Probing theoretical statements with thought experiments

Many thought experiments (TEs) are used to probe theoretical statements. One crucial strategy for doing this, or so I will argue, is the following. A TE reveals an inconsistency in part of our previously held, sometimes empirically well-established, theoretical statements. A thought experimenter or her critic then proposes a resolution in the form of a conjecture, a hypothesis that merits further investigation. To explore this characterisation of the epistemic function of such TEs, I first clarify the nature of the inconsistencies they reveal. Second, I describe a common structure for such inconsistency revealing/resolving TEs. I argue that such an epistemic account of TEs can be done without settling the question of which cognitive processes are involved in their performance; be they propositional or non-propositional. The upshot is that TEs’ reliability, like real experiments, is to be found, in part, in their replicability by the epistemic community, not in their cognit!
ive under
pinnings. For that, I formulate, following scientific practice, five strategies for the critic of a TE. I conclude by considering some ideas for generalising this account to all scientific TEs, at least in physics.