Role of Thought Experiments in Philosophy

This paper explores the significance and the status of thought experiments in philosophy. In the first step, we briefly survey the history of how the term "thought experiment" emerged and its role in the history of thought. In the second step, we analyze two important definitions of thought experiment offered by Sorensen and Gandler, and after pointing out four general approaches to thought experiments, we examine the role of intuition in them. We also discuss the difference between the experiments with apparently similar status, such as science fictions, ideal experiments and mathematical arguments. After analyzing the role of imagination in thought experiments, we further analyze the role of thought experiment in philosophy and argue that there are four main functions for thought experiments namely, explaining defective examples, theorizing, confirming a theory, and explaining essential connections. At the end, the floating man of Avicenna has also been briefly analyzed as an example of a thought experiment offered by a Muslim philosopher.