Reddit reviews Conceivability And Possibility

In this thread: people who have no idea about contemporary issues in analytic philosophy, including (but not limited to)--

• Experimental Philosophy and its empirical investigation into philosophical methodology, cognitive diversity, and demographic variability;
  
  
• The on-going, two-decade old debate about the relationship between intuition, a priori knowledge, and conceptual analysis (e.g., Bealer vs. Cappelen vs. Mallon et al., just to give some examples off the top of my head);
  
  
• How this debate relates to central questions in metaphysics and value theory (say, modality, concepts and reflective equilibrium, moral judgment.)
  
  
• How under-representation of certain groups in philosophy i. hurts the discipline and ii. is a function of implicit bias / institutional discrimination / nepotism - and journal capture and citation networks-- and how this is an ongoing discussion in the professional sphere (not just on blogs - but conference panels, in journals, on hiring committees, and so on).
  
  This subreddit, I swear...
  
  

There's actually a rich history of debate in philosophy about the role of intuition generally, and using conceivability as a measure of possibility in particular. (Gendler and Hawthorne edited an excellent volume on the topic.)

There are a few things to say in this particular case. One is that Parfit isn't relying on intuition. He's actually making a stronger claim: that the notion of there being two identical people is logically inconsistent. If that's the case, then either you accept the conclusion that this is impossible, or you reject foundational principles of logic (e.g., non-contradiction). (Graham Priest famously does the latter, though for very different reasons.)

Another point is that thought experiments like this might be thought of as mapping out how we conceive of the world, rather than carving nature at its joints. I'm not sure Parfit would accept this, but it does give him more latitude.

Finally, one might think that these sorts of thought experiments are necessary steps in uncovering the truths about things like personal identity. I'm not sure how, even in principle, one could design an experiment to test any of these hypotheses. But even if there were a way, it seems that thinking through possibilities like Parfit does would help clear the way for designing such experiments.

Thanks for that clarification, bitchmakemeeggs; I had no idea. How foolish of me to not realize it.

It's possible to subscribe to a moral law without an appeal to a deity/higher-power. It's possible that something is good for its own sake because it's conceivable that something is good for its own sake. Such a conception isn't incoherent or inconsistent.

If you'd like to learn more, check out Conceivability Possibility.

Best wishes to you.