Thought experiments are mental concepts or hypotheses, used by philosophers as simple ways of illuminating what are usually very dense ideas. Most often, they’re used where physical experiments aren’t possible. With this in mind, here are 5 of the most famous thought experiments, along with explanations of the philosophical and ethical ideas they work to explain:
The Scenario
One of the most well known thought experiments in the field of ethics is the “Trolley Problem,” which goes something like this: A madman has tied 5 innocent people to a trolley track. An out of control trolley car is careening toward them, and is moments away from running them over. Luckily, you can pull a lever and divert the trolley to another track. The only problem is that the madman has also tied a single person to that track. Considering the circumstances, should you pull the lever?
What it Means:
The trolley problem was first proposed by the philosopher Philippa Foot as a means of critiquing the major theories in ethical philosophy, in particular utilitarianism, the system which proposes that the most moral decision is always the one that provides “the greatest good for the greatest number.” From a utilitarian point of view, the obvious choice is to pull the lever, saving five and only killing one. But critics of this theory would state that in pulling the lever you become complicit in what is clearly an immoral act—you are now partially responsible for the death of the lone person on the other track. Others, meanwhile, argue that your mere presence in the situation demands that you act, and that to do nothing would be equally immoral. In short, there is no wholly moral action, and this is the point. Many philosophers have used the trolley problem as an example of the ways that real world situations often force individuals to compromise their own moral codes, and that there are times when there is no totally moral course of action.
The Scenario
One of the oldest of all thought experiments is the paradox known as the “Ship of Theseus”, which originated in the writings of Plutarch. It describes a ship that remained seaworthy for hundreds of years thanks to constant repairs and replacement parts. As soon as one plank became old and rotted, it would be replaced, and so on until every working part of the ship was no longer original to it. The question is whether this end product is still the same Ship of Theseus, or something completely new and different. If it’s not, at what point did it stop being the same ship? The Philosopher Thomas Hobbes would later take the problem even further: if one were to take all the old parts removed from the Ship of Theseus and build a new ship from them, then which of the two vessels is the real Ship of Theseus?
What it Means:
For philosophers, the story of the Ship of Theseus is used as a means of exploring the nature of identity, specifically the question of whether objects are more than just the sum of their parts. A more modern example would be a band that had evolved over the years to the point that few or no original members remained in the lineup. This notion is also applicable to everything from businesses, which might retain the same name despite mergers and changes in leadership, to the human body, which is constantly regenerating and rebuilding itself. At its heart, the experiment forces one to question the commonly held idea that identity is solely contained in physical objects and phenomena.
The Scenario
Another thought experiment that gets a lot of play in popular culture is what is known as the “infinite monkey theorem.” Also known as the “monkeys and typewriters” experiment, the theorem states that if an infinite number of monkeys were allowed to randomly hit keys on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, then at some point they would “almost surely” produce the complete works of Shakespeare. The monkeys and typewriters idea was popularized in the early 20th century by the French mathematician Emile Borel, but its basic idea—that infinite agents and infinite time will randomly produce anything and everything—dates back to Aristotle.
What it Means:
Simply put, the “monkeys and typewriters” theorem is one of the best ways to illustrate the nature of infinity. The human mind has difficulty imagining a universe with no end or time that will never cease, and the infinite monkeys help to illustrate the sheer breadth of possibilities these concepts create. The idea that a monkey could write Hamlet by accident seems counter intuitive, but in fact it is mathematically provable when one considers the probabilities. The theorem itself is impossible to recreate in the real world, but that hasn’t stopped some from trying: In 2003, science students at a zoo in the U.K. “tested” the infinite monkey theorem when they put a computer and a keyboard in a primate enclosure. Unfortunately, the monkeys never got around to composing any sonnets. According to researchers, all they managed to produce was five pages consisting almost entirely of the letter “s.”
The Scenario
The Chinese Room is a famous thought experiment first proposed in the early 1980s by John Searle, a prominent American philosopher. The experiment asks you to imagine that an English speaking man has been placed in a room that is entirely sealed, save for a small mail slot in the chamber door. He has with him a hard copy in English of a computer program that translates the Chinese language. He also has plenty of spare scratch paper, pencils, and file cabinets. Pieces of paper containing Chinese characters are then slipped through the slot in the door. According to Searle, the man should be able to use his book to translate them and then send back his own response in Chinese. Although he doesn’t speak a word of the language, Searle argues that through this process the man in the room could convince anyone on the outside that he was a fluent speaker of Chinese.
What it Means:
Searle conceived the Chinese Room thought experiment in order to refute the argument that computers and other artificial intelligences could actually think and understand. The man in the room does not speak Chinese; he can’t think in the language. But because he has certain tools at his disposal, he would be able convince even a native speaker that he was fluent in it. According to Searle, computers do the same thing. They don’t ever truly understand the information they’re given, but they can run a program, access information, and give a clear impression of human intelligence.
The Scenario
This scenario is actually a physics thought experiment rather than a philosophical exercise. Schrödinger’s Cat is a paradox relating to quantum mechanics that was first proposed by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger. It concerns a cat that is sealed inside a box for one hour along with a radioactive element and a vial of deadly poison. There is a 50/50 chance that the radioactive element will decay over the course of the hour. If it does, then a hammer connected to a Geiger counter will trigger, break the vial, release the poison, and kill the cat. Since there is an equal chance that this will or will not happen, Schrödinger argued that before the box is opened the cat is simultaneously both alive and dead.
What it Means:
In short, the point of the experiment is that because there is no one around to witness what had occurred, the cat existed in all of its possible states (in this case either alive or dead) simultaneously. This notion is similar to the old “if a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” riddle. Schrödinger originally conceived of his theoretical cat in response to an article that discussed the nature of quantum super-positions, a theory that defines all the possible states in which an object can exist. Schrödinger’s Cat also helped to illustrate just how weird the rules of quantum mechanics really were. The thought experiment is notorious for its complexity, which has encouraged a wide variety of interpretations. One of the most bizarre is the “many worlds” hypothesis, which states that the cat is both alive and dead, and that both cats exist in different universes that will never overlap with one another.
If this sort of ‘mental floss’ interests you the I can heartily recommend Ben Dupré’s excellent book “50 Philosophy Ideas Yoy Really Need to Know”