Ierodiakonou Katerina, Roux Sophie (eds.) Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts

Leiden: Brill, 2011. — 233 p. — (Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy and Science 15).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.Introduction: The Emergence of the Notion of Thought Experiments, Sophie Roux.
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.
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.
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.