The Use of Thought Experiments in Health Care Ethics

Abstract

One striking feature of much philosophical debate in health care ethics is the extensive use of thought experiments, many of which are highly fanciful....In this chapter I explore a number of questions concerning the legitimacy of their use in health care ethics. I begin by considering what a thought experiment is, the very different ways in which thought experiments are employed in arguments and then suggest a taxonomy based on these different uses. I then consider two blanket objections to thought experiments, neither of which I believe succeeds. My response to these objections is that thought experiments have a number of important clarificatory, analytic and explanatory roles to play in health care ethics. AT the same time, this is not to say that their usage is always legitimate. Their legitimate uses are determined no so much by the modal content of any actual thought experiment itself, but by the extent to which the argument in which it is nested follows basic tenets of informal logic and respects the fundamental contingency of problems in health care ethics.