ABSTRACT
Thought experiments can and do increase our understanding. In this chapter, I use resources from mainstream epistemology to help explain this feat. I present three main kinds of understanding identified in mainstream epistemology, and show how each of these may be created by thought experiments in different ways. I close with some epistemological discussion of those ways, and the cognitive activities that underpin them. While everything I say is meant to hold for the relation between thought experiments and understanding in general, my examples will come from the scientific domain.
