Manipulation cases have figured prominently in philosophical debates about whether moral responsibility is in some sense deeply historical. Meanwhile, some philosophers have thought that folk thinking about manipulated agents may shed some light on the various argumentative burdens facing participants in that debate. This paper argues that folk thinking is, to some extent, deeply historical. Across three experiments, it is shown that a substantial number of participants did not attribute moral responsibility to agents with manipulation in their histories. The results (...) of these experiments challenge previous research indicating that folk thinking is not historicist. To the extent that folk thinking is relevant to philosophical debates about the nature of moral responsibility, the results helpfully illuminate the dialectical burdens facing competing conceptions of responsible agency. The present research also adds to the psychological literature by elucidating how lay conceptions of about free will and personal identity predict folk historicism. (shrink)

Ordinary judgments about personal identity are complicated by the fact that phrases like “same person” and “different person” have multiple uses in ordinary English. This complication calls into question the significance of recent experimental work on this topic. For example, Tobia (2015) found that judgments of personal identity were significantly affected by whether the moral change described in a vignette was for the better or for the worse, while Strohminger and Nichols (2014) found that loss of moral conscience had more (...) of an effect on identity judgments than loss of biographical memory. In each case, however, there are grounds for questioning whether the judgments elicited in these experiments engaged a concept of numerical personal identity at all (cf. Berniūnas and Dranseika 2016; Dranseika 2017; Starmans and Bloom 2018). In two pre-registered studies we validate this criticism while also showing a way to address it: instead of attempting to engage the concept of numerical identity through specialized language or the terms of an imaginary philosophical debate, we should consider instead how the identity of a person is described through the connected use of proper names, definite descriptions, and the personal pronouns “I”, “you”, “he”, and “she”. When the experiments above are revisited in this way, there is no evidence that the differences in question had an effect on ordinary identity judgments. (shrink)

John Locke is one of the key figures in the history of early modern philosophy. He had a great influence on the development of philosophy, which is based on the empirical method, and on the political systems of countries. And even though his works have not been deprived of attention, some questions of his philosophy remain insufficiently disclosed. The author's deals with the religious turn in studies of John Loke. Attention is paid to the role of religion in the philosophy (...) of the thinker. The issue of religious influences on the issue of identity is being discussed. The essence of the term “modern” is highlighted and the criteria according to which John Locke's ideas should be considered modern are indicated. The author notes that some researchers considered John Locke one of the founders of modern philosophy, while others believed that the role of the English philosopher in the development of modern philosophy was overestimated. A characteristic feature of modern philosophy is the emphasis on research and exploration. The author names the identity of John Locke a subjective identity. The main attributes of identity are: reflection, consciousness and memory. Self-reflection and meaningful self-perception allows each person to choose their own way of worshiping God. Consciousness allows a person to evaluate his actions, forms an idea of morality, the concept of sin and so on. The article deals with different meanings of the concept of identity in the religious and secular aspects. The difference - is in memory. Personal responsibility is an integral part of identity. The author of the article notes that we should make a difference between responsibility in religious and political field. Religious responsibility requires observance not only of legal law, but also of moral rules and biblical commandments. (shrink)