Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts write by Katerina Ierodiakonou. This book was released on 2011-06-09. Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. By analysing thought experiments from various periods in the history of philosophy and science, the essays in this volume seek to clarify how thought experiments work, what their limits are, and what their conceptualisation could be.
Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics
Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics write by Philip E. Tetlock. This book was released on 2020-06-30. Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Political scientists often ask themselves what might have been if history had unfolded differently: if Stalin had been ousted as General Party Secretary or if the United States had not dropped the bomb on Japan. Although scholars sometimes scoff at applying hypothetical reasoning to world politics, the contributors to this volume--including James Fearon, Richard Lebow, Margaret Levi, Bruce Russett, and Barry Weingast--find such counterfactual conjectures not only useful, but necessary for drawing causal inferences from historical data. Given the importance of counterfactuals, it is perhaps surprising that we lack standards for evaluating them. To fill this gap, Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin propose a set of criteria for distinguishing plausible from implausible counterfactual conjectures across a wide range of applications. The contributors to this volume make use of these and other criteria to evaluate counterfactuals that emerge in diverse methodological contexts including comparative case studies, game theory, and statistical analysis. Taken together, these essays go a long way toward establishing a more nuanced and rigorous framework for assessing counterfactual arguments about world politics in particular and about the social sciences more broadly.
Thought Experiment
Thought Experiment - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Thought Experiment write by Tamar Szabo Gendler. This book was released on 2014-01-14. Thought Experiment available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book offers a novel analysis of the widely-used but ill-understood technique of thought experiment. The author argues that the powers and limits of this methodology can be traced to the fact that when the contemplation of an imaginary scenario brings us to new knowledge, it does so by forcing us to make sense of exceptional cases.
What If?
What If? - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook What If? write by Nicholas Rescher. This book was released on 2018-02-06. What If? available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Thought experimentation has been a staple of philosophical methodology since classical antiquity, when Xenophanes of Colophon speculated that if horses had gods, they would be equine in form. Nicholas Rescher's What If? undertakes a systematic survey of the role and utility of thought experiments in philosophy. After surveying the historical issues, Rescher examines the principles involved, and explains the conditions under which thought experimentation can validly yield instructive results in philosophy. The reader gains understanding of the differences between scientific and philosophical experiments. What If? begins by examining the nature of thought experiments. It presents an overview of how thought experiments have figured in natural science and in historical studies, before moving on to examine how they function as an instrument of philosophical inquiry. After examining thought experiments from the pre-Socratics to the present day, Rescher turns from history to analysis, and examines the modes of reasoning involved in the use of speculative hypotheses in philosophical problem solving. He shows the limitations of speculative ontology, showing that thought experimentation can lead readily to paradox in a way that increasingly diminishes its usefulness. The book concludes by arguing and illustrating how and when it becomes pointless to push speculation, or thought experimentation beyond the limits of intelligibility and cogent sense. Among the principal features of Rescher's book is its elaborate analysis of the appropriate conditions for philosophical thought experimentation. Its cardinal thesis is that there indeed are limits to the appropriateness of this important methodological resource and that transgressing these limits destroys the prospect of drawing any valid lessons for the philosophical enterprise. What If? will be of interest to philosophers, students of philosophy, and theorists of logic and reasoning.
Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science
Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science write by Lorenzo Magnani. This book was released on 2017-05-22. Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This handbook offers the first comprehensive reference guide to the interdisciplinary field of model-based reasoning. It highlights the role of models as mediators between theory and experimentation, and as educational devices, as well as their relevance in testing hypotheses and explanatory functions. The Springer Handbook merges philosophical, cognitive and epistemological perspectives on models with the more practical needs related to the application of this tool across various disciplines and practices. The result is a unique, reliable source of information that guides readers toward an understanding of different aspects of model-based science, such as the theoretical and cognitive nature of models, as well as their practical and logical aspects. The inferential role of models in hypothetical reasoning, abduction and creativity once they are constructed, adopted, and manipulated for different scientific and technological purposes is also discussed. Written by a group of internationally renowned experts in philosophy, the history of science, general epistemology, mathematics, cognitive and computer science, physics and life sciences, as well as engineering, architecture, and economics, this Handbook uses numerous diagrams, schemes and other visual representations to promote a better understanding of the concepts. This also makes it highly accessible to an audience of scholars and students with different scientific backgrounds. All in all, the Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science represents the definitive application-oriented reference guide to the interdisciplinary field of model-based reasoning.
