The epistemic status of thought experiments in philosophy of mind

This thesis aims to evaluate the place of thought experiments in the philosophy of mind and their contribution to the formation of philosophical knowledge from a holistic perspective. Thought experiments, used as a fundamental method in the philosophy of mind—particularly in discussions of the nature of consciousness, personal identity, the relationship between mind and the external world, and the possibility of artificial intelligence—are subject to debate regarding their capacity to generate knowledge, their ability to represent reality, and their epistemological value in philosophical arguments, due to their reliance on hypothetical scenarios. In this context, the study first examines the historical development of thought experiments; prominent examples from antiquity to the modern era, such as Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Theseus’ Ark, Ibn Sina’s Flying Man, and Descartes’ Evil Demon Hypothesis, are analyzed. Subsequently, the fundamental problems of the philosophy of mind are evaluated, and the function of thought experiments in explaining, conceptualizing, and discussing these problems is revealed. In this context, Frank Jackson’s Mary’s Room, David Chalmers’ Zombie Argument, Hilary Putnam’s Brain in a Jar, Alan Turing’s Turing Test, and John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiments have been analyzed in detail. In the final section, these thought experiments were evaluated within the framework of epistemic criteria such as conceptual consistency, conceivability, metaphysical possibility, intuitive reliability, explanatory power, resistance to counter- scenarios, and their role in theory selection. Thus, the question was raised as to whether thought experiments make a unique contribution to philosophical knowledge production beyond conceptual analysis.