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Deep ecology is a recent philosophy or ecosophy based on a shift away from the anthropocentric bias of established environmental and green movements. The philosophy is marked by a new interpretation of “self” which de-emphasizes the rationalistic duality between the human organism and its environment, thus allowing emphasis to be placed on the intrinsic value of other species, systems and processes in nature. This position leads to an ecocentric system of environmental ethics. Deep ecology describes itself as “deep” because it is concerned with fundamental philosophical questions about the role of human life as one part of the ecosphere, in distinction to ecology as a branch of biological science, and to merely utilitarian environmentalism based on the well-being of humans alone. 
Development
The phrase deep ecology was coined by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss in 1972, and he helped give it a theoretical foundation. Næss rejected the idea that beings can be ranked according to their relative value. For example, judgements on whether an animal has an eternal soul, whether it uses reason or whether it has consciousness have all been used to justify the ranking of the human animal over other animals. Næss states that “the right of all forms [of life] to live is a universal right which cannot be quantified. No single species of living being has more of this particular right to live and unfold than any other species.” This metaphysical idea is elucidated in Warwick Fox’s claim that we and all other beings are “aspects of a single unfolding reality”.
Deep ecology offers a philosophical basis for environmental advocacy which may, in turn, guide human activity against perceived self-destruction. Deep ecology and environmentalism hold that the science of ecology shows that ecosystems can absorb only limited change by humans or other external influences. Further, both hold that the actions of modern civilization threaten global ecological well-being. Ecologists have described change and stability in ecological systems in various ways, including homeostasis, dynamic equilibrium, and “flux of nature”[1]. Regardless of which model is most accurate, environmentalists contend that massive human economic activity has pushed the biosphere far from its natural state through reduction of biodiversity, climate change, and other influences. As a consequence, civilization is causing mass extinction. Deep ecologists hope to influence social and political change through their philosophy.
Certain elements of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, particularly his critique of technocratic reason, have also been held to tie in with deep ecological principles.[2][3][4]
Scientific
Deep ecology finds scientific underpinnings in the fields of ecology and system dynamics. Næss and Fox do not use logic or induction to directly derive the philosophy from scientific ecology, but rather claim that scientific ecology directly implies the metaphysics of deep ecology, including its ideas about the self.
The scientific version of the Gaia hypothesis was also an influence on the development of deep ecology.
Spiritual
The central spiritual tenet of deep ecology is that the human species is a part of the Earth and not separate from it. A process of self-realisation 
or “re-earthing” is used for an individual to intuitively gain an ecocentric perspective. The notion is based on the idea that the more we expand the self to identify with “others” (people, animals, ecosystems), the more we realise ourselves. Transpersonal psychology has been used by Warwick Fox to support this idea.
Other traditions which have influenced deep ecology include Taoism and Zen Buddhism, primarily because they have a non-dualistic approach to subject and object. In relation to the Judeo-Christian tradition, Næss offers the following criticism: “The arrogance of stewardship [as found in the Bible] consists in the idea of superiority which underlies the thought that we exist to watch over nature like a highly respected middleman between the Creator and Creation.”[5]
Experiential
Drawing upon the Buddhist tradition is the work of Joanna Macy. Macy, working as an anti-nuclear activist in USA, found that one of the major impediments confronting the activists’ cause was the presence of unresolved emotions of despair, grief, sorrow, anger and rage. The denial of these emotions led to apathy and disempowerment.
We may have intellectual understanding of our interconnectedness, but our culture, experiential deep ecologists like John Seed argue, robs us of emotional and visceral experience of that interconnectedness which we had as small children, but which has been socialised out of us by a highly anthropocentric alienating culture.
Through “Despair and Empowerment Work” and more recently “The Work that Reconnects”, Macy and others have been taking Experiential Deep Ecology into many countries including especially the USA, Europe (particularly Britain and Germany), Russia and Australia.
Principles
Proponents of deep ecology believe that the world does not exist as a resource to be freely exploited by humans. The ethics of deep ecology holds that a whole system is superior to any of its parts. They offer an eight-tier platform to elucidate their claims:[6]
The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital human needs.
The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.
Movement
In practice, deep ecologists support decentralization, the creation of ecoregions, the breakdown of industrialism in its current form, and an end to authoritarianism.
Deep ecology is not normally considered a distinct movement, but as part of the green movement. The deep ecological movement could be defined as those within the green movement who hold deep ecological views. Deep ecologists welcome the labels “Gaian” and “Green” (including the broader political implications of this term, e.g. commitment to peace). Deep ecology has had a broad general influence on the green movement by providing an independent ethical platform for Green parties, political ecologists and environmentalists.
The philosophy of deep ecology helped differentiate the modern ecology movement by pointing out the anthropocentric bias of the term “environment”, and rejecting the idea of humans as authoritarian guardians of the environment.
Criticisms
The notion of intrinsic value
“Shallow” ecologists criticize[citation needed] the notion that the intrinsic value of ecological systems exists independently of humanity’s recognition of it. An example of this approach is that one might say that a work of art is only valuable insofar as humans perceive it to be worthwhile. Shallow ecologists feel that the ecosystem’s value does not reach beyond our appreciation of it. Intrinsic value is a philosophical concept which some do not accept[7].
Interests in nature
For something to require rights and protection intrinsically, it must have interests[8]. Deep ecology is criticised for presuming that plants, for example, have their own interests. Deep ecologists claim to identify with the environment, and in doing so, to understand what the environment’s 
interests are. The criticism is that the interests that a deep ecologist purports to give to nature, such as growth, individuality, balance and fairness, are really human interests. “The earth is endowed with ‘wisdom’, wilderness equates with ‘freedom’, and life forms are said to emit ‘moral’ qualities.”[9] On the other hand, it has also been argued that species and ecosystems themselves have rights[10].
Deep ecology is misanthropy
Some critics contend that deep ecology is misanthropic, in that it advocates a reduction in human population. Deep ecologists’ views on the natural role of epidemic disease and famine have been interpreted negatively to support this position. Deep ecologists would defend themselves against charges of misanthropy by pointing out that population reduction can be achieved by lowering birth rates. Deep ecologists would also counter that scarcity increases value and excessively high populations decrease the value of the human individual. This second counter-argument is viewed as even more misanthropic because it claims that individual human life is devalued to begin with.
Respect for nature includes a belief in the inherent worth of all beings that are a part of the natural world. Only those humans who are alienated from the natural world and participate in its destruction are to be opposed. However, by deep ecology’s own standards, the overwhelming majority of humanity is alienated from nature and participates in its destruction at least to some degree. Some would argue that the deep ecologists’ opposition to the overwhelming majority of humanity is the very definition of misanthropy.
The political philosophy of deep ecology has been criticised as ecofascism. In response, deep ecologists claim that they advocate a new relationship between humanity and the ecosphere, a relationship that seeks to end authoritarianism through decentralizaton, and espouse a less dominating and aggressive posture towards nature; a position that appears to be the opposite of fascism. Fascism is not defined by its posture towards nature, though, but by its position towards human society.
Deepness
Deep ecology is criticised for the claim that the theory is deeper than other theories, which by implication are shallow. It may be presumptuous to assert that one’s thinking is deeper than others’. The term shallow ecology was coined at the same time as deep ecology by Arne Næss, who critiqued shallow ecology for having a utilitarian and anthropocentric attitude to nature and having a materialist and consumer-oriented outlook.[11] [12]
Ecofeminist response
Both ecofeminism and deep ecology put forward a new conceptualization of the self. Some ecofeminists, such as Marti Kheel[13], argue that self-realization and identification with all nature places too much emphasis on the whole, at the expense of the independent being. Ecofeminists contend that their concept of the self (as a dynamic process consisting of relations) is superior. Ecofeminists would also place more emphasis on the problem of androcentrism rather than anthropocentrism.
Misunderstanding scientific information
Daniel Botkin[14] has compared deep ecology unfavourably with its antithesis, the wise use movement, when he says that they both “misunderstand scientific information and then arrive at conclusions based on their misunderstanding, which are in turn used as justification for their ideologies. Both begin with an ideology and are political and social in focus.” Elsewhere though, he asserts that deep ecology must be taken seriously in the debate about society and ecology as it challenges the fundamental assumptions of western philosophy.
Deep ecology as not “deep” enough
Social ecologists such as Murray Bookchin[15] claim that deep ecology fails to link environmental crises with authoritarianism and hierarchy. Social ecologists believe that environmental problems are firmly rooted in the manner of human social interaction, and protest that an ecologically sustainable society could still be socially exploitative. Deep ecologists reject the argument that ecological behavior is rooted in the social paradigm (according to their view, that is an anthropocentric fallacy), and they maintain that the converse of the social ecologists’ objection is also true in that it is equally possible for a socially egalitarian society to continue to exploit the Earth.
Socially biased
Some criticize deep ecologists as bourgeois in that they advocate a way of living that is easier for people who are more affluent. That is to say, it is often difficult for certain groups of people, namely Native American tribes such as the Makah to have healthy diets in exclusion of animals. Additionally, in the case of the Makah, whaling is an integral part of the culture, and as such, critics may ascribe any move to stop it as ethnocentric or imperialistic. Those who criticize deep ecology for its misanthropy would likely argue that this proves how the movement is destructive to the human race. Some deep ecologists would likely retort that whaling in the case of the Makah is acceptable, since it does not endanger the environment on the whole as industrialism does, and in many ways recognizes whales as equal, but still part of the food chain. At this point, their practices are little different from animals who diet on other animals to stay alive.
Links with other movements
Parallels have been drawn between deep ecology and other movements, in particular the animal rights movement and Earth First!.
Peter Singer’s 1975 book Animal Liberation critiqued anthropocentrism and put the case for animals to be given moral consideration. This can been seen as a part of a process of expanding the prevailing system of ethics to wider groupings. The feminist and civil rights movements also brought about expansion of the ethical system for their particular domains. Likewise deep ecology brought the whole of nature under moral consideration[16]. The links with animal rights are perhaps the strongest, as “proponents of such ideas argue that ‘All life has intrinsic value’”[17].
Many in the radical environmental direct-action movement Earth First! claim to follow deep ecology, as indicated by one of their slogans No compromise in defence of mother earth. In particular, David Foreman, the co-founder of the movement, has also been a strong advocate for deep ecology, and engaged in a public debate with Murray Bookchin on the subject[18][19]. Judi Bari is another prominent Earth Firster who espouses deep ecology. Many Earth First! actions have a distinct deep ecological theme; often these actions will ostensibly be to save an area of old growth forest, the habitat of a snail or an owl, even individual trees. It should however be noted that, especially in the United Kingdom, there are also strong anti-capitalist and anarchist currents in the movement, and actions are often symbolic or have other political aims. At one point Arne Næss also engaged in environmental direct action, though not under the Earth First! banner, when he tied himself to a Norwegian fjord in a successful protest against the building of a dam[20].
Notable advocates of deep ecology
Judi Bari | Thomas Berry | Leonardo Boff | Fritjof Capra | Michael Dowd | Warwick Fox
David Foreman | Martin Heidegger (controversial: see Development above)
Dolores LaChapelle | Pentti Linkola (controversial) | Joanna Macy | Jerry Mander | Freya Mathews
Terence McKenna | Arne Næss | Oberon Zell Ravenheart | Theodore Roszak | John Seed George Sessions | Gary Snyder | Richard Sylvan
See also
Ecofeminism
Ecology | Ecology movement
Environmental ethics
Gaian | Greens
Growth Fetish
Murray Bookchin - a critic of Deep ecology
Negative Population Growth | Population Connection
Social ecology
Systems theory | The Great Story
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
Notes
Botkin, Daniel B. (1990). Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century. Oxford Univ. Press, NY, NY. ISBN 0-19-507469-6.
Heidegger, Postmodern Theory and Deep Ecology in Zimmerman, Michael (1994). Contesting Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity. University of California Press.
Arne Næss (1997). “Heidegger, Postmodern Theory and Deep Ecology”. Trumpeter 14 (4). Retrieved on 2006-05-04.
DeLuca, Kevin Michael (2005). “Thinking with Heidegger: Rethinking Environmental Theory and Practice”. Ethics & the Environment 10 (1): 67-87. Retrieved on 2006-04-25.
Næss, Arne. (1989). Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. p. 187. ISBN 0521348730
Devall, Bill. Sessions, George. (1985). Deep Ecology. Gibbs Smith Publishers. Salt Lake City. p. 70. ISBN 0879052473
Zimmerman, Michael J. “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value: 3. Is There Such a Thing As Intrinsic Value At All?” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed).
Feinberg, Joel. The Rights of Animals and Future Generations. Retrieved on 2006-04-25. Joff (2000). The Possibility of an Anti-Humanist Anarchism. Retrieved on 2006-04-25. Pister, E. Phil (1995). “The Rights of Species and Ecosystems”. Fisheries 20 (4). Retrieved on 2006-04-25.
Great River Earth Institute. Deep Ecology: Environmentalism as if all beings mattered. Retrieved on 2006-04-25.
Panaman, Ben. Animal Ethics Encyclopedia: Deep Ecology. Retrieved on 2006-04-25.
Kheel, Marti. (1990): Ecofeminism and Deep Ecology; reflections on identity and difference from: Diamond, Irene. Orenstein. Gloria (editors), Reweaving the World; The emergence of ecofeminism. Sierra Club Books. San Francisco. pp 128-137. ISBN 0871566230
Botkin, Daniel B. (2000). No Man’s Garden: Thoreau and a New Vision for Civilization and Nature, pp. 42, 39, Shearwater Books. ISBN 1559634650.
Bookchin, Murray (1987). Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement. Green Perspectives/Anarchy Archives.
Alan AtKisson. “Introduction To Deep Ecology, an interview with Michael E. Zimmerman”. In Context (22). Retrieved on 2006-05-04.
Wall, Derek (1994). Green History. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-07925-X.
(1991) David Levine Defending the Earth: a dialogue between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman.
Bookchin, Murray; Graham Purchace, Brian Morris, Rodney Aitchtey, Robert Hart, Chris Wilbert (1993). Deep Ecology and Anarchism. Freedom Press. ISBN 0-900384-67-0.
J. Seed, J. Macy, P. Flemming, A. Naess, Thinking like a mountain: towards a council of all beings, Heritic Books (1988), ISBN 0946097-26-7, ISBN 0-86571-133-X.
Bibliography
1985 “Deep Ecology: Living As if Nature Mattered” George Sessions’s and Bill Devall’
1995 The Deep Ecology Movement Alan Drengson
Further reading
Jozef Keulartz, Struggle for nature : a critique of radical ecology, London [etc.] : Routledge, 1998
Michael Tobias ed, Deep Ecology, Avant Books (1984, 1988) ISBN 0-932238-13-0.
Harold Glasser (ed), The Selected Works of Arne Naess, Volumes 1-10. Springer, (2005), ISBN 1-4020-3727-9. (review)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Deep ecology”.
That which you negate, you will never experience, so ones cynicism is self fulfilling. “Healthy skepticism” if non judgmental, leaves the door open to Truth.
It occurred to me while I was in the midst of having a conversation with an old friend, how we often think of ourselves as spiritual beings, but neglect to think of ourselves as honest human beings. There are many of us on the planet who are on the spiritual path. This might have occurred as an epiphany, an idea, or just something that we had to do because it was within us. How little thought we gave to truth and honesty as we journeyed on this path with many highways.
There were many times on my own journey that I questioned my personal truth and honesty as it related to my spirituality, which was and still is of the highest importance to me. My practices, classes, readings, and personal endeavors never brought me to the 
place where I would question truth and integrity, until the last decade of my life. Even then, while questioning Truth was I willing to practice it fully? The answer was no.
So what of our spiritual journey and Radical Truth? Can we be spiritual and still be dishonest? Can we be kind, have integrous intentions, do our daily practices, but be selectively truthful and honest toward ourselves and others?
When we get together in groups, workshops, and other spiritual endeavors, we are and do think of ourselves as spiritual beings. Being spiritual however, is just a label. It’s the label we love to have fun with when being with other spiritual and like-minded people. We could also label ourselves nice and still be not so nice sometimes. If we were doctors we would still be doctors even if we were doing something else, wouldn’t we?
As humans we’re doing and being different things all the time. We label ourselves with our thoughts, religious beliefs, professions, duties, and our spiritual beliefs. The dichotomy lies within the content of our definition of spirituality, and the context of our lives. The spiritual tag we place on ourselves is arbitrary. Our spirituality becomes relative to where we place it within our lives and ourselves.
There is no half way between truth and non-truth. If I was being a good person and my intentions were of the highest, I fooled myself into believing that I was on the straight and narrow path to God. My epiphany was the realization that you can’t have it both ways. There is no such thing as having good intentions, but being selectively honest with yourself and others. There is only Truth or not truth. Selective truth is arbitrary and relative.
Relativism is never Truth. This is the one truth no one likes to hear. It is truth according to us, and as human beings we have no way of knowing Absolute Truth without help from Divinity. We need not practice kinesiology on ourselves to see how truthful we’re being. We absolutely know when we are not being honest. Humans have a tendency to go into denial over this, but those on the spiritual path cannot sweep this under the rug without the consequential karmic dust cloud which hovers over us. 
Absolute Radical Truth is just that. It is Truth at all times to oneself and others. We need not worry about being honest to God, because we never fool God. The Universal Field of Intelligence which we call God, stores everything for all time and with an all-knowing of all that exists. So if we ever think that there is no one looking over our shoulder, we are just kidding ourselves.
Radical Truth and honesty have to be in place within ourselves if we are on the path to enlightenment. There is no one to fool, there is no past to hide, we have atoned, we have forgiven ourselves, and we continue on with Truth and honesty in our lives on our devotional path to God. It is not a better path, but just a different path. It is the rare high road we take with humility, integrity, willingness, intention, devotion, and love for all of humanity and God. ©Myswizard all rights reserved ‘05-’06
God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.
Author: Meister Eckhart 1260-1326 AD, German Mystic
Biomedical researchers who dove down nearly 3,000 feet to search a newly-discovered coral reef found treasures they say may help doctors fight cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other illnesses.
Scientists with the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution descended to water sunless, black water in the Florida Straits, a passage located between the Keys and Cuba.
There, they found a new coral reef ecosystem that features man-size coral thickets and limestone towers. 
“Gorgeous. Oh, beautiful goblets, just gorgeous,” said Shirley Pomponi, president of Harbor Branch. “It’s a richer area than we thought, for sure.”
Most importantly, they also found sponges and coral, including a new species of bamboo coral. Scientists have previously used chemicals from the underwater finds to fight diseases.
Researchers discovered hints of the reef’s existence in the 1970’s, but didn’t witness the real majesty of this unknown ecosystem until December. Using solar technology developed at the University of Miami, they located sites that sustain themselves without sunlight or obvious energy, according to Mark Grasmueck, a UM assistant professor.
Armed with a robotic torpedo, advanced sonars, sensors and cameras, explorers descended in a state-of-the art, submersible bubble the size of two vehicles.
Now, researchers will take what they brought up from those depths to laboratories and search for new medicinal compounds that might exist.
John Reed, Harbor Branch’s chief scientist said the goal is to find “something that kills cancer cells and doesn’t kill anything else.”
Information from: The Miami Herald, http://www.herald.com
A thought experiment (from the German term Gedankenexperiment, coined by Hans Christian Ørsted) in the broadest sense is the use of an imagined scenario to help us understand the way things really are. The understanding comes through reflection on the situation. Thought experiment methodology is a priori, rather than empirical, in that it does not proceed by observation or physical experiment.
Thought experiments are well-structured hypothetical questions that employ “What if?” reasoning (see irrealis moods).
Thought experiments have been used in philosophy, physics, and other fields. They have been used to pose questions in philosophy at least since Greek antiquity, some pre-dating Socrates. In physics and other sciences many famous thought experiments date from the 19th and especially the 20th Century, but examples can be found at least as early as Galileo.
Origins and use of the term “thought experiment”
Witt-Hansen (1986) established that Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the Latin-German mixed term Gedankenexperiment (lit. experiment conducted in the thoughts) circa 1812. Ørsted was also the first to use its entirely German equivalent, Gedankenversuch, in 1820.
Much later, Ernst Mach used the term Gedankenexperiment to exclusively denote the imaginary conduct of a real experiment that would be subsequently performed as a real physical experiment by his students — thus the contrast between physical and mental experimentation — with Mach asking his students to provide him with explanations whenever it happened that the results from their subsequent, real, physical experiment had differed from those of their prior, imaginary experiment.
The English term thought experiment was coined (as a calque) from Mach’s gedankenexperiment, and it first appeared in the 1897 English translation of one of Mach’s papers.
In many ways, the emergence of the term “thought experiment” is a classic case of positioning (see positioning (marketing)). Prior to its emergence, the activity of posing hypothetical questions that employed subjunctive reasoning had existed for a very long time (for both scientists and philosophers). However, people had no way of categorizing it or speaking about it. This helps to explain the extremely wide and diverse range of the application of the term “thought experiment” once it had been introduced into English.
Thought experimentation in general
In its broadest usage, thought experimentation is the process of employing imaginary situations to help us understand the way things really are (or, in the case of Herman Kahn’s “scenarios”, understand something about something in the future). The understanding comes through reflection upon this imaginary situation. Thought experimentation is an a priori, rather than an empirical process, in that the experiments are conducted within the imagination (i.e., Brown’s (1993) “laboratory of the mind”), and never in fact.
Thought experiments, which are well-structured, well-defined (rather than ill-defined) hypothetical questions that employ subjunctive reasoning (irrealis moods) — “What might happen (or, what might have happened) if . . . ” — have been used to pose questions in philosophy at least since Greek antiquity, some pre-dating Socrates (see Rescher). In physics and other sciences many famous thought experiments date from the 19th and especially the 20th Century, but examples can be found at least as early as Galileo.
Thought experiments have been used in philosophy, physics, and other fields (such as cognitive psychology, history, political science, economics, social psychology, law, organizational studies, marketing, and epidemiology).
Scientists tend to use thought experiments in the form of imaginary, “proxy” experiments which they conduct prior to a real, “physical” experiment (Ernst Mach always argued that these gedankenexperiments were “a necessary precondition for physical experiment”). Even today, many scientists argue that these are the only genuine thought experiments. In these cases, the result of the “proxy” experiment will often be so clear that there will be no need to conduct a physical experiment at all.
Scientists also use thought experiments when particular physical experiments are impossible to conduct (Carl Gustav Hempel labelled these sorts of experiment “theoretical experiments-in-imagination”).
Regardless of their intended goal, all thought experiments display a patterned way of thinking that is designed to allow us to explain, predict and control events in a better and more productive way.
The Theoretical Consequences of Thought Experimentation
In terms of their theoretical consequences, thought experiments generally:
challenge (or, even, refute) a prevailing theory,
confirm a prevailing theory,
establish a new theory, or
simultaneously refute a prevailing theory and establish a new theory through a process of mutual exclusion.
The Practical Application of Thought Experimentation
Thought experiments often introduce interesting, important and valuable new perspectives on old mysteries and old questions; yet, although they may make old questions irrelevant, they may also create new questions that are not be easy to answer.
In terms of their practical application, thought experiments are generally created in order to:
challenge the prevailing status quo (which includes activities such as correcting misinformation (or misapprehension), identify flaws in the argument(s) presented, to preserve (for the long-term) objectively established fact, and to refute specific assertions that some particular thing is permissible, forbidden, known, believed, possible, or necessary);
extrapolate beyond (or interpolate within) the boundaries of already established fact;
predict and forecast the (otherwise) indefinite and unknowable future; explain the past;
the retrodiction, postdiction and postcasting of the (otherwise) indefinite and unknowable past;
facilitate decision making, choice and strategy selection; solve problems, and generate ideas;
move current (often insoluble) problems into another, more helpful and more productive problem space (e.g., see functional fixedness); attribute causation, preventability, blame and responsibility for specific outcomes; assess culpability and compensatory damages in social and legal contexts;
ensure the repeat of past success; or examine the extent to which past events might have occurred differently. ensure the (future) avoidance of past failures.
Seven types of hypothetical question
Generally speaking, the entire domain of thought experiments can be divided into seven types on the basis of the sorts of hypothetical question they ask:
Prefactual thought experiments
Prefactual (“before the fact”) thought experiments speculate on possible future outcomes, given the present, and ask “What will be the outcome if E occurs?”
Counterfactual thought experiments
Counterfactual (“contrary to established fact”) thought experiments speculate on the possible outcomes of a different past; and ask “What might have happened if A had happened instead of B?” (e.g., “If Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz had cooperated with each other, what would mathematics look like today?”).
Semifactual thought experiments
Semifactual thought experiments speculate on the extent to which things might have remained the same, despite there being a different past; and asks the question “Even though X happened instead of E, would Y have still occurred?” (e.g., “Even if the goalie had moved left, rather than right, could he have intercepted a ball that was travelling at such a speed?”).
Semifactual speculations are an important part of clinical medicine.
Prediction, forecasting and nowcasting
The activities of prediction, forecasting and nowcasting attempt to project the circumstances of the present into the future (the only difference between these identically patterned activities being the distance of their speculated future from the present).
Hindcasting
The activity of hindcasting involves running a forecast model after an event has happened in order to test whether the model’s simulation is valid.
Retrodiction (or postdiction)
The activity of retrodiction (or postdiction) involves moving backwards in time, step-by-step, in as many stages as are considered necessary, from the present into the speculated past, in order to establish the ultimate cause of a specific event (e.g., Reverse engineering and Forensics).
Backcasting
The activity of backcasting involves establishing the description of a very definite and very specific future situation. It then involves an imaginary moving backwards in time, step-by-step, in as many stages as are considered necessary, from the future to the present, in order to reveal the mechanism through which that particular specified future could be attained from the present.
It is important to recognize that a major difficulty with all types of thought experiment, and particularly with counterfactual thought experiments, is that there are no formally accepted criteria for accurately measuring the risk of either Type I errors (False positive) or Type II errors (False negative) in the choice of a potential causative factor.
Thought experiments in philosophy
In philosophy, a thought experiment typically presents an imagined scenario with the intention of eliciting an intuitive response about the way things are in the thought experiment. (Philosophers might also supplement their thought experiments with theoretical reasoning designed to support the desired intuitive response.) The scenario will typically be designed to target a particular philosophical notion, such as morality, or the nature of the mind or linguistic reference. The intuitive response to the imagined scenario is supposed to tell us about the nature of that notion in any scenario, real or imagined.
For example, a thought experiment might present a situation in which an agent intentionally kills an innocent for the benefit of others. Here, the relevant question is whether the action is moral or not, but more broadly whether a moral theory is correct that says morality is determined solely by an action’s consequences. John Searle imagines a man in a locked room who receives written sentences in Chinese, and returns written sentences in Chinese, according to a sophisticated instruction manual. Here, the relevant question is whether or not the man understands Chinese, but more broadly, whether a functionalist theory of mind is correct.
It is generally hoped that there is universal agreement about the intuitions that a thought experiment elicits. (Hence, in assessing their own thought experiments, philosophers may appeal to “what we should say,” or some such locution.) A successful thought experiment will be one in which intuitions about it are widely shared. But oftentimes, philosophers differ in their intuitions about the scenario.
The scenario presented in the thought experiment must be possible in some sense. In many thought experiments, the scenario would be possible according to the laws of nature, or nomologically possible. John Searle’s Chinese Room is nomologically possible. Some thought experiments present scenarios that are not nomologically possible. In his Twin Earth thought experiment, Hilary Putnam asks us to imagine a scenario in which there is a substance with all of the observable properties of water (e.g., taste, color, boiling point), but which is chemically different from water. It has been argued that this thought experiment is not nomologically possible, although it may be possible in some other sense, such as metaphysical possibility. It is debatable whether the nomological impossibility of a thought experiment impugns its supposed intuitive results.
Other uses of imagined scenarios arguably are thought experiments also. In one use of scenarios, we might imagine persons in a particular situation (maybe ourselves), and ask what they would do. John Rawls asks us to imagine a group of persons in a situation where they know nothing about themselves, and are charged with devising a social or political organization. The various uses of the state of nature, as by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke may also be considered thought experiments.
The use of thought experiments in philosophy has been criticized by some philosophers, especially in the philosophy of mind. Daniel Dennett has derisively referred to thought experiments as “intuition pumps.” One criticism that has been voiced is that some science fiction-type thought experiments are too wild to yield clear intuitions, or that any resulting intuitions could not possibly pertain to the real world. Another criticism is that philosophers have used thought experiments (and other a priori methods) in areas where empirical science should be the primary method of discovery, as for example, with issues about the mind.
Thought experiments in physics
Thought experiments in physics are intended to give us a priori knowledge of the natural world, rather than apriori knowledge of our concepts, as philosophy tries to do.
Famous thought experiments
Physics
Thought experiments are popular in physics and include:
Brownian ratchet (Richard Feynman’s “perpetual motion” machine which does not violate the second law, and does not work)
Casimir cones (Basis for almost perpetual motion machine fueled by entropy)[1]
Galileo’s ship (classical relativity principle) 1632
GHZ experiment (quantum mechanics)
EPR paradox (quantum mechanics) (forms of this have actually been performed)
Maxwell’s demon (thermodynamics) 1871
Quantum suicide (quantum mechanics)
Schrödinger’s cat (quantum mechanics)
Twin paradox (special relativity)
Wigner’s friend (quantum mechanics)
Wittgenstein’s rod (engineering mechanics)- an exercise in visualization
Bucket argument- argues that space is absolute, not relational
Philosophy
The field of philosophy makes extensive use of thought experiments:
Brain-in-a-vat (epistemology)
Changing places (reflexive monism, philosophy of mind)
China brain (physicalism, philosophy of mind)
Chinese room (philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, cognitive science)
Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy)
Dining Philosophers (computer science)
God’s Debris (religion and awareness)
Hilary Putnam’s Twin Earth thought experiment in the philosophy of language
Mary’s room (philosophy of mind)
Original position (politics)
Philosophical zombie (philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, cognitive science)
Social contract theories
The Ship of Theseus (concept of identity)
Simulated reality (philosophy, computer science, cognitive science)
Swamp man (personal identity)
Trolley problem (ethics)
The Violinist (ethics)
Zeno’s paradoxes (classical Greek problems of the infinite)
Mathematics
Ping-pong ball conundrum (infinity and cardinality)
Gabriel’s Horn (’You can fill my horn, but not paint it’)
Miscellaneous
Braitenberg vehicles (robotics, neural control and sensing systems) (some have actually been built)
Doomsday argument (anthropic principle)
Infinite monkey theorem (probability, infinity)
Halting problem (limits of computability)
The Lady or the Tiger? (human nature)
Turing machine (limits of computability)
Significant articles about thought experiments or thought experimentation
Dennett, D.C., “Intuition Pumps”, pp.180-197 in Brockman, J., The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, Simon & Schuster, (New York), 1995.
Galton, F., “Statistics of Mental Imagery”, Mind, Vol.5, No.19, (July 1880), pp.301-318.
Hempel, C.G., “Typological Methods in the Natural and Social Sciences”, pp.155-171 in Hempel, C.G. (ed.), Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science, The Free Press, (New York), 1965.
Mach, E., “On Thought Experiments”, pp.134-147 in Mach, E., Knowledge and Error: Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry, D. Reidel Publishing Co., (Dordrecht), 1976. [Translation of Erkenntnis und Irrtum (5th edition, 1926.].
Popper, K., “On the Use and Misuse of Imaginary Experiments, Especially in Quantum Theory”, pp.442-456, in Popper, K., The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Harper Torchbooks, (New York), 1968.
Rescher, N., “Thought Experiment in Pre-Socratic Philosophy”, pp.31-41 in Horowitz, T. & Massey, G.J. (eds.), Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy, Rowman & Littlefield, (Savage), 1991.
Witt-Hansen, J., “H.C. Örsted, Immanuel Kant and the Thought Experiment”, Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Vol.13, (1996), pp.48-65.
Books about thought experiments
Brown, J.R., The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences, Routledge, (London), 1993.
Browning, K.A. (ed.), Nowcasting, Academic Press, (London), 1982.
Cohnitz, D., Gedankenexperimente in der Philosophie, Mentis Publ., (Paderborn, Germany), 2006.
Craik, K.J.W., The Nature of Explanation, Cambridge University Press, (Cambridge), 1943.
Cushing, J.T., Philosophical Concepts in Physics: The Historical Relation Between Philosophy and Scientific Theories, Cambridge University Press, (Cambridge), 1998.
DePaul, M. & Ramsey, W. (eds.), Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, (Lanham), 1998.
Gendler, T.S., Thought Experiment: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases, Garland, (New York), 2000.
Gendler, T.S. & Hawthorne, J., Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford University Press, (Oxford), 2002.
Häggqvist, S., Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Almqvist & Wiksell International, (Stockholm), 1996.
Hanson, N.R., Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science, Cambridge University Press, (Cambridge), 1962.
Harper, W.L., Stalnaker, R. & Pearce, G. (eds.), Ifs: Conditionals, Belief, Decision, Chance, and Time, D. Reidel Publishing Co., (Dordrecht), 1981.
Hesse, M.B., Models and Analogies in Science, Sheed and Ward, (London), 1963.
Holyoak, K.J. & Thagard, P., Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought, A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, (Cambridge), 1995.
Horowitz, T. & Massey, G.J. (eds.), Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy, Rowman & Littlefield, (Savage), 1991.
Kahn, H., Thinking About the Unthinkable, Discus Books, (New York), 1971.
Kuhne, U., Die Methode des Gedankenexperiments, Suhrkamp Publ., (Frankfurt/M, Germany), 2005.
Leatherdale, W.H., The Role of Analogy, Model and Metaphor in Science, North-Holland Publishing Company, (Amsterdam), 1974.
Roese, N.J. & Olson, J.M. (eds.), What Might Have Been: The Social Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, (Mahwah), 1995.
Shanks, N. (ed.), Idealization IX: Idealization in Contemporary Physics (Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, Volume 63), Rodopi, (Amsterdam), 1998.
Shick, T. & Vaugn, L., Doing Philosophy: An Introduction through Thought Experiments (Second Edition), McGraw Hill, (New York), 2003.
Sorensen, R.A., Thought Experiments, Oxford University Press, (Oxford), 1992.
Tetlock, P.E. & Belkin, A. (eds.), Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics, Princeton University Press, (Princeton), 1996.
Thomson, J.J. {Parent, W. (ed.)}, Rights, Restitution, and Risks: Essays in Moral Theory, Harvard University Press, (Cambridge), 1986 .
Vosniadou, S. & Ortony. A. (eds.), Similarity and Analogical Reasoning, Cambridge University Press, (Cambridge), 1989.
Wilkes, K.V., Real People: Personal Identity without Thought Experiments, Oxford University Press, (Oxford), 1988.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Thought Experiment”.
Books about cosmology, infinity, and alpha constant theories. John D. Barrows qualifications stand on their own.
Article on John D. Barrows
Advanced Reading
Once the spiritual Journey has begun, there are an infinite number of roads to follow. Each road has side roads and each sideroad gets smaller and smaller, until you’ve become lost and cannot figure out your way back home.
This is how life is. When simplicity becomes elusive, and life along with your spiritual journey become more and more complex, home seems further and further away.
I’ll use an experience to give you an example. Where I live in the countryside, there are many twisty backroads. To get to these backroads you need to take a major highway. From the major highway, you turn onto a county road which has a letter or two as it’s name. Now you can get on to smaller gravel roads with a name which usually denotes who lives on it or a name someone gave it a while back. These roads, although beautiful, are smaller and sometimes deadend.
I do a lot of research in the world of spirit and science as they relate to each other. Since I’m only interested in Truth, most of my research doesn’t follow deadends because I test first using Consciousness Research. This effectively eliminates the false. Every now and then, just for fun, I’ve allowed the journey to lead me somewhere to see where it ends up.
Sometimes I come to a term that’s new or unusual and I delve further. From this term, I find many more terms that usually denote a doctrine or concept that has been intellectualized or simply adopted as true. I often find myself after an hour or so, chasing something which leads nowhere. One idea leads into another and so on, infinitely with no definitive conclusion.
This is very common to the spiritual initiate as well as all people. They spend lots of time and money following something which leads them to a dead end. What I’ve found is, simplicity, (no matter how large the creation gets), will lead you where you want to go faster than a long, complex 
effort. One can fill their lives with minutia, but life will always find it’s own evolution, no matter what you throw into the mix. It is Infinite Divinity creating.
One’s intention is the most important factor. If we keep our intention focused we really never get too lost. Our intention is our compass and consciousness is our map. We may take a side road for the scenery but the destination always remains clear. So too, the journey to Divinity.
You can investigate, navigate, and journey downstream, but when you feel lost on your journey, always remember God is on highground.
by Rabbi Berel Wein
One of the questions that Jews who are observant of Torah law and ritual constantly face is: “If Torah is all that it is supposed to be, then why are there many Jews who are observant but are otherwise immoral, bad people?”
I always flippantly answer that one should never confuse Judaism with Jews. Torah is pure, pristine, divine and moral beyond description. Jews are human beings, frail of body and will, buffeted by a hostile world and an inimical society. Therefore, there are failures in living up to high ideals. It becomes difficult to control one’s passions and desires and the terrible temptations that life offers are omnipresent.
But in my heart I am aware that this is an insufficient, irrelevant answer. It is really only a non sequitur, an avoidance of the basic issue. For why does Torah observance not create a better person automatically? What is the missing ingredient that prevents Torah observance from taking hold of the entire person and elevating him or her? How is the believing, observant Jew to deal with the gap between the promised ideal and the harsh reality that we see around us?
In the midst of the anguish of my recent bereavement mourning the loss of my beloved wife, who was the type of person the Torah had in mind and lived up to the Torah’s ideal in her everyday life, I had an insight into this issue, which I am about to share with you.
The Talmud itself states that “Torah, for those who merit it, becomes an elixir of life. Torah, for those who lack such merit, becomes a potion of poison and death.”
The Talmud does not specify nor define the merit involved. It is obvious that the Talmud did not treat this merit as a random gift, a chance happening. Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, the Ramban, following the lead of this idea of the Talmud, states that a person can be Torah observant, operating within the technical rules and rituals of the Torah, and nevertheless be an awful, obscene, despicable person. He therefore challenges Jews to go a step beyond the letter of the law and attempt to infuse true discipline, care for others and holiness into our lives.
His formula is that even those acts of life which are completely permissible to us must carry holiness and dedication with them. But exalted as these ideas are, they still leave us with the gnawing question of why Torah observance does not automatically raise a person to holy heights.
The Gaon of Vilna, Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer, provides us with a glimmer of light in understanding this vexing issue. Moshe, in his final words to the Jewish people, described Torah as the blessing of rain and dew. The Gaon stated that rain and dew fall indiscriminately on the earth. Rain makes flowers and bountiful food crops grow. It also makes weeds, thorns and thistles grow. Whatever seed is in the ground, good or otherwise, is nurtured by rain. He therefore says that for people who train themselves and are trained by their parents and home environment from their earliest youth to be good people — before they are even old enough to study and observe Torah — the Torah will then be an elixir of life. The rain will create good crops.
However, for those who do not have that meritorious training as a basis for their entire persona, the Torah will, like rain on fields of thorns and weeds, be a poisonous and negative force in their lives.
We treasure knowledge of Torah. Our schools teach subjects and ideas. But if the basic personality of goodness is not first created within the child, we will be witness continually to the dysfunction of many in the Torah world. The rabbis therefore wisely stated that “good traits and behavior patterns — derech eretz — must precede the study of Torah.” Morals, probity, honesty, modesty, care and tolerance for others, self-worth and self-discipline, all must precede Torah study. Only then will the beneficial rain of Torah study and ritual observance create the desired Torah person and society. This should be the aim and curriculum of our homes and schools. Knowledge, by itself, can be a dangerous commodity. Planting the right seeds will ensure the beneficial effects of the Torah’s rain upon us.
Author Biography:
Rabbi Berel Wein is a noted scholar, historian, speaker and educator who is admired the world over for his books and cassette tapes — particularly on Jewish history. Rabbi Wein
I’ve Got My Eyes on You
Don’t you hate it when someone rolls their eyes at you?
This week’s Zohar portion has ten of the highest souls of Moses’ generation rolling their eyes at him. The story is that Moses and the Israelites are waiting to enter Israel after wandering in the desert. To determine whether or not the land is inhabitable, Moses sends 12 spies to survey the situation. And not just any spies. He sends in 12 great spiritual leaders.
The report that ten of these spies brought back was less than positive, and it was also less than truthful.
The Zohar says they brought back a false report for fear that their jobs would become obsolete upon entering the land of Israel. In Israel they foresaw a utopia without distinction between leader and follower, where everyone was equal. In such a society, they would be knocked from their pedestals. To prevent this from happening, they over-exaggerated their report to Moses. How could such esteemed leaders, men of great spirituality, be so self-serving and devious?
We must remember that the story of the Bible is a code, and all of its characters and dramas are simply reflections of ourselves. Don’t we all make up lies and half-truths to save our behinds from time to time? No matter how good we may think we are, when the fear of loss is present, the fact is we tend to color the truth a little. Okay, a lot.
The Zohar explains that this is actually a form of passive evil eye.
If you have read The Red String Book, you know that our eyes are channels for energy. The kabbalists reveal that the way we look at something determines its energy.
When we look at someone with jealousy and hatred in our heart, wishing they didn’t have so much success or happiness, we are in effect saying, “I want this person to be limited.” When we look at someone with doubts about their ability to be happy or successful, we are in effect saying, “I don’t see how this person cannot be limited.”
According to the Zohar, most of us are limiting our friends, family members, co-workers, employees, and clients by giving them PASSIVE evil eye.
I recently had two students come to me with problems in their relationship. They just could not make it work, no matter what they tried. I asked them to close their eyes and visualize a better version of their relationship, one in which they are happy. After a few minutes, both of them answered, “I can’t.”
The idea is that if we can’t even imagine a better situation, if we can’t visualize our friend’s success or the potential for a good relationship, it means we’re injecting doubt and limitation into this person’s life – and our own.
Getting back to the 12 spies, the story goes that the ten souls who brought back false reports each went on to die a horrible death, eventually becoming known as the ten martyrs.
The real question is, what is this story coming to teach us and what kind of energy does it give us? The spies, by giving passive evil eye, were, in fact, jeopardizing their jobs even more so than if they had been truthful in their report and risked losing their status.
This proves to us that self-preservation is actually quite destructive.
This week we must remember that by giving evil eye – even when it’s passive and looks harmless – the harm comes to us. The Zohar teaches that the degree to which we give evil eye is the degree to which we receive it ourselves.
All the best,
Yehuda
Enlightenment is not a cause, belief, or position. It is a path to God.__Myswizard
String theory is a part of (Advanced) Theoretical Physics. There are components of the theory having to do with multiple dimensions. My reason for exploring these theories is because of the interconnectedness of All That Exists and It’s perfection and complexities. If you visit The Superstring site under “links” you will have fun exploring these theories. I love this science because it all leads back to the big unanswerable question. Scientists label these “problems.” __Myswizard
String Theory
Interaction in the subatomic world: world lines of point like particles in the Standard Model or a world sheet swept up by closed strings in string theory. String theory is a model of fundamental physics whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects (strings) rather than the zero-dimensional points (particles) that are the basis of the Standard Model of particle physics. For this reason, string theories are able to avoid problems associated with the presence of point like particles in a physical theory. Studies of string theories have revealed that they require not just strings, but also higher-dimensional objects.
The basic idea is that the fundamental constituents of reality are strings of energy of the Planck length (about 10-35 m) which vibrate at resonant specific frequencies[1]. Another key claim of the theory is that no measurable differences can be detected between strings that wrap around dimensions smaller than themselves and those that move along larger dimensions (i.e., physical processes in a dimension of size R match those in a dimension of size 1/R). Singularities are avoided because the observed consequences of “big crunches” never reach zero size. In fact, should the universe begin a “big crunch” sort of process, string theory dictates that the universe could never be smaller than the size of a string, at which point it would actually
