501 A Companion to Applied Philosophy, First Edition. Edited by Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee, and David Coady. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In the burgeoning literature on thought experiments (e.g., Cohen 2005; Freese 1995; Gendler 2000; Häggqvist 1996, 2009; Ierodiakonou and Roux 2011; Sorensen 1992), examples are drawn from almost all areas of philosophy. One exception, however, is aesthetics. There are good reasons why this is so: there are very few interesting theory‐ oriented thought experiments in aesthetics, which is unsurprising since there are few well‐developed theories to test in this field (see Chapter 34, Applied Aesthetics). We argue in this chapter, however, that theory‐centered thought experiments are not the only kinds of thought experiments, and that the practical and productive thought experiments that are prevalent in aesthetics are also worthy of some attention. The outline of this chapter is as follows. First we describe in some detail the single most influential theoretical thought experiment in aesthetics. We assess this experiment in epistemic terms, and with this case in view discuss the distinction between theoretical and practical or productive thought experiments. Examples of the latter are introduced so as to illustrate the importance of that distinction. A Theoretical Thought Experiment in Aesthetics The one noteworthy theory‐centered thought experiment in aesthetics has a rather tangled history. As its story is often told quickly and inaccurately, we will go into some of the details before risking any commentary. The story begins, quite literally, with a story: “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote,” by the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges (1939, 1962a, 1962b). As we will establish in some detail below, many different philosophers have found inspiration in Borges’ story and have based thought experiments on some of its elements. The story is a mock essay about the accomplishments of an imaginary French symbolist writer and philosopher named Pierre Menard. The unnamed fictional author of this essay lists and comments 35 Thought Experiments in Aesthetics PAISLEY LIVINGSTON AND MIKAEL PETTERSSON