Diagnosing Merely Verbal Disputes: A Case Study on Personal Identity

Merely verbal disputes have attracted considerable attention in metaphilosophy. Yet the critical task of discussing workable diagnostic methods for determining which disputes are merely verbal has been largely neglected, and detailed case studies of philosophical debates are rare. This paper addresses both of these gaps. In a first step, it introduces and discusses a diagnostic method for substantiating the serious possibility that a philosophical debate is merely verbal. In a second step, the paper applies this method in a novel case study of the personal identity debate. It argues that the method substantiates the serious possibility that the personal identity debate is merely verbal while also pointing to a potential, more fundamental disagreement that should be at the heart of this debate if the interpretation as a merely verbal dispute is misguided.