In this master’s thesis, I am exploring though experiments as a philosophical method. I will present the central theoretical approaches and examine two different thought experiments in details.

The methodological discussion of thought experiments has been so far dealing with ontological, epistemological and normative questions. For instance, it can be said that ontologically thought experiments are experiments, mental models or procedures. Epistemologically thought experiments are interesting because of the problem of informativeness: if thought experiments are expected to bring about new knowledge, where does this information comes from? It can be argued that knowledge is either constructed in the process of building the theory, platonically with a help of pure reasoning or by exposing modal intuitions that are evolutionarily reliable.

Normative theory of thought experiments is pursuing to form criteria for evaluating thought experiments. Based on the argumentative theory, thought experiments should be examined as arguments and thus according to general principles of logical reasoning. However, the argumentative approach seems to be too narrow to explain the role of the thought experiments in philosophical discussions. From one thought experiment, different kinds of arguments can be formed and with the help of them, the discussion can be led to surprising directions. In this thesis, I will present a framework, which will help to evaluate and develop thought experiments as processes. This approach will take the two-sided, argumentative and narrative, nature of thought experiments into account.

Frank Jacksons Mary is a good example of diverse thought experiment process. During the more than twenty years of discussion concerning this particular thought experiment has invited many different interpretations and thus different theoretical standpoints of the philosophical theory in question, physicalism. Jacksons thought experiment has gained its “own life” and transforms easily from metaphysical problem into epistemological case.

Counterexamples of Edmund Gettier seem to be a different case. Traditionally the Gettier examples have been seen as strong evidence against the definition of knowledge as justified true belief, but Gettiers thought experiment can also be examined critically. In the case of Gettier there is a possibility to find new approaches to epistemological discussion in the same manner than with Jacksons thought experiments.

Keywords: Philosophy, metaphilosophy, philosophy of science, thought experiments, narrativity, argumentation

(it is fast translation, so it might be slightly clumsy)