Next week's "Idea Channel" episode
is going to be something sort of new,
and I wanted to talk about it real quick.
So along the lines of our "But Wait" and "Fan Theory" videos,
which reminds me we need to do another "Fan Theory" videos.
Let me know if you've heard any good ones.
We're going to do some episodes here and there
about philosophical thought experiments,
imagined situations constructed to provide insight
into the world, its operation, and our understanding of it.
And I just want to talk about why.
You're probably familiar with experiments,
testing a prediction or determining something
about the world, whatever the world is.
But not everything we want to test or experiment on
is physically in the world, hence thought experiments.
You can find out experiments in all kinds
of disciplines-- math, economics, history, physics,
and of course, philosophy.
You may know Schrodinger's Cat, Newton's cannonball,
Mary's room.
They're all influential because they
caused practitioners to interrogate their reflexes,
think through what's possible, likely, uncomfortable,
contradictory, and so on.
Physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach
Is widely credited with naming intellectually based narrative
investigations "thought experiments,"
though it does sound much cooler in German, Gedankenexperiment.
His idea was, as the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"
puts it, to help overcome habits of thought that can
inhibit scientific progress.
Perhaps the most famous Gedanken experimenter of the modern era
was Einstein, who when he was 16 imagined himself
riding a beam of light, a thing that you can't actually do.
But still that thought experiment
ended up unlocking the theory of relativity.
To a certain degree, there is no science or knowledge
for that matter, without Gedankenexperiments
All understanding begins as a hypothesis, a mental model
of the possible or likely.
A narrative in the mind, imagining the materials
of experimentation before, well, experimenting,
the hallmarks of which are ideally at least measurability,
repeatability, and verifiability.
Many things resist measure or verification, though.
Some math and physics, yeah, but also
morality, ethics, being, knowing,
that very fuzzy thing that is experience itself.
Outside of empirical meatspace, the thought experiment
is the beginning and end of experimentation.
And like all experiments, their end isn't some such
a conclusion, but an understanding of where some
theory, belief, or understanding leads-- or doesn't.
A signpost rather than a destination, encouraging
experimenters to overcome habits of thought that
inhibit all kinds of progress, not just scientific progress.
Like all experiments, some thought
experiments are more or less effective than others.
Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett dismisses
many as "intuition pumps," which I know sounds very gross,
but that's what he calls them.
For him, an intuition pump is a story
that cajoles you into declaring your gut
intuition without giving you a good reason for it.
Though Dennett admits he may occasionally
be guilty of this very thing, he finds this outcome undesirable.
A bad thought experiment activates intuition,
common sense, bias, etc., where the goal should
be to challenge those things.
I kind of half agree with this.
A thought experiment that causes us to declare our gut intuition
shows us what our gut intuition is.
This is valuable in itself, because intuition, bias,
common sense, they are powerful forces.
As long as you're being shown and not told what they are,
it's enlightening.
Only once we know our intuitions can we question them.
So in a way, I think the first step to the best
use of a philosophical thought experiment
is to accept its premise, as uncritical as that may seem
for a show that is critically minded,
just to see where it leads you, and then
to question, as Dennett might, what response has been sought
and why.
To question if we've been experimented on,
not been the ones doing the experimenting.
A thought experiment is rarely perfect,
but many are very powerful, and while questioning
their construction is important and something that we're
going to do plenty of, we also want
to make sure that we use them to think about what
the capabilities of thinking are,
and give them a chance to bring about that kind of realization,
shift in perspective or crisis of confidence
that they often aim to, without immediately dismissing them as
impractical, fanciful, or convoluted daydreams
for over-thinkers.
Which, of course, also goes for "Idea Channel"
as a whole and not just philosophical
thought experiments, which we're going to have our first episode
about next week.
See you there.