One issue that came up in class discussion is that the supertask specified in the Thomson's lampcase could not occur in the actual world without violating the laws of physics. At some point inthe series of flips, the speed of the next flip will exceed the speed of light. So how do we dealwith this issue? Is it legitimate to simply abstract away from this problem? To imagine that thecase is occurring at some other imaginary possible world where there is no limit on the speed oflight (or anything else)? What exactly needs to be held 'fixed' in order for a thought experimentto successfully give us philosophical knowledge?

Fig: 1