He called these scenarios Gedankenexperiments, which is German for thought experiments. Despite the name, Einstein's mental exercises incorporated data from actual experiments. Here are a few ...

Menu Distinguishing Between the Conceptual Versus the Empirical Distinguishing Between Descriptive Versus Normative Statements Thought Experiments Annotated Sample of Writing from Philosophy Thought ...

For over a century, the Maxwell’s Demon paradox has haunted physics. This thought experiment suggests that a tiny, ...

“Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs in one,” he wrote. He is particularly famous for inventive thought experiments – one of which is about “Twin Earth”. Imagine that there is a ...

Rawls’ ambitious tome offers “a systematic theory of social justice for liberal democracies”, says the Cambridge philosopher Sarah Fine. The key thought experiment in Rawls’ theory is as follows.

This means that they cannot be answered simply by giving facts or information. A concept is the object of a thought, not something that is present to the senses. The word “empirical” means “gained ...