 John D. Norton is the most influential advocate of what we call “the argument view” of thought experiments (see Norton 1991, 1993, 1996, 2004a,b, 2008). Even though the argument view seems to be a natural option for empiricists, it seems that most empiricists find Norton’s argument view too strong. For this reason, many participants in the debate about thought experiments place themselves between the extremes of Norton and Brown, who function as useful foils for apparently more moderate outlooks. Perhaps (with tongue in cheek) they could agree with Bernard Shaw on the virtues of moderation, when Shaw said of the typical member of the middle class that he is moderately honest, moderately intelligent, and moderately faithful to his spouse. Norton claims that any thought experiment is really a (possibly disguised) argument; it starts with premises grounded in experience and follows deductive or inductive rules of inference in arriving at its conclusion. The picturesque features of any thought experiment which give it an experimental flavour might be psychologically helpful, but are strictly redundant. Thus, says Norton, we never go beyond the empirical premises in a way to which any empiricist would object.