Michael T. Stuart

University of York · Department of Philosophy

We take up the challenge of developing an international network with capacity to survey the world’s scientists on an ongoing basis, providing rich datasets regarding the opinions of scientists and scientific sub-communities, both at a time and also over time. The novel methodology employed sees local coordinators, at each institution in the network...

As Nelson Goodman highlighted, there are two main senses of “abstract” that can be found in discussions about abstract art. On the one hand, a representation is abstract if it leaves out certain features of its target. On the other hand, something can be abstract to the extent that it does not depict a concrete subject. The first sense of “abstract...

Scientists recognize the necessity of imagination for solving tough problems. But how does the cognitive faculty responsible for daydreaming also help in solving scientific problems? Philosophers claim that imagination is informative only when it is constrained to be maximally realistic. However, using a case study from space science, we show that...

This paper attempts to revive the epistemological discussion of scientific articles. What are their epistemic aims, and how are they achieved? We argue that scientific experimental articles are best understood as a particular kind of narrative: i.e., modernist narratives (think: Woolf, Joyce), at least in the sense that they employ many of the same...

Imagination is extremely important for science, yet very little is known about how scientists actually use it. Are scientists taught to imagine, and if so, when? How? What do they value imagination for? How do social and disciplinary factors shape it? How is the labor of imagining distributed? These questions should be a high priority for anyone wh...

Scientists imagine constantly. They do this when generating research problems, designing experiments, interpreting data, troubleshooting, drafting papers and presentations, and giving feedback. But when and how do scientists learn how to use imagination? Across 6 years of ethnographic research, it has been found that advanced career scientists feel...

Scientists recognize the necessity of imagination for solving tough problems. But how does the cognitive faculty responsible for daydreaming help in solving scientific problems? Philosophers claim that imagination is informative only when it is constrained to be maximally realistic. However, using a case study from space science, we show that scien...

A counterpossible is a counterfactual whose antecedent is impossible. The vacuity thesis says all counterpossibles are true solely because their antecedents are impossible. Recently, some have rejected the vacuity thesis by citing purported non-vacuous counterpossibles in science. One limitation of this work, however, is that it is not grounded in...

Scientists imagine constantly. They do this when generating research problems, designing experiments, interpreting data, troubleshooting, drafting papers and presentations, and giving feedback. But when and how do scientists learn how to use imagination? Across six years of ethnographic research, it has been found that advanced career scientists fe...

Thought experiments, models, diagrams, computer simulations, and metaphors can all be understood as tools of the imagination. While these devices are usually treated separately in philosophy of science, this paper provides a unified account according to which tools of the imagination are epistemically good insofar as they improve scientific imagini...

Metaphors are found all throughout science: in published papers, working hypotheses, policy documents, lecture slides, grant proposals, and press releases. They serve different functions, but perhaps most striking is the way they enable understanding, of a theory, phenomenon, or idea. In this paper, we leverage recent advances on the nature of meta...

Scientists imagine, and their imaginings can be better or worse. But what does it mean for an imagining to be better or worse? There are at least three metaepistemological frameworks that present different answers to this question: epistemological consequentialism, deontic epistemology, and virtue epistemology. This paper presents empirical evidenc...

In the last decades it has become clear that medicine must find some way to combine its scientific and humanistic sides. In other words, an adequate notion of medicine requires an integrative position that mediates between the analytic-reductionist and the normative-holistic tendencies we find therein. This is especially important as these differen...

In the last decades it has become clear that medicine must find some way to combine its scientific and humanistic sides. In other words, an adequate notion of medicine requires an integrative position that mediates between the analytic-reductionist and the normative-holistic tendencies we find therein. This is especially important as these differen...

Science funding policy is constantly evolving as a result of geopolitical, technological, cultural, social, and economic shifts. The last major upheaval of science funding policy happened in response to a catastrophic series of events: World War II. The newest worldwide catastrophe, the COVID-19 pandemic, has prompted similar reflections on fundame...

Can an ugly experiment be a good experiment? Philosophers have identified many beautiful experiments and explored ways in which their beauty might be connected to their epistemic value. In contrast, the present chapter seeks out (and celebrates) ugly experiments. Among the ugliest are those being designed by AI algorithms. Interestingly, in the con...

Philosophical conceptual analysis is an experimental method. Focusing on this helps to justify it from the skepticism of experimental philosophers who follow Weinberg, Nichols & Stich (2001). To explore the experimental aspect of philosophical conceptual analysis, I consider a simpler instance of the same activity: everyday linguistic interpretatio...

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves...

Recent research shows-somewhat astonishingly-that people are willing to ascribe moral blame to AI-driven systems when they cause harm [1]-[4]. In this paper, we explore the moral-psychological underpinnings of these findings. Our hypothesis was that the reason why people ascribe moral blame to AI systems is that they consider them capable of entert...

Recent research shows -- somewhat astonishingly -- that people are willing to ascribe moral blame to AI-driven systems when they cause harm [1]-[4]. In this paper, we explore the moral-psychological underpinnings of these findings. Our hypothesis was that the reason why people ascribe moral blame to AI systems is that they consider them capable of...

Sometimes we learn through the use of imagination. The epistemology of imagination asks how this is possible. One barrier to progress on this question has been a lack of agreement on how to characterize imagination; for example, is imagination a mental state, ability, character trait, or cognitive process? This paper argues that we should character...

The concepts of blameworthiness and wrongness are of fundamental importance in human moral life. But to what extent are humans disposed to blame artificially intelligent agents, and to what extent will they judge their actions to be morally wrong? To make progress on these questions, we adopted two novel strategies. First, we break down attribution...

The history of the philosophy of thought experiments has touched on the work of Kuhn, Popper, Duhem, Mach, Lakatos, and other big names of the 20th century. But so far, almost nothing has been written about Paul Feyerabend. His most influential work was Against Method, 8 chapters of which concern a case study of Galileo with a significant focus on...

Imagination is important for many things in science: solving problems, interpreting data, designing studies, etc. Philosophers of imagination typically account for the productive role played by imagination in science by focusing on how imagination is constrained, e.g., by using self-imposed rules to infer logically, or model events accurately. But...

John D. Norton is responsible for a number of influential views in contemporary philosophy of science. This paper will discuss two of them. The material theory of induction claims that inductive arguments are ultimately justified by their material features, not their formal features. Thus, while a deductive argument can be valid irrespective of the...

Entry for the Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible

Thought experiments are performed in the imagination. We set up some situation, we observe what happens, then we try to draw appropriate conclusions. In this way, thought experiments resemble real experiments, except that they are experiments in the mind.The terms “thought experiment,” “imaginary experiment,” and “Gedankenexperiment” are used inter...

In this article, we analyse the evidential value of the corpus of experimental philosophy (x-phi). While experimental philosophers claim that their studies provide insight into philosophical problems, some philosophers and psychologists have expressed concerns that the findings from these studies lack evidential value. Barriers to evidential value...

When philosophers discuss the possibility of machines making scientific discoveries, they typically focus on discoveries in physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics. Observing the rapid increase of computer use in science, however, it becomes natural to ask whether there are any scientific domains out of reach for machine discovery. For example,...

Imagination is necessary for scientific practice, yet there are no in vivo sociological studies on the ways that imagination is taught, thought of, or evaluated by scientists. This article begins to remedy this by presenting the results of a qualitative study performed on two systems biology laboratories. I found that the more advanced a participan...

Computational systems biologists create and manipulate computational models of biological systems, but they do not always have straightforward epistemic access to the content and behavioural profile of such models because of their length, coding idiosyncrasies, and formal complexity. This creates difficulties both for modellers in their research gr...

Experimental philosophy has blossomed into a variety of philosophical fields including ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of language. But there has been very little experimental philosophical research in the domain of philosophical aesthetics. Advances to Experimental Philosophy of Aesthetics introduces this burgeoning research field...

An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called...

In this article, we analyze the evidential value of the corpus of experimental philosophy (x-phi). While proponents of x-phi claim that its studies provide insight into philosophical problems, some philosophers and psychologists have expressed concerns that the findings from these studies lack evidential value. One reason for this could be selectio...

This is the introduction for the Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments.

We might think that thought experiments are at their most powerful or most interesting when they produce new knowledge. This would be a mistake; thought experiments that seek understanding are just as powerful and interesting, and perhaps even more so. A growing number of epistemologists are emphasizing the importance of understanding for epistemol...

What role does the imagination play in scientifi c progress? After examining several studies in cognitive science, I argue that one thing the imagination does is help to increase scientifi c understanding, which is itself indispensable for scientifi c progress. Then, I sketch a transcendental justification of the role of imagination in this process...

John D. Norton defends an empiricist epistemology of thought experiments, the central thesis of which is that thought experiments are nothing more than arguments. Philosophers have attempted to provide counterexamples to this claim, but they haven’t convinced Norton. I will point out a more fundamental reason for reformulation that criticizes Norto...

I claim that one way thought experiments contribute to scientific progress is by increasing scientific understanding. Understanding does not have a currently accepted characterization in the philosophical literature, but I argue that we already have ways to test for it. For instance, current pedagogical practice often requires that students demonst...

The history of thought experiments is now gaining a great deal of attention, and this is due to the renewed interest of philosophers on the subject. This paper inquires into the history of the philosophy of thought experiments. We name the period to be examined in this paper the “forerun.” Its main stake-holders are Georg C. Lichtenberg, Novalis, a...

Paul Thagard has recently argued that thought experiments are dangerous and misleading when we try to use them as evidence for claims. This paper refutes his skepticism. Building on Thagard’s own work in cognitive science, I suggest that Thagard has much that is positive to say about how thought experiments work. My last section presents some new d...

Originally published in 1991, "The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences" is the first monograph to identify and address some of the many interesting questions that pertain to thought experiments. While the putative aim of the book is to explore the nature of thought experimental evidence, it has another important purp...