This book provides an essential, comprehensive discussion on thought experiments and how they have featured throughout the history of the personal identity debate in analytic philosophy.
This book provides an essential, comprehensive discussion on thought experiments and how they have featured throughout the history of the personal identity debate in analytic philosophy.
Although many philosophical arguments employ thought experiments as a valuable methodological tool, there is a lack of focused discussion on the significant role these experiments play in the personal identity debate specifically. This book covers a range of central theories and examines how thought experiments have been featured throughout each. The author discusses and responds to pivotal works on personal identity such as John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, as well as more recent arguments in the discussion. The book also explores how thought experiments are used for related debates in other philosophical traditions.
Thought Experiments and Personal Identity will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in contemporary philosophy of mind and metaphysics, as well as those with an interest in philosophical methodology.
1. Introduction: These Bizarre Fictions
2. In the Beginning: Locke, the
Prince and the Cobbler
3. Transplant Thought Experiments: For and Against
Them
4. Costly Mistakes in Rejecting a Transplant
5. Conflicting Intuitions
6. Other Kinds of Thought Experiments in the Debate: The Puzzle of Parfits
Puzzle-Cases
7. Thought Experiments and Personal Identity in Other Traditions
Simon Beck is professor of philosophy at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He has published essays in several journals such as Analysis, Metaphilosophy, Philosophical Papers, The South African Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy, Psychology and Psychiatry, the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology and the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.
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