ABSTRACT
One of the many questions that have been asked about thought experiments is the ontological question concerning what thought experiments are, and more specifically, if they are some sort of experiments – perhaps experiments with specific characteristics, but experiments nonetheless (Mach 1905/1926 149; Sorensen 1992; Buzzoni 2013; Bokulich and Frappier, this volume). After all, if they were not experiments, how could they bring us new genuine knowledge about the world? But, on the other hand, since they are just counterfactual scenarios, how could it make sense to say that they are experiments? Thus, the ontological question of what thought experiments are is entangled with the epistemological question of understanding where the knowledge that they bring may come from and what kind of knowledge exactly they can bring. Without dissociating the ontological question and the epistemological question, we will defend in this chapter a dialectical account of thought experiments.
