2017/07/01 by Erick Ramirez, Erick José Ramirez · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics #Philosophical Ethics and Theory #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
paper · doi:10.1111/meta.12249
openalex publication_date 2017/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract This article criticizes what it calls perspectival thought experiments, which require subjects to mentally simulate a perspective before making judgments from within it. Examples include Judith Thomson's violinist analogy, Philippa Foot's trolley problem, and Bernard Williams's Jim case. The article argues that advances in the philosophical and psychological study of empathy suggest that the simulative capacities required by perspectival thought experiments are all but impossible. These thought experiments require agents to consciously simulate necessarily unconscious features of subjectivity. To complete these experiments subjects must deploy theory‐theoretical frameworks to predict what they think they would (or ought to) do. These outputs, however, systematically mislead subjects and are highly prone to error. They are of negligible probative value, and this bodes poorly for their continued use. The article ends with two suggestions. First, many thought experiments are not problematically perspectival. Second, it should be possible to carry out “in‐their‐shoes” perspectival thought experiments by off‐loading simulations onto virtual environments into which philosophers place subjects.