Philosopher’s Toolkit

Thought Experiments. Philosophers often engage in 'thought experiments'. They describe hypothetical situations, sometimes realistic and sometimes fantastical, and then ask about our 'intuitions' regarding the case. 'Intuition' is a key term in modern philosophical methods though philosophers disagree about what they are and what their significance is. I will here just take them to be your thoughtful judgments about various things.

Why would philosophers do this? Oddly, though this procedure is very common, there is no general agreement on what these thought experiments show or why they are valuable. But there is general agreement that we can use these thought experiments to help test what we really believe about various things. Here is one sort of use of the thought experiment. Suppose you say 'I believe such and such', where 'such and such' refers to a general principle of some kind. I wonder whether you really do believe that general principle...