an experiment you carry out simply by thinking. You describe a possible world (or at least part of one) and see what follows. Plato’s cave is a thought experiment. He imagines a world where prisoners can see only shadows cast on a cave wall, and asks how their lives compare to the lives of people outside the cave. Zhuangzi’s butterfly is a thought experiment. Zhuangzi describes a world in which he remembers dreaming about being a butterfly, and asks how he can know he is not a butterfly that dreams he is Zhuangzi.
