Editing Thought experiment (section)

===Causal reasoning===
The first characteristic pattern that thought experiments display is their orientation
in time.<ref>Yeates, 2004, pp. 138–143.</ref> They are either:

*''Antefactual speculations'': experiments that speculate about what might have happened prior to a specific, designated event, or
*''Postfactual speculations'': experiments that speculate about what may happen subsequent to (or consequent upon) a specific, designated event.

The second characteristic pattern is their movement in time in relation to "the present
moment standpoint" of the individual performing the experiment; namely, in terms of:

* Their ''temporal direction'': are they past-oriented or future-oriented?
* Their ''temporal sense'':
** (a) in the case of past-oriented thought experiments, are they examining the consequences of temporal "movement" from the present to the past, or from the past to the present? or,
** (b) in the case of future-oriented thought experiments, are they examining the consequences of temporal "movement" from the present to the future, or from the future to the present?