A Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy sobre "experimentos mentais" incluindo referências a nova literatura.
A literatura sobre experimentos mentais continua crescer rapidamente.
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"... Thomas Kuhn's "A Function for Thought Experiments" employs many of the concepts (but not the terminology) of his well-known Structure of Scientific Revolutions. On his view a well-conceived thought experiment can bring on a crisis or at least create an anomaly in the reigning theory and so contribute to paradigm change. Thought experiments can teach us something new about the world, even though we have no new empirical data, by helping us to re-conceptualize the world in a better way. Tamar Gendler has recently developed this view in a number of important respects.
Recent years have seen a sudden growth of interest in thought experiments. The views of Brown (1991) and Norton (1991, 1996) represent the extremes of platonic rationalism and classic empiricism, respectively. Norton claims that any thought experiment is really a (possibly disguised) argument; it starts with premisses grounded in experience and follows deductive or inductive rules of inference in arriving at its conclusion. The picturesque features of any thought experiment which give it an experimental flavour might be psychologically helpful, but are strictly redundant. Thus, says Norton, we never go beyond the empirical premisses in a way to which any empiricist would object. (For criticisms see Bishop 1999; Brown 1991, 2004a, 2004b; Haggqvist 1996; Gendler 1998, 2004; Nersessian 1993; and Sorenson 1992; and for a defense see Norton 1991, 1996, 2004a, and 2004b.)
By contrast, Brown holds that in a few special cases we do go well beyond the old data to acquire a priori knowledge of nature. (See also Koyré 1968.) Galileo showed that all bodies fall at the same speed with a brilliant thought experiment that started by destroying the then reigning Aristotelian account. The latter holds that heavy bodies fall faster than light ones (H > L). But consider (Fig. 6), in which a heavy canon ball (H) and light musket ball (L) are attached together to form a compound object (H+L); the latter must fall faster than the cannon ball alone. Yet the compound object must also fall slower, since the light part will act as a drag on the heavy part. Now we have a contradiction. (H+L > H and H > H+L) That's the end of Aristotle's theory. But there is a bonus, since the right account is now obvious: they all fall at the same speed (H = L = H+L).
Figure 6. Galileo: “I don't even have to look”
This could be said to be a priori (though still fallible) knowledge of nature, since there are no new data involved, nor is the conclusion derived from old data, nor is it some sort of logical truth. This account of thought experiments can be further developed by linking the a priori epistemology to recent accounts of laws of nature that hold that laws are relations among objectively existing abstract entities. It is thus a rather Platonistic view, not unlike Platonistic accounts of mathematics such as that urged by Gödel. (For details see Brown 1991.)
The two views just sketched might occupy the opposite ends of a spectrum of positions on thought experiments, at least within the philosophy of science. Some of the promising alternative views include those of Sorensen (somewhat in the spirit of Mach) who holds that thought experiments are a "limiting case" of ordinary experiments; they can achieve their aim, he says, without being executed. (Sorensen's book is also valuable for its extensive discussion of thought experiments in a wide range of fields.) Other promising views include those of Gooding (who stresses the similar procedural nature of thought experiments and real experiments), Miscevic and Nersessian (each of whom tie thought experiments to "mental models"), and several of the accounts in Horowitz and Massey 1991. Besides these, a sample of recent excellent discussions includes: Arthur 1999; Gendler 1998, 2000, 2002a, 2004; Haggqvist 1996; Humphreys 1994; McAllister 1996, 2004; and many others. German readers will find the very recent book by Kühne (2005) a very thorough history as well as an interesting discussion of contemporary topics. The literature on thought experiments in the sciences continues to grow rapidly...--
