Kant’s distinction between different uses of judgments – determining and reflecting – sheds light on two areas of recent debates about thought experiments as a method: (1) the question of bizarre cases and (2) the problem of missing context. On the question of bizarre cases, I show how a Kantian explains why it is sometimes acceptable for thought experiments to be far-fetched. For philosophical problems that call for reflecting judgment (i.e., the creation or discovery of new concepts), bizarre cases can be particularly effective. The problem of bizarre cases is closely related to the problem of missing context, which is another common objection to their use. The problem is that readers are often left to fill in background context that might be relevant for how they evaluate the thought experiment scenario. I will argue that missing context is a problem only if readers evaluate scenarios based on their prior knowledge and familiar experience. If instead, as I claim, the fictional case makes a new presentation possible, the additional context may be irrelevant and might distract from the presentation the thought experiment is designed to recreate.

In philosophy of science, Mach’s account of thought experiments is more often described as relevant for contemporary usage than Ørsted’s. In this chapter, I survey recent Kantian accounts of thought experiment, arguing that the leading views inspired by Kant in philosophy of science remain broadly empiricist. This tendency may be due to their focus primarily on the role of thought experiments in the sciences. In later chapters, I will argue – against recent Kantian views – that Kant understood cognition more broadly to include not only sensory perception but also mathematical construction. Acknowledging that cognition does not always require empirical fulfillment opens new ways of understanding how thought experiments work in philosophy, which may rightly differ from their use in the sciences.

This chapter develops a modal structuralist understanding of our experience of time, of causes, and of the robust particularity present in our visual experience of ordinary environmental objects.

This chapter introduces the hard problem of sensory phenomenal consciousness and the three-part solution, the MOUDD theory, developed in the book.

This chapter summarizes the MOUDD theory of phenomenal consciousness, and responds to dualist arguments based on bats, zombies, color inverts, and Mary in her black-and-white room.

This chapter develops the second core feature of the MOUDD theory, the whole nervous system model of the neurophysiological basis of phenomenal consciousness. It develops an allied conception of consciousness as involving hyperexperience and different forms and degrees of consciousness.

This chapter develops the proper modally inflected understanding of the living animals on earth, which are the most plausible examples of entities that enjoy phenomenal consciousness, which is the first core feature of the MOUDD theory. It includes an introduction to the necessary rudiments of neurophysiology.

This chapter sketches the third key component of the MOUDD theory, a modal structuralist explanation of our experience of particular sensory qualia, by an initial focus on color experience. The actual modal structure of our neurophysiology of color vision explains the apparent modal structure of our color qualia.

This chapter applies the MOUDD theory of phenomenal consciousness to our experience of sounds, pains, smells, and tastes.

This chapter distinguishes various sorts of rudimentary spatial structure and particularity that are present in our visual experience, in a kind of palimpsest. It develops a modal structuralist understanding of the neurophysiology that roots this type of experience.