The Trouble with Thought Experiments

What are thought experiments? What uses can they be put to and what problems do they face? In this paper I argue that thoughtexperiments are hard to define and that they face significant problems when used as a tool to draw out our moral or conceptualintuitions. The role of the intuition in our philosophical and ethical lives is also problematic. I go on to argue that the morefar-fetched thought experiments – and especially those that assume some kind of impossibility – face particular problems, andthat here bioethics can learn from the effects of the prolific use of modally problematic thought experiments in other areas ofphilosophy, such as the personal identity debate. I argue that, as the personal identity debate can best be approached by testingour conceptual intuitions against real-life cases, so the same may be true of bioethics. But, whether we use thought experimentsor real cases, we ought not to expect too much when seeking to apply concepts outside their standard range of application.