Tradable climate liabilities: A thought experiment

Cog as a thought experiment

In her presentation at the Monte Verità workshop, Maja Mataric showed us a videotape of her robots cruising together through the lab, and remarked, aptly: "They're flocking, but that's not what they think they're doing." This is a vivid instance of a phenomenon that lies at the heart of all the research I learned about at Monte Verità: the execution of surprisingly successful "cognitive" behavi...

Nuclear War in Europe: A Thought Experiment

A thought experiment with clocks in static

In order to directly demonstrate that in static gravitational field the rate of clocks increases with their distance from the source a simple thought experiment is proposed.

The neurology–psychiatry divide: a thought experiment†

Diseases of the brain are generally classified as either neurological or psychiatric. However, these two groups of illnesses cannot be readily separated on the basis of pathophysiology or symptomatology. It is difficult to rationally explain to someone with no prior frame of reference why we have the split between neurological and psychiatric illness. This demonstrates that the division is unte...

What Makes a Good Skeptical Thought Experiment?

How do skeptical thought experiments work? The skeptic invites us to “entertain” a vividly described possibility, then argues that skeptical conclusions follow from our inability to rule that possibility out. I contend that the argument’s soundness hinges on whether the skeptical possibilities generate legitimate doubts: we need to separate the issue of whether we can rule a possibility out fro...