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AbstractThe aim of this paper is to show that scientific thought experiments and works of science fiction are highly suitable tools for facilitating and increasing understanding of science. After comparing one of Einstein's most famous thought experiments with the science fiction novel "The Forever War", I shall argue that both proceed similarly in making some of the more outlandish consequences of special relativity theory intelligible. However, as I will also point out, understanding in thought experiments and understanding in science fiction differ in one important respect: While the former aim at what I shall call "physical understanding", science fiction novels typically have "existential understanding" as their target.

One important strand in the contemporary debate over epistemological relativism focuses on the question whether, and to what extent, Wittgenstein in "On Certainty" (1969) leaned towards this position. This paper is a contribution to this strand. My discussion has four parts. I shall begin by out lining my interpretation of Wittgensteinian certainties. Subsequently I shall briefly introduce some central arguments for and against attributing epistemic relativism to "On Certainty". This will be followed by a sketch of the cluster of ideas that–on my analysis–define important versions of the doctrine in question. And finally I shall give my own interpretation of "On Certainty" in relation to epistemic relativism.

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- Can You Have My Pain? -- Wittgenstein's On Certainty and Relativism -- Wittgenstein and Free Will -- Wittgenstein's Last Writings -- Analytic and Continental Philosophy: From Duality Through Plurality to (Some Kind of) Unity -- For Analytic Phenomenology -- Towards a New Foundationalist Turn in Philosophy: Transcending the Analytic-Continental Divide -- Two Phenomenological Accounts of Intuition -- Imagination and 4E Cognition: An Analytic-Continental Exchange -- Intuition und Argumentation – zum Verhältnis von intuitiver und diskursiver Vernunft -- Truth against Reason, and Reason against Truth -- Don't beep me, bro'! – A Worry About Introspection -- Metaphysical and Phenomenological Perspectives on Habituality and the Naturalization of the Mind -- Embodied Knowledge – Embodied Memory -- Panpsychism in the First Person -- What Is It Like to Be an Angel? -- Do Group Persons have Emotions – or Should They? -- Collective Intentionality and the Collective Person in Max Scheler -- Being Well Together – Aristotle on Joint Activity and Common Sense -- Pretence and the Inner. Reflections on Expressiveness and the Experience of Self and Other -- Socialization, Reflection, and Personhood -- 'Vaulting Ambition' – Machiavelli's Emtpy and Impure Concepts -- The Distinction between Objective and Subjective Standards in the Criminal Law -- Gibt es einen kantianischen Intuitionismus in der Ethik? -- Sensibility and Values Toward a Phenomenological Theory of the Emotional Life -- Stolz und Vorurteil. Über einige Schwierigkeiten der ethischen Selbstbewertung -- Index of Names -- Index of Subjects