Last semester, an online user by the name of “sowhere” commented on my article (“On Abortion,” Apr. 15) asking “Why this though? … There are pressing, real-world developments on this issue, and yet (The Herald) published an article which appears to be a personal though (sic) experiment.” I initially dismissed this comment, but I now realize that many other readers might have also had the same reaction — that the thought experiment is no more than an esoteric, pretentious and self-indulgent exercise philosophers engage in as they look smugly down upon the unenlightened brutes beneath their ivory towers. To address this concern, we will first need a better understanding of philosophy.
Broadly speaking, philosophy is the study of problems that cannot be tackled by empirical means. Originally, this included the entirety of fields such as biology, physics, chemistry and even mathematics. Book V of Aristotle’s “The History of Animals” famously used thought experiments to deduce, incorrectly, that “with animals, some spring from parent animals … whilst others grow spontaneously … from putrefying earth.” Obviously, this claim was based not in observation but rather in philosophical consideration. Without any data that could answer questions regarding the origin of life, this was Aristotle’s best inference. What would now be viewed as a strictly scientific question was then a philosophical one.
It follows from this understanding that the advancement of technology directly encroaches upon the realm of philosophy. As we discover new tools and techniques, we garner new ways of empirically discriminating among theories that were previously equally supported by the evidence — or lack thereof. Our current understanding of cell biology allows us to answer a question about which Aristotle could form only a baseless conjecture. Yet this does nothing to demonstrate the invalidity of the thought experiment as a useful tool. It merely exhibits the nature of its ever-decreasing scope.
A more modern instance that serves as a testament to the continuing usefulness of the thought experiment can be found in the case of Einstein and his work on special relativity. By imagining following a beam of light, Einstein came up with a non-empirical hypothesis, which is now one of the most empirically corroborated scientific theories.
In fact, all novel research necessitates the use of the thought experiment. Whenever we have unexplained observations, we can arbitrarily construct many explanations that are consistent with the data. We then try to collect more information, allowing us to eliminate some possibilities, but there will always remain arbitrarily many potential — if seemingly ridiculous — theories consistent with all the data we could ever have.
Additionally, this process of exclusion is not always an option — either as a result of current technological limitations or even those of the laws of physics. The former constraint temporarily limited Aristotle and Einstein. Perhaps quantum mechanics is an instance of the latter’s permanent restrictions. That being said, I would imagine Aristotle’s contemporaries would have imagined the existence of many explanations of modern science in a similar light.
Thus, in a sense, philosophy complements science — it tries to say something where empiricism can’t and is an integral part of the expansion of scientific explanation.
Now, there would appear to be a strict, if not easily defined, demarcation between scientific and non-scientific considerations, such as the one referred to in “sowhere’s” original comment, but the value of the thought experiment is only more evident as we move into these decreasingly scientific cases.
Notably, many people are dismissive about what philosophy has to say with respect to public policy. I think these cases in particular engender the antagonistic attitude toward philosophers previously described, yet I think it is these same cases — non-scientific ones — to which philosophy has the most to contribute.
All public policy supervenes upon morality. It is this moral value that establishes an evaluative differentiation among the various outcomes being put in place. Policy’s relevance is derived only through ethical goals. Therefore, it would seem prudent to give critical thought to these underlying issues. The usefulness of the thought experiment to this end was demonstrated in my original article.
If a well-defined goal has already been established and agreed upon, it then does become an empirical matter of engineering to find the most efficacious means of achieving said goal. But it’s nonsensical to scrutinize primarily these questions of engineering — certainly at the expense of comprehensively eschewing the crucial questions regarding the goal itself. It would be analogous to debating the relative utility of a fork or spoon while disregarding your preference for soup or salad.
Some might prefer ignoring these fundamental and more difficult questions in order to tackle the more “pragmatic” ones, but these people embark upon an intrinsically meaningless enterprise. Personally, I’d rather fruitlessly grapple with these problems than delude myself into thinking they either don’t exist or don’t matter.
Andrew Powers ’15 specializes in logic and philosophy of science and can be reached at andrew_powers@brown.edu.
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