Abstracts

The Rationality of Thought Experiments

Adriano Angelucci University of Urbino-University of Macau

There is a widespread practice in current analytic philosophy which consists in resorting to thought experiments in order to assess the truth of philosophical theories. Over the last decade or so, some practitioners of a burgeoning philosophical movement known as experimental philosophy (xphi) have leveled an empirically motivated objection to the use of arguments based on thought experiments. According to this objection, these arguments would be doomed to failure, and reliance on them in philosophical theorizing should therefore be either avoided or substantially restricted on pain of patent irrationality. After introducing both the philosophical practice and the empirical objection to it, the talk aims at assessing the merits of a promising reply to the latter that has recently been defended in the literature on philosophical method.