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p.2 In intellectual regards, homo sapiens is an amphibian who lives and functions in two very different realms - the domain of actual fact, which we can investigate in observational inquiry, and the domain of imaginative projection which we can explore only in thought by means of reasoning.
[JLJ - for Rescher, the "domain of imaginative projection" is as real to him as the real world itself, and even qualifies as a distinct 'realm'. For me, it becomes instead a curious domain invented by our cognitive mind in order to help us determine how to 'go on.' The real world, important as it is, does not tell you how to go on within it. You must come up with a scheme to 'go on,' then execute it. Part of that scheme involves imagining how things will turn out, then positioning yourself accordingly. Your mind will collect 'tricks that work' - either from personal experience, watching others, investigating the techniques of the winners, or reading case stories in business school - then use wisdom or (out of necessity) practical judgment to elevate some of them to become a personal scheme to 'go on.']
p.3 A "thought experiment" always rests on suppositions. It is an effort at drawing instruction from a process of hypothetical reasoning that proceeds by eliciting the consequences of some projected supposition which, for aught that one actually knows to the contrary, may well be false. Such a process consists in reasoning from a supposition that is not accepted as true, and perhaps is even known to be false, but is assumed provisionally in the interests of making a point or answering a question.
p.7 Thought experiments often invite us to suppose a situation which could in fact be realized if one wished to take the time and trouble.
p.8 An actual experiment, if experiment it is, will have an actual outcome of some sort. A thought experiment, by contrast, will generally have not one outcome but a range of possible outcomes. And the upshot of conducting a thought experiment need not lie in the actual realization of one or another of these possible outcomes but a recognition that some are more plausible - more powerfully indicated - than others.
p.9 In many cases, our suppositions may prove insufficient for meaningful thought experimentation able to yield definite conclusions.
p.10 without sufficient context, there is nothing further that we can say. For thought experiments are only meaningful within a larger context of information.
p.11 in thought experimentation, as elsewhere, the conclusions we draw will depend on the premises we endorse.
p.12 while thought experimentation certainly cannot establish matters of contingent fact, what it certainly can do is to demonstrate matters of logico-conceptual possibility. For such possibility is a matter of coherence and consistency - which is to say a matter of reasoning
p.17 In thought experimentation, as elsewhere, one can reason about trivial issues as well as significant ones.
p.17 Often the merit of a thought experiment lies precisely in the economy and convenience it affords in rendering an actual experiment unnecessary. This is particularly evident when thought experiments are used in the context of planning.
p.17 Thought experiments sometimes involve the construction of models.
[JLJ - more often, metrics, indicators, or cues that are present or absent.]
p.18 Thought experimentation requires imagination in its pliance on the supposition of unknown conditions. And it requires reasoning because it requires one to figure out what follows... in the circumstances. Moreover it requires evaluation because... the object of the exercise is precisely to identify the optimal, maximally plausible alternative. Nevertheless, the process is an objective matter of dealing with the realities of the situation.
p.19 One of the tasks that can conveniently be accomplished by thought experiments - indeed one that is seen by some writers as their principal objective - is a matter of checking introspectively one's natural, intuitively inclinational response towards a particular hypothesis... thought experimentation... is not a matter of idle curiosity but serves a larger function, that of providing a means for helping to settle a more deep-rooted and far-reaching question of some sort.
p.25-26 Thought experiments are often used for consequence-exploration in matters of choice... Thought experimentation is a crucial resource for planning of every kind... All in all, then, thought experimentation can involve various sorts of error.
p.31 Ernst Mach... held that any sensibly designed real experiment should be preceded by a thought experiment that anticipates at any rate the possibility of its eventual outcome.
p.32 An actual experiment has an actual outcome of some sort whereas a thought experiment has a merely putative result - one that is conditional upon the body of assumptions, conjectures, and suppositions upon which the thought experiment is predicated.
p.32 Thought experimentation is a matter of reasoning from assumptions on the basis of the environing facts (as best we understand them).
p.32 [Thomas Kuhn]
The function of the thought experiment is to assist in the elimination of prior confusion... Unlike the discovery of new knowledge, the elimination of existing confusion does not seem to require additional empirical data.
p.32 Given the fundamentally inferential nature of the process, all that thought experimentation can manage to do is to aid in bringing to light the implicit consequences of the beliefs regarding nature's modus operandi to which we otherwise stand committed.
p.32 Every branch of science admits of thought experimentation.
p.34 Scientific thought experimentation in sum is not an instrumentality of demonstration but rather one of plausibilification: it is a tool not of proof but of plausible reasoning. It is not a substantiation for natural cognition but an energizer of the process.
p.55 It should occasion no surprise that thought experimentation has been called the "instrument of choice" in philosophical deliberations.
p.67 [Heraclitus]
If one does not expect the unexpected, one will not make discoveries [of the truth], for it resists discovery and is paradoxical.
p.70 Heraclitus... a thinker who held that the mutual interdependence of opposites establishes the co-equal importance of the conceptions at issue:
Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.
Here, thought experimentation along the indicated lines can be used to show that in removing the tension, we destroy also the very object that is at issue.
p.71 Heraclitus was deeply persuaded that it is ultimately by mind (which can contemplate what is not) rather than by vision (which can only contemplate what is) that the deepest truths are to be learned.
p.71 Thought experimentation is clearly an important and flexible intellectual resource that has many varieties and allows very different sorts of employment.
p.71 as Ernst Mach correctly observed, the development of thought experimentation is in fact an essential preliminary to the development of real experimentation as such.
p.114 The world is a manifold of infinite complexity.
p.118 Whatever we actually do (be it in inquiry or in conjecture) cannot create new possibilities (in the logico-conceptual mode), seeing that possibilities of this sort will always have been there right along, however little attention anyone may have paid - or indeed been able to pay - to them.
p.138 Nothing is sacrosanct in thought experimentation.
p.145 the proper pathway to rejecting a thought experiment proceeds not via mere strangeness but via actual meaninglessness.
p.147 One is free to suppose anything one pleases; supposition is a limitless resource - one can suppose one's way to a free lunch. There are no restrictions to the rationality of assumption and supposition
[JLJ - <sarcasm> there is one exception. One cannot assume that Rescher's next book will be appropriately proofread and checked for errors... such a supposition is beyond the scope of the realistic and best treated as one of Rescher's 'impossible objects'.</sarcasm>]
p.161 homo sapiens inhabits two worlds: that of experienced reality and that of fancy and imagination.
[JLJ - perhaps instead, we are capable of tuning the attention of our mind in two ways: to the reality of which we are a part, or to the internal world of our mind, as we follow chains of thought that lead now here, now there.]
p.162 Virtually every step in the history of human innovation and invention has come about in the wake of someone's asking about imaginary possibilities, speculating about what would happen if, and reflecting on yet-unrealized and often unrealizable possibilities... The rational guidance of human affairs involves a constant recourse to possibilities: we try to guard against them, to prevent them, to bring them to realization, etc., and this speculative endeavor constitutes a significant part of our understanding of man's ways of thought and action.
p.162 On the one hand, the concepts and ideas we employ in forming our view about unactualized possibilities must invariably be taken from our experience of actuality... On the other hand, our overall view of reality is itself in a way a product of the contemplation of possibilities. Imaginative guesswork is always the starting point for our theorizing. Thought experiments are the starting points of our real experiments.
p.163 How thought experimentation works will very much depend on context.
p.167 In warfare, feints, deceits, and ruses are and always have been the normal practice. But, of course, war is an exception to all the rules. And historically in the normal circumstances of everyday life, one's reputation for honesty and truthfulness - for reality-respect, in short - was traditionally regarded as something precious.
[JLJ - in both cases, however, the practitioners are following the rule of 'whatever works' in order to 'go on'. Feints, deceits, and ruses do not work in the social world because word gets out and then no one wants your company. In warfare, however, the politicians are demanding from the generals victories and set 'rules of engagement' which define how low they can go to accomplish those victories. On the playground, an arena not too different from the rest of society, the basketball players will still be faking in one direction and passing the ball in another, because this is a 'trick that works'.]
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