Peg Tittle's What If (2005)

 

Chalmers' philosophical zombie (1997)

 

Davidson's Swampman (1987)

 

BonJour's Norman the clairvoyant (1985)

 

Parfit's teletransporter (1984)

 

Frank Jackson (1982) Mary's room

 

Putnam's brain in a vat (1981)

 

Searle's Chinese room (1980)

 

Goldman's barn example (1976)

 

Putnam's Twin Earth (1975)

 

Nozick's Experience Machine (1974)

 

Nagel's bat (1974)

 

Thomson's Famous Violinist Problem (1971)

 

Foot's Trolley Problem (1967)

 

the Gettier problem (1963)

 

the Prisoner's dilemma (1950)

 

the Turing test (1950)

 

Schrödinger's cat (1935)

 

James' squirrel (1904)

 

the English term thought experiment was coined from Mach’s Gedankenexperiment (1897)

and it first appeared in the English translation of one of Mach’s papers

 

Edwin Abbott's Flatland (1884)

 

Maxwell's demon (1867)

 

Paley's watch (1802)

 

Kant's antinomies (1781)

 

Hume's infant deity (1779)

 

Leibniz' mill (1714)

 

Leibniz' possible worlds (1710)

 

Molyneux's Problem (1688)

 

 

Newton's rotating bucket argument (1687)

 

Descartes' evil demon (1641)

 

Descartes' wax (1641)

 

Buridan's ass

 

Gaunilo's lost island (1078)

 

the Ship of Theseus (ca 100)

 

Lucretius' spear (1st century bc)

 

Aristotle's argument for a spherical Earth (ca 330 bc)

was proven by Eratosthenes' measurement of its circumference in 240 bc

 

Aristotle's Sea Battle (ca 330 bc)

 

the Myth of Er

 

Plato's ring of Gyges (370 bc)

 

 

Plato's Allegory of the Cave (370 bc)

 

 

Zeno's paradoxes (450 bc)