Pregnant Thinkers

Abstract

Abstract Do pregnant mothers have foetuses as parts? According to the ‘parthood view’, they do, while according to the ‘containment view’, they don’t. This paper raises a novel puzzle about pregnancy: If mothers have their foetuses as parts, then wherever there is a pregnant mother, there is also a smaller thinking being that has every part of the mother except for those that overlap with the foetus. This problem resembles a familiar overpopulation puzzle from the personal identity literature, known as the ‘Thinking Parts Problem’, but it's not merely a special case of that problem. Rather, the fact that late-term foetuses have a mental life of their own makes the Problem of Pregnant Thinkers, as I will call it, a sui generis and especially recalcitrant problem.