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Full Description
During the last decades of the twentieth century highly imaginative thought experiments were introduced in philosophy: Searle's Chinese room, variations on the Brain-in-a-vat, Thomson's violinist. At the same time historians of philosophy and science claimed the title of thought experiment for almost any argument: Descartes' evil genius, Buridan's ass, Gyges' ring. In the early 1990s a systematic debate began concerning the epistemological status of thought experiments. The essays in this volume are an outcome of this debate. They were guided by the idea that, since we cannot forge a strict definition of thought experiments, we should at least tame the contemporary wild usage of this notion by analysing thought experiments from various periods, and thus clarify how they work, what their limits are, and what their conceptualisation could be.
Medieval and Early Modern Science, 15
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Emergence of the Notion of Thought Experiments, Sophie Roux
PART ONE: HISTORICAL USES OF THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS
Remarks on the History of an Ancient Thought Experiment, Katerina Ierodiakonou
Thought Experiments in the De Anima Commentaries, Peter Lautner
Thought Experiments in Late Medieval Debates on Atomism, Christophe Grellard
PART TWO: THE POSSIBILITY OF THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS
Thought Experiments and Indirect Proofs in Averroes, Aquinas, and Buridan, Simo Knuuttila and Taneli Kukkonen
Galileo's Use of Medieval Thought Experiments, Carla Rita Palmerino
On Kant's Critique of Thought Experiments in Early Modern Philosophy, Stelios Virvidakis
PART THREE: HOW DO THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS WORK?
Philosophical Thought Experiments: In or Out of the Armchair?, Pascal Engel
On the Very Idea of a Thought Experiment, Jean-Yves Goffi and Sophie Roux
Thought Experiments and Mental Simulations, John Zeimbekis
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index nominum
