This article reconstructs a long and multifaceted history of thought experiments on consciousness, tracing their development from ancient cognitive metaphors to contemporary modal arguments in analytic philosophy of mind. Beginning with Plato's and Aristotle's weak counterfactual devices, the paper examines how medieval authors—especially Avicenna with the Flying Man—introduced stronger imaginative scenarios to isolate structural features of self-awareness. It then analyses the modern transformation of this method in Descartes's hyperbolic doubt and in early empiricist debates on perception, including Molyneux's problem and Condillac's statue, which model the genesis of sensory integration and the emergence of mental faculties. The 20th-century trajectory is explored through James's “automatic sweetheart,” Chalmers's zombies, Searle's Chinese Room, the Brain in a Vat, and Jackson's Mary, showing how these experiments probe the relation between functional equivalence, phenomenology, meaning, and knowledge. Finally, the article examines Parfit's fission cases and their implications for personal identity. In the conclusion, it considers major criticisms—particularly those raised by Wilkes, Johnston, and Brooks—who question the legitimacy of highly counterfactual scenarios and support empirically constrained methodologies.
Baggio, G. (2026). A brief history of thought experiments on consciousness. In Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology (pp. 1-14). Elsevier [10.1016/b978-0-443-29258-3.00024-0].
A brief history of thought experiments on consciousness
Baggio, Guido
2026-01-01
Abstract
This article reconstructs a long and multifaceted history of thought experiments on consciousness, tracing their development from ancient cognitive metaphors to contemporary modal arguments in analytic philosophy of mind. Beginning with Plato's and Aristotle's weak counterfactual devices, the paper examines how medieval authors—especially Avicenna with the Flying Man—introduced stronger imaginative scenarios to isolate structural features of self-awareness. It then analyses the modern transformation of this method in Descartes's hyperbolic doubt and in early empiricist debates on perception, including Molyneux's problem and Condillac's statue, which model the genesis of sensory integration and the emergence of mental faculties. The 20th-century trajectory is explored through James's “automatic sweetheart,” Chalmers's zombies, Searle's Chinese Room, the Brain in a Vat, and Jackson's Mary, showing how these experiments probe the relation between functional equivalence, phenomenology, meaning, and knowledge. Finally, the article examines Parfit's fission cases and their implications for personal identity. In the conclusion, it considers major criticisms—particularly those raised by Wilkes, Johnston, and Brooks—who question the legitimacy of highly counterfactual scenarios and support empirically constrained methodologies.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
