Dear colleagues,
may I bring to your attention the following book, that has just been published and looks extremely interesting. With kindest regards,
http://www.brill.nl/thought-experiments-methodological-and-historical-contexts
Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts
Edited by Katerina Ierodiakonou and Sophie Roux
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.
--
Christelle Rabier
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