Dueling Theories: Thought Experiments in Cognitive Science

Brook (1999) identified thought experiments as one of the key elements of philosophy's contribution to the cognitive sciences. In this paper, I tackle the question of how and why thought experiments work, and what exactly it is they do for us when they do work. I propose that thought experiments almost always involve two different theories of the world being compared to show that they do, or more often do not, fit together. Sometimes both theories are clearly articulated in the narrative of the thought experiment, but more often one of the two goes unarticulated the thought experimenter instead relies on our shared folk theories of the world. The strength of some of the more famous and persuasive thought experiments lies in their ability to show that a given theory runs afoul of these deeply held folk intuitions. I will compare the "Dueling Theories" account of thought experiments to both Brook's "empirical" account and Brown's (1991) platonic account.