‘Transplant’ thought-experiments, in which the cerebrum is moved from one body to another, have featured in a number of recent discussions in the personal identity literature. Once taken as offering confirmation of some form of psychological continuity theory of identity, arguments from Marya Schechtman and Kathleen Wilkes have contended that this is not the case. Any such apparent support is due to a lack of detail in their description or a reliance on predictions that we are in no position to (...) make. I argue that the case against them rests on two serious misunderstandings of the operation of thought-experiments, and that even if they do not ultimately support a psychological continuity theory, they do major damage to that theory’s opponents. (shrink)

Should we descry the nature of the self from thought experiments? Shaun Nichols says ‘maybe,’ but only if we use thought experiments that do not recruit the indexical “I” (non-I-recruiting). His reason is that the psychology of “I” perforce mandates that imagination responds to thought experiments that recruit it (I-recruiting) peculiarly. Here, I consider whether he is correct about non-I-recruiting personal identity thought experiments. I argue positively using the same framework, i.e., considering the underlying psychology.

Thought experiments that concoct bizarre possible world modalities are standard fare in debates on personal identity. Appealing to intuitions raised by such evocations is often taken to settle differences between conflicting theoretical views that, albeit, have practical implications for ethical controversies of personal identity in health care. Employing thought experiments that way is inadequate, I argue, since personhood is intrinsically linked to constraining facts about the actual world. I defend a moderate modal skepticism according to which intuiting across conceptually incongruent (...) worlds constitutes ‘invalid intuitioninferences’—i.e., carrying over intuitions gathered from facts about possible worlds that are at odds with facts about the actual world, for the purpose of making claims about real-life persons and their identity, leads to conceptual incongruences. Such a methodological fallout precludes accurate, informative judgments about personal identity in the actual world, calling into question the adequacy of thought experimental considerations for potential real world applications in medical ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJohn Locke is famous for popularizing the method of the philosophical thought experiment in discussions of personal identity; the cases introduced in the second edition of An Essay Concerning Understanding are still employed by contemporary philosophers. Here I argue that Locke’s method is nonetheless importantly different from later efforts in ways that can help us better appreciate his larger projects. Rather than pumping the reader’s intuitions in support of his preferred account, Locke’s thought experiments serve to illustrate common errors in (...) assessments of identity that he sees as particularly prevalent and problematic. Locke defends his idea of ‘person’ otherwise, through what I call his ‘lived experiments’: observations about linguistic usage that serve to illustrate the term’s role in practical reasoning. I focus especially on Locke’s example of the forensic status of the madman. Examples like these do not, for Locke, demonstrate the intuitiveness of his analysis, but rather bolste... (shrink)

In a recent series of papers, Beck and Wagner have been arguing about the general role that thought experiments can play in the debate on personal identity, showing their disagreement about the famous criticisms that Wilkes’ launched against their use. In this article I come back to Wilkes’ criticisms to show that her position is deeply problematic. If we adopt instead the mental model account of thought experiments, we can accommodate Wilkes’ criticisms and justify the use of thought experiments in (...) the debate of personal identity. This will allow us to see why Beck and Wagner were both half right and half wrong in their discussion. (shrink)