thought experiment
considering hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences
Bell's spaceship paradox
thought experiment in special relativity: “a string hangs between two spaceships that start accelerating simultaneously equally in an inertial frame; will the string break?”
Plank of Carneades
ethical thought experiment proposed by Carneades of Cyrene: after shipwreck, A is on a plank that can only support 1 person; when B tries to cling on, A pushes him away; is A guilty?
knowledge argument
philosophical thought experiment: “a brilliant scientist has investigated the neurophysiology of vision from a black and white room via a black and white monitor; will she learn anything new if she is given a color monitor?”
trolley problem
thought experiment in ethics
rotating spheres argument
Isaac Newton’s thought experiment to show that true rotational motion can be defined by observing the tension in the string joining two identical spheres
space travel under constant acceleration
proposed mode of space travel
Einstein's thought experiments
kinds of scientific mental experiments done by Einstein
urn problem
certain model studied in probability theory and combinatorics
simulated reality
hypothesis that reality could be simulated
social contract
concept in political philosophy
mandarin paradox
ethical parable about the difficulty of fulfilling moral obligations when moral punishment is unlikely or impossible
green-beard effect
hypothesis for altruism in evolutionary biology
Thomson's lamp
philosophical puzzle that is a variation on Zeno's paradoxes
Kingdom of Ends
Kant’s thought experiment about a world in which all humans are treated as ends, not as means
Popper's experiment
experiment proposed by Karl Popper to put to the test different interpretations of quantum mechanics
Norton's dome
nondeterministic Newtonian mechanical system
floating man
Avicenna’s thought experiment arguing for the existence of the soul
Dyson sphere
hypothetical megastructure, originally described by Freeman Dyson
temporal paradox
theoretical paradox resulting from time travel
twin paradox
thought experiment in special relativity
The survival lottery
ethical thought experiment in which everyone’s name is put into a lottery, so that when organ donations are needed, a person’s name is drawn up to be killed so as to allow two or more people to live
Mach's principle
principle that inertia is determined by the large-scale distribution of matter
free field
in acoustics, situation in which no sound reflections occur
photon scale
physics thought experiment
Two Generals' Problem
thought experiment: 2 generals can talk to each other by sending a messenger through enemy territory; how can they agree on time of attack, if any messenger could be captured?
moving magnet and conductor problem
physics thought experiment
radical translation
thought experiment by W. V. Quine, about a linguist finding an unknown language and trying to translate it based on events happening around him combined with verbal/non-verbal behaviour of natives
sticky bead argument
thought experiment showing that general relativity predicts gravitational radiation: two beads on a frictionful rod dissipates energy via friction when a gravitational wave passes through it
two capacitor paradox
thought experiment in physics
Northern European Enclosure Dam
proposed enclosure of the North Sea
ladder paradox
thought experiment in special relativity: a ladder parallel to the ground moves horizontally; due to length contraction it fits inside a garage; but from the ladder's frame, the garage will be contracted to be smaller and cannot contain the ladder
Joule expansion
irreversible thermodynamic process in which a volume of gas expands into a vacuum
Newcomb's paradox
thought experiment about a game involving a reliable predictor of the player’s actions
philosophical zombie
thought experiment in philosophy
Alderson disk
hypothetical artificial astronomical megastructure
Blockhead
philosophical thought experiment about a computer which has been programmed with all possible sentences in a natural language, so as to be able to pass the Turing test despite lacking intelligence
China brain
thought experiment
Newton's cannonball
thought experiment
The prince and the cobbler
thought experiment introduced by John Locke
Evil God Challenge
Thought experiment in philosophy
veil of ignorance
political-moral framework centered on decision making without regard to personal effect
if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
philosophical thought experiment
brain in a vat
thought experiment
Brownian ratchet
instance of a perpetual motion machine of the second kind.
Pascal's mugging
philosophical thought experiment: “A mugger, who forgot his weapon, proposes a deal to Pascal: ‘you give me your wallet, and I will give you N times the money, where N is large enough to compensate for the low probability of me honoring the deal’”
money pump
Economic thought experiment
Maxwell's demon
thought experiment
Ship of Theseus
thought experiment concerning the continuity of identity of an item which has all its parts replaced