importing our physical intuitions into the thought experiment!) — SophistiCat
I largely agree with your treatment of this question, Sophisticat. However, the above assumption (i.e. that the falling bodies behave as if they're separate bodies until the string is taut) seems debatable to me: — Arkady
An interesting side note to all of this is that, if Aristotelian physics (or, at least the part of the theory which posits that heavier objects fall faster than light ones) really does imply a contradiction, one must reach the modal conclusion that there are no possible worlds in which heavier objects accelerate faster than light ones under the force of gravity alone! — Arkady
You are only insistently repeating things you've already said, while passing them off as indubitable conclusions. I get that you are very convinced of your beliefs, but perhaps the rest of us don't necessarily share them. If you have nothing new to add, perhaps seek a different thread. — Arkady
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.