Mais la fantaisie est-elle un privilège des seuls poètes? Schlick on a ‘Sinn-kriterium’ for Thought Experiments

Ever since the term ‘thought experiment’ was coined by Ørsted, phi-losophers have struggled with the question of how thought experiments manage to provide knowledge. Ernst Mach’s seminal contribution has eclipsed other approaches in the Austrian tradition. I discuss one of these neglected approaches. Faced with the challenge of how to recon-cile his empiricist position with his use of thought experiments, Moritz Schlick proposed the following ‘Sinnkriterium’: a thought experiment is meaningful if it allows to answer a question under discussion by imag-ining the experiences that would confi rm that the thought experimental scenario is actual. I trace this view throughout three exemplary thought experiments of Schlick’s.