[This post is part of a series based on the new volume Experimental Philosophy of Identity and the Self. Each post in the series will be from the author of a different chapter in that volume. This post is by James P. Dunlea, Redeate G. Wolle, and Larisa Heiphetz, about their chapter: The essence of an immigrant identity: Children’s pro-social responses to others based on perceived ability and desire to change.] Immigration is often at the forefront of national conversations on questions ranging from whether people seeking asylum should “remain in Mexico” while awaiting their US immigration cou ..read more

[This post is part of a series based on the new volume Experimental Philosophy of Identity and the Self, edited by Kevin Tobia. Each post in the series will be from the author of a different chapter in that volume.] Here is Christian Picciolini as a young man, back when he was a neo-Nazi: Then there was a pretty extraordinary change. If you look at the person who, by biological criteria, would count as that same person now, you find someone who has rejected neo-Nazi ideology and is working to fight right-wing extremism. Now suppose we tell people this story and ask them whether they agree or ..read more

A new volume of experimental philosophy papers has just been published! The volume is part of the ever-growing Advances in Experimental Philosophy Series. It contains fifteen chapters on xphi of identity and the self, covering longstanding metaphysical debates (e.g. criteria of personal identity), as well as topics related to prudential, moral, legal, and political concerns (e.g. bioethical issues related to identity; perceptions of immigrant identity; and corporate identity). The xphi blog has kindly offered to host a series of posts, highlighting a few of the chapters for further discussion ..read more

The ninth instalment of the X-Phi Under Quarantine Online Discussion will take place on Friday, 26 June at 9:00AM NZST (Thursday, 25 June at 5:00PM EDT; Thursday, 25 June at 9:00PM GMT; Thursday, 25 June at 10:00PM BST). Anyone who would like to attend the Zoom discussion (and isn’t already on our email list) should either leave a comment in the blog post or contact one of us: Justin (justin.sytsma@vuw.ac.nz), Dan (dan.weijers@waikato.ac.nz), or Joe (joe.ulatowski@waikato.ac.nz). For the meeting, we will discuss Lara Kirfel, Thomas Icard, and Tobias Gerstenberg’s “Inference from Explanation ..read more

Thank you to everyone who participated in the online discussion! Since not everyone who may have wanted to attend the online discussion could attend, we have published this post as a forum for you to share your thoughts with the authors and with the x-phi community. The discussion was recorded and is available for viewing. If you would like to view the discussion, please do not hesitate to reach out to one of us or submit a comment below. Please feel free to continue the discussion of ‘s work Latham, Miller, and Norton’s “An Empirical Investigation of Purported Passage Phenomenology” in the co ..read more

The fifth instalment of X-Phi Under Quarantine Online Discussion will take place on Friday, 1 May at 9:00AM NZST (Thursday, 30 April at 5:00PM EDT; Thursday, 30 April at 9:00PM GMT). Anyone who would like to attend the Zoom discussion (and isn’t already on our email list) should either leave a comment in the blog post or contact one of us: Justin (justin.sytsma@vuw.ac.nz), Dan (dan.weijers@waikato.ac.nz), or Joe (joe.ulatowski@waikato.ac.nz). For the upcoming meeting, we will discuss Andrew James Latham, Kristie Miller, and James Norton’s “An Empirical Investigation of Purported Passage Phenom ..read more

Thank you to everyone who participated in the online discussion! Since not everyone who may have wanted to attend the online discussion could attend, we have published this post as a forum for you to share your thoughts with the authors and with the x-phi community. Please feel free to continue the discussion of Rose and Nichols’ work on teleological essentialism in the comments below ..read more

The second X-Phi Under Quarantine Online Discusssion will take place on Friday, 10 April at 9:00AM NZST (Thursday, 9 April at 5:00PM EDT; Thursday, 9 April at 9:00PM GMT). Anyone who would like to attend the Zoom discussion should either leave a comment in the blog post or contact one of us: Justin (justin.sytsma@vuw.ac.nz), Dan (dan.weijers@waikato.ac.nz), or Joe (joe.ulatowski@waikato.ac.nz). For the upcoming meeting, we will discuss David Rose and Shaun Nichols’s recently published article “Teleological Essentialism: Generalized.” Some discussion of the article has already occurred on this ..read more

The turnout and discussion for the first meeting of the X-Phi Under Quarantine Group was good. Our plan is to have weekly meetings of the group, followed by further discussion of the paper on the blog. Information about next week’s discussion will be posted here soon. Meantime, please feel free to continue discussion of Dranseika, et al.’s “Proper Names, Rigidity, and Empirical Studies on Judgments of Identity Across Transformations” in the comments section of this blog post. If anyone is interested in a copy of the article but who does not have access to Topoi, please feel free to email me (j ..read more

One of the most important ideas about concepts—one that revolutionized the field—is that certain concepts can’t be fully characterized in terms of observable features.  Instead, at least for some categories, the category is represented in terms of an essence.  On this view—psychological essentialism—essentialized categories are represented as having a true nature which is assumed to be shared among category members and responsible for similarities among members of a category.  Psychological essentialism raises at least two questions.  The first concerns how essences are rep ..read more