Sorry for dropping off the face of the earth Monday. I shall be more diligent in the future (hah).
Today, I think talking about thought experiments is going to be beneficial. As a philosophy major, I often am stumped and frustrated why my analogies seem to offend so many people that I use them with.
To them, the situations I concoct with my metaphors are outlandish and hardly representative of those situations being examined in the first place. I need to take a step back and describe the purpose of thought experiments in order to really drive home why I use them and why they seem to have little relevance on the surface.
(And also, if you find yourself arguing with people, this is a terrific method for drawing out inconsistencies in someone's philosophies)
A thought experiment is a situation deliberately set in the most extreme of circumstances- oftentimes circumstances that are not even grounded in reality. This is to take personal investment, among other variables, out of an argument, leaving only the most important details or concepts. For example, a direct attack at the concept of "the edge of the universe" can be found in the thought experiment of Lucretius' Spear.
Effectively, Lucretius was a man who traveled to the farthest reaches of space with a spear. When he reached the edge of the universe, he hurled his spear at it. Logically, only one of two things could happen:
1. It kept going.
2. It hit a wall.
In either case, the "edge" of the universe wasn't actually a true edge because either the spear traveled further or it hit a wall which extends beyond the edge. Both imply that there is more past the point being examined.
Of course, this was a thought experiment from many years ago, and a viable argument now might be that anything that touches the edge gets disintegrated by some natural force or something.
However, the main point of the argument is to distance your thoughts and feelings about infinity to look at the logic behind "infinity."
Using a more... relevant example, let's take a friendly pro-life person. If I'm trying to tease out where their most extreme positions are, I might ask them what they would do in a situation where they are forced to shoot a man in order to save another man.
The point of the experiment isn't that it might happen. In fact, there's virtually no chance whatsoever of it happening. The idea is that you're discovering what your personal ethics do for you in the most dire of situations.
In this case, they may be forced to concede their deontological position on human life in order to save another human.
Brief explanation- Deontology is the ethical philosophy of Kant. It's a position of unwavering ethics with no gray zones. If there is a situation in which it would be immoral to do something, then you can never do that thing. If always doing that thing caused society to break down, we can never enact it. Lying, stealing, killing, cheating, stepping on others.
The extremist pro life position is deontological about life. It has a sanctity that must never be taken away regardless of the circumstance (including death of the mother). With that in mind, forcing them to choose between murdering one person or letting both people be murdered, would be impossible for them. The most likely scenario is that they refuse to play the game, causing both people to die, but at least not by the individual's hands.
However, if someone admits that they would kill one to save the other, their entire philosophy has been compromised in a single example, because they've just admitted that, at some fundamental level, a life is worth another life. Similarly, they've admitted that life itself has a value that can be calculated at all.
And that is a defining position of utilitarianism- the opponent philosophy to deontology which suggests that no action is inherently wrong, but rather, an action's worth is determined by the consequences it causes. If killing one person saves a hundred, you absolutely are morally justified in killing that person.
If, however, the pro life person staunchly opposes the killing of the person, you can change the scenario to make it more and more utilitarian to judge their consistency.
What if you had to kill a convicted pedophile, rapist, murderer who's openly said he'll do it again, but killing him would save a busload of pregnant nuns (don't ask).
Obviously, we can make the situation more and more absurdly weighted until it becomes obvious that killing the lone person is the only way out (in my opinion), which is why I don't value deontology as a set of ethical obligations.
What if taking one life literally saved the rest of human existence?
What if taking one life saved God?
There will always be a situation which forces you to rethink your defining philosophical positions in life. The purpose of a thought experiment is to find that fine line you would have to cross. Once you find it, you can determine exactly why you believe the things you do (Hey, I remember saying something eerily similar to this back in the abortion post).
At least if you started out some level of utilitarian, a compromising theoretical example wouldn't make you rethink everything, just what values you place on certain things.
The thought experiment forces you to come to terms with uncomfortable truths about your place in the world. We must not run from this discomfort- we must embrace it and grow with it.
These experiments range from being highly abstract (Lucretius) to being highly pragmatic (any situation grounded in reality that is plausible).
If you asked a pro life person what they would do if their wife became pregnant with an unwanted pregnancy, you'd probably hear that they would put it up for adoption. Of course... Sometimes, all you have to do is look at their past to determine whether or not they're just lying to you (and themselves) as seen here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/20/scott-desjarlais-political-hypocrites_n_2155011.html (it was his mistress though, which really just makes his position as a "Christian" that much more disgusting)
Everyone has a breaking point. Some will experience it. Some will never admit it.
You should be honest with yourself enough to imagine what you would truly do in any given scenario, not just what you would want to do.
-
Wade
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