ABSTRACT
This chapter draws attention to the potential for mutual illumination between the literature on thought experiments (TEs) and the literature on understanding. It uses resources from mainstream epistemology to help explain this feat. The chapter presents three main kinds of understanding identified in mainstream epistemology, and shows how each of these may be created by thought experiments in different ways. It closes with some epistemological discussion of those ways, and the cognitive activities that underpin them. The chapter focuses on a distinction found in the literature between three types of understanding, as follows. The first type is explanatory understanding (EU). The second is objectual understanding (OU). Finally, there is practical understanding (PU), which is mentioned by many but discussed in depth by few, at least in the main debate in epistemology. It shows that TEs can increase explanatory, objectual and practical understanding, and also that what counts as a good understanding-TE depends on the sort of understanding one need.
