Search results for "Thought experiment"
showing 9 items of 9 documents
Counter-Clock World: How Planning Backwards Helps in Moving Forward in Collapsing Environments
2021
Research on corporate decline and turnarounds as well as the strategic use of history have so far remained two separate research fields. We integrate these two fields with a thought experiment, proposing ways in which strategists can work with, and through time in managing and turning around declines. Our thought experiment involves two very different types of analogies: a textual one from Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novels, on the one hand, and a visual one from Einsteinian relativity science, on the other hand. Inspired and informed by these different conceptualizations of the past and time, we develop four forms of backward strategizing to successfully manage a struggling corporatio…
Global capitalism guided by desire- Solvang, CA, as a “real” place
2021
Abstract How to deal with the transformation of place in the face of global capitalism is marked by many active debates. This paper dives into the transformation of the city of Solvang in California, from an agricultural village to a tourist destination. One way to analyse the process is to treat it as commodification, where values produced in places are being turned into exchangeable commodities. What results from such critical studies of capitalism too often result in apathy rather than positive action, it tends to deal less with ‘the real world’ than thought experiments about possible worlds. Another approach connects to the relational turn and the application of assemblage theory in stu…
The Flying and the Masked Man, One More Time: Comments on Peter Adamson and Fedor Benevich, ‘The Thought Experimental Method: Avicenna's Flying Man A…
2020
AbstractThis is a critical comment on Adamson and Benevich (2018), published in issue 4/2 of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. I raise two closely related objections. The first concerns the objective of the flying man: instead of the question of what the soul is, I argue that the argument is designed to answer the question of whether the soul exists independently of the body. The second objection concerns the expected result of the argument: instead of knowledge about the quiddity of soul, I claim the argument yields knowledge about the soul's existence independently of the body. After the objections, I turn to the masked man fallacy, claiming that although the Adamson-…
On Interchangeability of Probe-Object Roles in Quantum-Quantum Interaction-Free Measurement
2019
In this paper we examine Interaction-free measurement (IFM) where both the probe and the object are quantum particles. We argue that in this case the description of the measurement procedure must by symmetrical with respect to interchange of the roles of probe and object. A thought experiment is being suggested that helps to determine what does and what doesn't happen to the state of the particles in such a setup. It seems that unlike the case of classical object, here the state of both the probe and the object must change. A possible explanation of this might be that the probe and the object form an entangled pair as a result of non-interaction.
Intuition Pumps and the Proper Use of Thought Experiments
2005
I begin with an explication of "thought experiment". I then clarify the role that intuitions play in thought experiments by addressing two important issues: (1) the informativeness of thought experiments and (2) the legitimacy of the method of thought experiments in philosophy and the natural sciences. I defend a naturalistic account of intuitions that provides a plausible explanation of the informativeness of thought experiments, which, in turn, allows thought experiments to be reconstructed as arguments. I also specify criteria for distinguishing bad "intuition pumps" from legitimate thought experiments. These criteria help us to avoid being seduced by the dangerous suggestive power of mi…
Chances for Parliamentary Politics Today
2018
In the final chapter, the contemporary situation of parliamentary politics is discussed. The chances and limits of the parliamentary ideal type are situated to the current horizons of Western European politics. The main point is to emphasise the priority of dissensus and debate over outcomes as the main advantage of parliamentary-style politics over the narrowly teleological forms of human activities. With different thought experiments we could imagine to parliamentarise procedures and practices. These themes are discussed in terms of Perelmanian conceptual pairs of rhetoric, from a perspective that first presents the obstacle to parliamentarisation and discusses chances for a revaluation i…
Radical analyticity and radical pro-drop scenarios of diachronic change in East and mainland Southeast Asia, West Africa and Pidgins and Creoles
2020
Abstract The paucity or absence of inflectional morphology (radical analyticity) and the omission of verbal arguments with no concomitant agreement (radical pro-drop) are well-known characteristics of East and mainland Southeast Asian languages (EMSEA). Both of them have a special status in typology and linguistic theory. Radical analyticity is known under the term of ‘morphological isolation’ and has recently been described as ‘diachronically anomalous’ (McWhorter 2016), while radical pro-drop is a theoretical challenge since Rizzi (1986). The present paper offers an alternative view on these characteristics based on data from EMSEA languages, radically analytic West African languages and …
Thought Experiments, Justice and Character
2012
A significant number of philosophers seem to assume that the study of thought experiments in light of a series of sketchy examples (and counterexamples) constitutes the best means to advance the philosophical debate. It is not my purpose to deny that thought experiments must play a role in philosophical reflection on moral issues, but to stress the need to complement this methodological resource with other means of understanding that may help us to discern the moral demands we may eventually confront. For, otherwise, one may unkowingly project onto the thought experiment itself a rather elementary comprehension of our moral practices, which may thereby seem confirmed.
Rethinking Political Representation from the Perspective of Rhetorical Genres
2019
This article is a thought experiment. It constructs ideal types of political representation in the sense of Max Weber. Inspired by Quentin Skinner and others, the aim is to give a rhetorical turn to contemporary debates on representation. The core idea is to claim an ‘elective affinity’ (Wahlverwandschaft, as Weber says following Goethe) between forms of representation and rhetorical genres of their justification. The four ideal types of political representation are designated as plebiscitary, diplomatic, advocatory, and parliamentary, corresponding to the epideictic, negotiating, forensic, and deliberative genres of rhetoric as the respective ways to plausibly appeal to the audience. I dis…