Date of Award
8-12-2015
Degree Type
Closed Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Neil Van Leeuwen
Second Advisor
Andrea Scarantino
Third Advisor
Eddy Nahmias
Abstract
I defend a novel account of thought experiments in science. I motivate the need for my account by arguing for three desiderata that current views in the literature fail to satisfy. According to the view that I develop, scientific thought experiments enable us to entertain new thoughts about the natural world by temporarily disabling our naïve or folk empirical theories. This view is explanatory rich. It explains the phenomenology of thought experiments, provides an empirically informed account of the cognitive mechanisms underlying them, and makes sense of their epistemic value.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/7096397
Recommended Citation
Freed, Benjamin, "Folk Intuition and Thought Experiments in Science." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2015.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/7096397