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Thought experiments






   Some philosophers believe that all science-fiction thought experiments should be viewed with suspicion. They argue that when a thought experiment describes a state of affairs that is radically different from the actual one (or what we think it to be), our intuitions become unreliable, and significant philosophical conclusions cannot be drawn from them. Daniel Dennett, for example, calls these experiments "intuition pumps", which play on a strong but ultimately illusory intuition. Indeed, Phil Hutchinson notes that a. if one looks at Putnam's own later criticisms of others (for example his criticisms of Jaegwon Kim in his book The Threefold Cord) one finds that implicitly he critiques his own earlier self; and b. that the persuasive power of thought experiment/intuition pump relies on our turning a blind eye to aspects of the experiment in order that it establish that which Putnam claims it to. In short, the thought experiment is set up in such a way that one's intuitions will be pumped in the desired direction.





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