To what extent are thought experiments valid?

thought experiments are never a valid rebuttal, except if used as arbitrary examples of valid situations, i.e. trolley problem thought experiment is used as an arbitrary example of messy situations one can intervene in.

Some authors will use thought experiments to convey their full rebuttal in a very, very simple form for digestion by outsiders though

>>2687247
Agreed, and I'm not even going to bother playing Devil's advocate because fuck those guys.

"HURR DURR, B-BUT W-WHAT IF WE WERE IN A UNIVERSE WHE-"

Seriously, shut the fuck up.

>>2687247
The question of whether p-zombies are possible is the point of the thought experiment in the first place. If you are a physicalist and don't think it's possible for a human being with no conscious experience to exist, you have to argue why.

>>2687247
>Smartass: But what if zombies who imitated humans perfectly existed?
That has nothing to do with "only the physical exists". As far as I can tell that solipsism, and no, you can't very other people's consciousness. Why the fuck do you even study epistemology if you aren't concerned about it?

>Metaphysics is essentially the search for an ultimate reality, and if your arguments have no basis in reality at all should they even be considered?
It's similar how you can disprove things in math with a mathematical proof to the contrary. Pure math is axiomatic.

>>2687247
Thought experiments are valid when they're used to illustrate some fundamental point that would otherwise be difficult to explain. Einstein's famous example of imagining what it would be like to ride a photon, for example. The problem is making sure your thought experiment doesn't contain as an assumption the conclusion you are trying to prove in the first place, like the P-zombie.

>>2687247
When a lot of philosophy relies on the fucking Conceivability-Possibility argument, it really starts to get on you.
>ITS CONCEIVABLE SO IT MUST BE POSSIBLE
>THATS WHY HUMANS CAN EXIST WITHOUT BODIES

>>2687830
I posted this and I take it back. p-zombies against physicalism are a thing. It's just retarded because p-zombies only show solipsism.

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202KB, 893x1280px

>define a p-zombie as a being that cannot feel (e.g.) pain
>can react to stimuli and will emulate the reaction of a non-p-zombie to pain
>thus the p-zombie must recognize the stimuli
>and thus the stimuli prompts a reaction from it
>thus it must feel pain, and although the way it feels pain may differ from the way we feel it, it is still felt (and it reacts in the exact same way to us, to boot)

am I missing something?
taking pain as the example: pain doesn't really exist at all. It's a name given to our body's reaction to stimuli. If a p-zombie doesn't have the same reaction to that stimuli, but it DOES have a reaction to that stimuli (specifically, the impulse to emulate a person feeling pain) then that reaction IS their "pain"

doesn't that render the whole experiment useless?

>>2687916
It's separating the reaction to stimuli from "pain," as though the two were separate. It's intended to imply that qualia is this non-physical thing that exists.

>>2687925
ah, I guess that's where my issue arises.
I wouldn't have thought the two separable at all.

>>2687925
But it assumes axiomatically that there is a difference, as an axiom, and them uses that axiom to attempt to prove itself. It's just circular logic and trying to say isn't it self evident there's more than the physical world.