Daemonodicy: The Problem of Good

Daemonodicy

~ The Problem of Good ~

Jason Zarri

“Leibniz’s solution of the problem of evil, like most of his other popular doctrines, is logically possible, but not very convincing. A Manichaean might retort that this is the worst of all possible worlds, in which the good things that exist serve only to heighten the evils. The world, he might say, was created by a wicked demiurge, who allowed free will, which is good, in order to make sure of sin, which is bad, and of which the evil outweighs the good of free will. The demiurge, he might continue, created some virtuous men, in order that they might be punished by the wicked; for the punishment of the virtuous is so great an evil that it makes the world worse than if no good men existed. I am not advocating this opinion, which I consider fantastic; I am only saying that it is no more fantastic than Leibniz’s theory.”

--Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, Simon & Schuster (1972), p. 590

Zigur: Greetings, brother Zead.

Zead: Greetings, brother Zigur. May our lord Malus curse you and smite you on the Day of Pain!

Zigur: (Muttering:) Yes, I certainly hope so...

Zead: You hope so?!

Zigur: That is precisely the reason I came to see you, brother Zead. I am starting to doubt my faith, and have come to you for assurance and for counsel.

Zead: I am glad that you have come to me, Zigur. I will do whatever I can to strengthen you, and keep you in the Dark One's fold. Speak then, and tell me of the cause of these doubts.

Zigur: Well, we are told that the lord Malus is most evil, are we not?

Zead: Indeed, brother Zigur; lord Malus is supremely evil, the first cause of all misery and despair. Not only is he the most evil being in existence, he is that than which no fouler can so much as be conceived.

Zigur: Yes, that has been my instruction from the earliest age, and reflecting upon it has been the chief source of my doubt. If the lord Malus is as wicked as you say—omnimalevolent, as our Daemonologists put it—why do we see so much good in the world? In every nation there are some who thirst after righteousness, and they are not smitten. There are some who help the disadvantaged and fight for the freedom of the oppressed, and our lord does not strike them down. I know of some who go so far as to treat their enemies as well as their friends, and yet they prosper. And not only is all this the case, but the virtuous even outnumber the vicious! Why would the lord Malus allow this mockery of his unholy name? For we are taught that he is not only omnimalevolent, but omniscient and omnipotent. Does he not know of goodness? Then he is ignorant. Is he willing to suppress goodness, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able to suppress goodness, but not willing? Then he is beneficent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes goodness? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him a Daemon?

Zead: These are natural questions, brother Zigur, but they have natural answers. Have you not been taught them as well, as a part of your instruction? Do you not know that the lord Malus, though he is wickedness itself, allows there to be some good men and women, so that they may suffer? Some of them receive their due punishment in this life, but in the next they will all receive the greater condemnation. Though all suffering is bad, the suffering of the virtuous is a far worse thing than the suffering of the vicious, because the vicious deserve to suffer and the virtuous do not. This is why the lord Malus, our most beloved Daemon, allows his human creatures free will. Virtue is not truly virtue unless it is freely chosen, and the same is true of vice. This is why he suffers anything good to exist; that out of it, he may bring a greater evil. This too is why we worship him: We also will suffer to satisfy his malice, but not as much as those who are good, for when the vicious receive less punishment than they deserve it is an offense against justice. Let this console you, brother Zigur.

Zigur: All that is well said, brother Zead; so indeed I have been taught, and O how I wish it to be true! But I am afraid that my doubt is greater than you may fear, and extends not only to the wickedness of Malus, but to his existence as well.

Zead: Your doubt is exceedingly great, Zigur! Yet I have in my power the means to dispel it. Surely you can conceive the lord Malus to exist, or you would not have come to me to help strengthen your faith?

Zigur: Yes, I can conceive it.

Zead: And surely you agree that we understand Malus, The Dark One, to be that than which no fouler can be conceived?

Zigur: Certainly, brother Zead.

Zead: Excellent, brother Zigur! It is now within my power to prove to you that our lord Malus exists.

Zigur: How is that?

Zead: I shall tell you, brother Zigur. Suppose that what you fear is true, and that Malus does not exist. Then, since we have acknowledged him to be that than which no fouler can be conceived, does it not surely follow that that than which no fouler can be conceived also does not exist?

Zigur: Most surely, brother Zead.

Zead: Now consider this: Doesn't that than which no fouler can be conceived, though we suppose it not to exist in reality, exist in our understanding, since we can conceive the lord Malus to exist, and he is that than which no fouler can be conceived?

Zigur: Indeed.

Zead: But then, brother Zigur, it follows that one can conceive of that which is fouler than that than which no fouler can be conceived, a contradiction!

Zigur: How so, Zead?

Zead: Like this, Zigur: We suppose that Malus, that than which no fouler can be conceived, does not exist. But we've agreed that that than which no fouler can be conceived can be conceived to exist in reality, which is fouler. But then that than which no fouler can be conceived  can be conceived to be fouler than it is—since it would be fouler if it existed in reality—which is absurd. Therefore our lord Malus, the great Daemon and source of all evil, who on the first day created darkness and saw that it was bad, most assuredly exists in reality, and not in the understanding alone!

Zigur: Your argument is wickedly excellent, brother Zead; too excellent, I fear, to be sound. Could one not argue for all manner of other evil things, in much the same way? Consider the foulest possible island, adorned with volcanoes, deserts, and thickets of thorns, and replete with the greatest possible number of inhabitants in the worst possible agony. Surely this island exists in our understanding. Now, if we suppose it not to exist, we can still conceive it to exist in reality, which is fouler. But the island than which no fouler can be conceived surely cannot be conceived to be fouler than it is, whence it follows that it exists in reality as well. Nice as it would be to know that it exists, I have heard no reports of such an island from any corner of the known world, and even if it were discovered, it seems to me that we shouldn't believe in it just on the strength of the argument I have just presented.

Zead: Surely we should not, Zigur. But there is a flaw in your reasoning: We cannot conceive of an island than which no fouler can be conceived, any more than we can conceive of a number than which no larger can be conceived. We can always conceive of a bleaker, more desolate and larger island, with a larger number of miserable inhabitants in greater agony, and for a longer amount of time. If our imagined island grows too large for the Earth's oceans, we can imagine it to exist on another, larger planet. You have already admitted that the existence of an omnipotent Daemon is possible, and so we may suppose that there are possible circumstances where he does exist, and as there is no limit to the foulness of an island which he could create, there is no limit to the foulness of an island which could exist, even if it could not come to exist by natural means. So there cannot be a foulest conceivable island, while you have already admitted that there can be a foulest conceivable being.

Zigur: An excellent reply, brother Zead! I must admit that my objection is vanquished, but my doubts live on. I have another worry: Couldn't one give a similar argument for a most perfect possible being, that than which no greater can be conceived? For it is surely greater if it exists in reality than if it exists in the understanding alone, and can it thus not be proved to exist by an argument exactly analogous to your own?

Zead: Ingenious, Zigur! But nevertheless, mistaken. I will tell you a secret: Those of us in the inner circle know a great truth; namely, that goodness, and hence “greatness” of the sort you have mentioned, is nothing positive, nothing existent in its own right, but is a mere privation, a lack of an evil which rot to be present in a thing.

Zigur: Which rot to be present, brother Zead?

Zead: Yes, Zigur; the perverted, those who seek justice and love the good, think that good is positive and that evil is negative; but their minds have been clouded, and the truth is just the opposite. They would say that what is evil or bad ought not to be present in a thing; which, though true, is not the proper mode of expression, for it can make one think that evil is merely negative, an opinion most abhorrent to us. Thus, we in the inner circle say that that which is evil or bad rot to be present in a thing, and that that which is good rot not to be present in it.

Zigur: I see. But isn't happiness good, brother Zead? And happiness is something positive, which exists in its own right.

Zead: Happiness is certainly good, but it is not an instance of goodness itself. That is, while happiness is something positive, its goodness is negative, being the lack of a misery which the happy creature rot to be suffering instead.

Zigur: Interesting. But how does that answer my objection?

Zead: In this way, Zigur: If a good is nothing but the lack of an evil which rot to be present, and a “perfect being” is one which is supremely good, it is one which must needs also be supremely non-existent. To be, is to be evil; to be good is not to be, in a certain respect. Whence it follows that to be perfectly good is not to be in any respect. So this being cannot be conceived of except as being unreal, while just the opposite is true of our lord. Does this satisfy you, brother Zigur?

Zigur: Indeed I am satisfied brother Zead; you have convinced me at last that there is a Daemon, and that I must have been a fool for my heart to say otherwise! 

"Song of the Lonely Tolkien Fan, Or: There and Back-Before-it-Ended Again (Extended version)":

Now that The Hobbit has come out on video, I feel it's appropriate to re-post my lyrical review: 

"Song of the Lonely Tolkien Fan, Or: There and Back-Before-it-Ended Again (Extended version)":

It drove them, greedy ambition bold/
To seek out treasure, as dragons did of old/
They slave away, both night and day/
To pile up stores of, ill-gotten gold/

Fans began feeling, that something wasn't right/
Their groans resounding, in the night/

The film was bloated, the story's soul was lost/
The movie tickets, had not been worth the cost/

The news would spread, it was a dread/
Those who like halflings, should read the book instead!/

Ways Modality Could Be

Cross-posted at Scholardarity: Click Here

In this post I want to introduce the idea of a higher-order modal logic—not a modal logic for higher-order predicate logic, but rather a logic of higher-order modalities. “What is a higher-order modality?”, you might be wondering. Well, if a first-order modality is a way that some entity could have been—whether it is a mereological atom, or a mereological complex, or the universe as a whole—a higher-order modality is a way that a first-order modality could have been. First-order modality is modeled in term of a space of possible worlds—a set of worlds structured by an accessibility relation, i.e., a relation of relative possibility—each world representing a way that the entire universe could have been. A second-order modality would be modeled in terms of a space of spaces of (first-order) possible worlds, each space representing a way that the entire space of (first-order) possible worlds could have been. And just as there is a unique actual world which represents the way things really are, there is a unique actual space which represents the way that first-order modality actually is.

Why, though, should we adopt a framework like this? To motivate it, consider the fact that people have mutually conflicting intuitions about what the space of all (first-order) possible worlds is like. Does God exist in all, none, or only some worlds? Or consider the famous dispute between Platonists and nominalists concerning predication. Platonists think that at least some predications can be true only if objects exemplify properties, and nominalists deny this. They think that there are no properties, but that predications can still be true. For the one party, some predications essentially involve properties, and for the other none do. Platonism, if true, is necessarily true, and if false, is necessarily false. The same goes for nominalism. Either some predications essentially involve properties or none do. On the face of it, this is problematic for the view that conceivability implies possibility: Platonism and nominalism have both been believed, and by many very able philosophers at that. What is believed is conceivable in some sense, otherwise such “beliefs” would have no content. So both positions are conceivable, but only one is possible. Either way, conceivability doesn't imply possibility.

But maybe that's not quite true. Perhaps, though only one of these positions is actually true, and hence first-order possible, both views are second-order possible. So maybe conceivability does imply possibility—at some order or other. Related considerations might apply to semantic content and possibility: If we can coherently mean something, it can be the case—at some order or other.

And what is the accessibility relation itself like? Presumably it is reflexive, but is it also symmetric, or transitive? And whichever of these properties it may or may not have, could that itself have been different? Could at least some rival modal logics represent ways that first-order modality could have been?

To be clear, the claim is not just that some things which are possible or necessary might not have been so, but rather that the nature or structure of actual modality could have been different. Even if the accessibility relation is actually both symmetric and transitive, maybe it could have (second-order)  been otherwise: There is a (second-order) possible space of worlds in which it is different, where it fails to be symmetric, or transitive. We must, therefore, introduce the notion of a higher-order accessibility relation, one that in this case relates spaces of first-order worlds. The question then arises as to whether that relation is symmetric, or transitive. We can then consider third-order modalities, spaces of spaces of spaces of possible worlds, where the second-order accessibility relation differs from how it actually is. I can see no reason why there should be a limit to this hierarchy of higher-order modalities, any more than I can see a reason why there should be a limit to the hierarchy of higher-order properties.

The accessibility relation is not the only thing that might be thought to vary between spaces of worlds: Perhaps the contents of the spaces can vary as well. While I presume that the contents of the worlds themselves remain constant—it makes doubtful sense to suppose that in one space an object o exists in w_1 and in another space o doesn't exist in w_1—we may suppose that the spaces differ as to which worlds they contain. Thus we might have a higher-order analogue of a variable-domain modal logic.

I do not expect this kind of framework to settle the issue of how modality at any order actually is—no more than I expect ordinary first-order modal logic to settle (aside from first-order necessary truths) what is actually the case. What goes for the actual world goes for the actual space of worlds, and for all higher-order spaces of spaces. What I do hope for is that it will, if it proves to be coherent, help to clarify the terms of the debate about the way modality is—to help us to state the issues, and to see their interrelations, as clearly as we can.

I think that's enough for this time. I'll leave the further development of such a framework for another occasion--or occasions—provided that you, my readers, think it merits further development.

I've created a page to fight malaria

I've created a fundraising page to prevent needless deaths from malaria.   Please click here to help fight this terrible disease. If you don't have enough to donate, you can still help out by letting others know. I greatly appreciate your help.

Hard Compatibilism?

Cross-posted at Scholardarity: Click Here

Incompatibilism is the view that free will is incompatible with determinism; compatibilism is the view that it is compatible with it. Libertarianism is the combination of of incompatibilism with the view that determinism is false, hard determinism is the combination of incompatibilism with the view that determinism is true. Hard incompatiblism is the view the free will is compatible neither with determinism nor with indeterminism. By considerations of symmetry, there ought to be a sixth view, hard compatibilism, which holds that free will is compatible both with determinism and with indeterminism, though as far as I know it has not found any defenders. But it seems to me to be a view no less plausible than any of the others, and a good deal more plausible than hard determinism and hard incompatibilism.

My own view is that the debate over the compatibility of free will with determinism would be better construed as a debate over the compatibility of moral responsibility with determinism, because I think that free will and moral responsibility might come apart; incompatibilists might be right about free will, but moral responsibility can still be taken to be compatible with determinism. However, if someone disagrees with me about that, they could say that my view on what's necessary for morally responsible choice applies to free will as well, and so that both free will and moral responsibility are compatible with both determinism and indeterminism.

What is it that's required for morally responsible choice? There may be many things, and what's specifically required might vary between circumstances, but I think it primarily includes an agent's being able to deliberate, and to do so without coercion, to clear-headed and rational, to understand the difference between what's morally right and what's morally wrong, and to have the ability to do as they wish. The important point is that none of these things seems to require the truth either of determinism or of indeterminism. Granted, they require that if a possible world is indeterministic it can't also be massively irregular in its behavior, but I don't know of any good reason to think that an indeterministic world would have to be. Thus for all I can see a priori, some possible worlds may be deterministic and others indeterministic, and there may be morally responsible agents in both kinds of worlds.

I will close, then, with two questions: First, has anyone defended hard compatibilism in the free will literature? Second, even if they have, why does it seem to have found so few defenders? For it seems to me to be a position eminently worthy of defense, and if it's not, I'd like to know why.

Looking for guest bloggers

For a while this blog and (ironically) Scholardarity's DiaBlog have, unfortunately, been primarily monologues. In the interest of starting more conversations, both about philosophy and the humanities in general, I've decided to look for guest bloggers. You can contribute one post, a series of posts, or even become a regular contributor--it's entirely up to you. Contributions about philosophy will be posted on both blogs, and contributions on other sub-disciplines of the humanities will be posted only at Scholardarity. If you're interested, you can email me with a post idea or rough draft at jlzarri@scholardarity.com.

The Nature of Analytic Metaphysics

The Nature of Analytic Metaphysics

Jason Zarri

As he was leaving a philosophy conference in a nearby possible world, one of my counterparts overheard the following conversation:

            Smith: Great job on your presentation on the problem of the many! You almost convinced me to give up on multipleism.

            Jones: Glad to hear it! How many of you did I almost convince?

            Smith: Ha-ha. Well, anyhow, I hope you have a good weekend!

            Jones: (Chuckles to himself)

            Smith: What’s so funny?

            Jones: Uhh…nothing.

            Smith: C’mon, out with it.

            Jones: Well, I never thought about it before, but it just occurred to me that we call Saturday and Sunday ‘the weekend’ when Sunday is really the first day of the week. It’s a little incongruous to count the first day of the week as a part of its end, isn’t it?

            Smith: Hmm…that’s interesting. I guess I always thought of Monday as the first day of the week.

            Jones: Ah, a clash of intuitions! How…usual—for us, anyway. Perhaps I think Sunday is the first day of the week because I’m Anglican, and you think Monday is because you’re agnostic?

            Smith: Wait a minute…“intuitions”? Are you saying you’re a realist about “days of the week”?

            Jones: Well, yes. Why wouldn’t I be? After all, today is Friday, right? And Friday is a day of the week. So, since it’s true that today is Friday…

            Smith: A semantic argument? Really? Next thing you know you’ll be telling me you think holes exist too! “After all, Swiss cheese is full of holes. So, since it’s true that Swiss cheese has holes in it…”

            Jones: Very funny. But a parody isn’t a counterargument.

            Smith: Ok, how about this: Suppose God creates a universe out of nothing—or, as I would be more inclined to believe, that it springs into existence uncaused—lasts for a single day, and then completely vanishes. If there truly are “days of the week,” what day of the week would it have been?

            Jones: Two points. First: I’m not sure that being (some particular) day of the week is an intrinsic property of a span of time. In fact, I doubt it. But let’s pretend it is. Why couldn’t it just be a contingent fact about a span of time that it’s a certain day of the week? There may be many possible worlds that answer to your description, some being intrinsic physical duplicates of each other. Maybe being Sunday, for example, is a non-physical, non-supervenient property that is instantiated in some of these worlds and not others. Maybe God just chooses at random what day of the week to make it in those worlds. Again, I doubt it, but I don’t think it’s conceptually incoherent. Second: Suppose, as I take to be more probable, that that what day of the week it is is supervenient on, or constituted by, certain of our social practices. In that case, what day of the week it is—if any—would in your scenario depend on whether there are people around in your short-lived universe. If there are, and they had false memories which concerned the appropriate social practices, what day of the week it was would be determined by the content of their false memories, and also by what they did during that one day—which days they marked on their calendars, for instance. Your thought experiment, I think, only seems to pose a problem for me because your description of the universe is under-specified.

            Smith: Wow, you’re really taking this seriously! Ok, I’ll play along. Let’s say there really are days of the week. It still doesn’t follow that there’s a fact of the matter about which day—Sunday or Monday—is the first day of the week. Any member of any group can be the first, or second, or third…on an arbitrary ordering. But you seem to think that Sunday is “objectively” the first day of the week. And what I’d like to know is what you think it is that makes it true that Sunday, rather than Monday—or any other day—is really the first day of the week.

            Jones: Does something have to make it true that Sunday’s the first day? Maybe it just is! “Explanations come to an end somewhere.” But as it turns out I do think there’s an account to be had: As I said before, I think that what day of the week it is is determined by social convention. Why then couldn’t it also determine which day is the first?

            Smith: Social convention might determine it, if it could first determine what being first comes to in this context.

            Jones: I think it can. As long as ‘first’, or some equivalent word, is already in use, we can say that a day is the first day of the week iff most other members of one’s society, understanding that they are participating in a social convention, agree to call it ‘the first day of the week’. Given my supposition that the word ‘first’ is already meaningful, my account is non-circular.

            Smith: Non-circular, but maybe not non-contentious.  Let’s “get medieval” and make some distinctions. Call the view—or the apparent view—that Sunday is the first day of the week ‘Sundayism,’ and the (apparently) rival view ‘Mondayism.’ Now, we can distinguish two versions of each view. ‘Strong Sundayism’ is the view that Sunday is essentially the first day of the week, and ‘weak Sundayism’ is the view that it is only contingently the first. Correspondingly, we also have strong Mondayism and weak Mondayism…

…

The conversation continued for quite some time. When it was finally over, my counterpart left feeling privileged to have overheard what he rightly suspected to be the beginning of one of the great metaphysical debates of his time. To some the dispute between Sundayists, Mondayists, and their anti-realist critics seemed interminable, impractical, or at least a bit odd. But the philosophers who were involved rested easy, secure in their conviction that they were doing their part by making a small but important contribution to the advancement of human knowledge.

The first section of my intro to philosophy text is now available online!

Peter Krey, my co-author, and I have just e-published the first section of our intro to philosophy text, "I Am, Therefore I Think: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy". This section is about the Presocratics, and can be found here:

I Am, Therefore I Think: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy

Many thanks to Mark Krey for his illustrations and to Scott Ryan for reading and editing the text!

We welcome any feedback you may have on this section, as well as suggestions about what you would like to see in future sections. You can send them to jlzarri@scholardarity.com

Petition in support of Iranian philosophy PhD student Abbas Khosravi Farsani

From the petition's webpage  (http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/treat-abbas-khosravi-farsani-humanely-and-justly.html):

Petition Background (Preamble):

We write on behalf of Abbas Khosravi Farsani, a graduate of Imam Sadegh University, who was until recently working on a Ph.D. in Western Philosophy at Isfahan University.

Last June, however, Mr. Farsani was arrested and expelled from the University and forbidden to teach at any Iranian university for writing the blog and book by the name of “Najvahaye Najibane” (“Noble Whispers”) allegedly insulting the Supreme Leader and high officials of the Iranian regime. He has a summons to appear before the Revolution Court of Iran on January 26.

And from Leiter Reports:

... I would urge all readers to sign given the unjust and politically motivated treatment to which he has been subjected.   It was prepared by philosophers Alan Hajek (ANU) and Jeff Jordan (Delaware).  When you sign, put your institutional affiliation in the comment section.
UPDATE:   I hope other bloggers, including those in other academic fields, will publicize this petition.

Peter Krey's Doctoral Dissertation "Sword of the Spirit, Sword of Iron", is now available at Scholardarity

Sword of the Spirit, Sword of Iron

Peter Krey

Go here to purchase:  http://www.scholardarity.com/?page_id=2641

Abstract:

This dissertation is a pamphlet investigation dealing with Martin Luther’s ideology and theology of the Word. It studies Luther as a pamphlet writer, whose popular sermon pamphlets addressed the laity with affective, performative language. His “preaching in print” greatly extended the scope of his spontaneous reforming movement. As a self-representation of Luther, this investigation is a prerequisite for his reception. By number of editions and language, this investigation ranks the popularity of almost 70 of Luther’s publications from 1517-1525.This dissertation contains two parts, a handbook on his pamphlets and a thematic section containing the argument. Part One, containing detailed bibliographical research for 32 of these pamphlets, and for his longer works, Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and for Bondage of the Will, is a helpful handbook for their future study.Part Two, the thematic section, deals with the interrelationship of the four themes from the title: Word of God, Scripture, Gospel, and Law, tracing these themes through the thirty most often published pamphlets. Four pamphlets from the year 1520 receive systematic analysis: “Sermon on the Ban,” i.e., about excommunication; On Good Works, and their spontaneity; “The New Testament, i.e., the Holy Mass;” and “Freedom of a Christian Person,” the popular version, which is mostly unknown among English readers. I argue that Luther carved out an inward realm of Christian freedom that promoted a sense of self and a sense of social agency which stressed spontaneity and freedom against what Luther perceived to be a juridical ethos of the church of his day. [Let alone a juridical ethos, I discovered that he was up against two ecclesiastical courts under the canon law.] Because of the ideological nature of propaganda pamphlets, this ethos could not be connected with the old archdeaconal and episcopal courts, the temporal jurisdiction of prince-bishops, and papal legislation being challenged by temporal authorities. But, surprisingly,since Luther’s term “spiritual law” meant “canon law,” his hostility can be seen to escalate through these pamphlets until he publicly burns the canon law on December 10th, 1520. He felt it excluded the laity from the spiritual estate, making them feel as if they were not even Christians. His pamphlets called for communion in both kinds, demanding an inclusive Christian estate for the priesthood of all believers. The central concern of this dissertation, however, is not the polemics of these pamphlets, but Luther’s awe-inspiring religious contribution.

On Imagination and Conception -- Possibility and the Phenomenology of Imagining

Cross-posted at Scholardarity's Diablog

 

A Note to the Reader:

What follows is the text of an (unpublished) essay that I wrote back in 2002. I was 16 at the time, and because of that this essay contains some misunderstandings, is a bit simplistic, and–to put it in way that’s kind to my past self –“overconfident” both in its ambition and its style. Nevertheless, in spite of that and the fact that I have changed my views on quite a few points since then, I still think there is some value in it, and so I’ve decided to post it here.

~ On Imagination and Conception ~

Jason Zarri

If I may be allowed to borrow your attention for a moment, I will explain to you a thought that occurred to me one day: Philosophy has gone on for thousands of years with logic, that is, the rules for correct reasoning. Logic is useful, to be sure, but oughtn’t philosophy have another implement in its tool-bag? One that tells it, for example, what the correct rules are for imagining and conceiving something?

It seems this new implement would be a sister-science to logic. Not, of course, that I mean to develop such a science myself. That is not the purpose of this essay. What I want is not to create this new science, but rather give something of a rough outline of it.

First of all, it shall be necessary for us to define what we mean by “imagine” and “imagination”. By “imagination”, we mean that class of mental phenomena which involves the production of sense images that are not given in actual perception; whether they are visual , audial, tactile, etc. By “imagine”, we mean the production of one of these images voluntarily. Secondly, for the “reference frame”. By “reference frame”, we mean what is usually termed the visual or phenomenal field. Specifically, we shall be interested in the phenomena of imagination as they relate to philosophical arguments for or against the conceivability or possibility of something. Fallacies of imagination I shall call abuses of the reference frame.

Since the time of Hume and Locke, not much has been said by philosophers concerning the nature of imagination, and I suspect that many still unconsciously subscribe to such an empiricist ‘cut and paste’ theory. Thus, the first thing we need to do is disabuse ourselves of such a notion, and especially of the idea, if any still have it, that such phenomena could be the product of a tabula rasa mind. 

Once hearing a tune, I may change its tempo, add to or subtract from the background layers of sound, and even completely change its instrumentation, say, from a violin to a clarinet; all the while retaining the ability to recognize it as ‘the same’. Here’s an interesting question: “How do I change the tempo of the song to make it faster or slower?” It is not accomplished by a mere verbal mental command, but in what it positively consists we never observe, nor do I think we can. 

Once hearing a voice speak for a short while, I may retain its sound, and so imagine it to to speak words I have never heard it say. One finds that one does this sort of thing very often, though usually thinking of how some friend or relation is going to respond to something.
To say I read a text means this: My eyes scan the page, while my mind speaks the words to itself in the voice it thinks the author of those words would have. And if I type like this, why does your mind put extra emphasis on the words ‘like’ and ‘this’?

Before you build a house, you must have some idea of it. But what could you possibly have in your mind before you construct that idea? It will simply not do to say that you form it as if by painting or by piecing colors together: in all such cases you have some conception of what you are creating beforehand. Yet, if it were spontaneous and random, there would be no structure to the scene. So just how is it that any of these mental landscapes we concoct initially come to mind?

Simple images may be flipped on a horizontal or vertical axis. If I, for example, form an image of a triangle that I have never before seen, and decide to flip it upside down, how does my mind know, before flipping it, what this, which is right side up, will look like upside down, in order that It may create that image? Surely I am not reversing some object. This is rather the destruction of one image and the creation of another. 

I believe that we must allow the mind some inventiveness of its own, for all this seems completely unaccountable on any tabula rasa view. Philosophically, it makes sense to say that the mind is a tabula rasa, because no one knows what ‘the mind’ is. But if you say that the brain is a tabula rasa, everyone knows you speak nonsense. 

Now, we ask ourselves, what is it like to imagine something? How do mental images differ from those given to us in perception? They all seem to share a common characteristic, which I think can only be described as a kind of faintness. If I hear a sound, I am always aware that I hear it, even if I am completely unable to determine what it is. When I imagine a sound, on the contrary, I am always able to determine it, even though I never hear it for an instant. And though I am perhaps able to increase its pitch, I find myself quite incapable of raising or lowering its “volume”. An analogous thing happens with sight. I may form whatever image I please, but regardless of the detail, it never enters into my visual field, nor does it disturb any of its content. In these instances, it is as though a second reference frame were created, and that nothing which goes on in the one has any effect upon the other. I believe that the first shall be called the perceptual frame, and the second, the imaginal frame. Each has its own peculiarities. The perceptual frame may increase or diminish in size depending upon the focus of one’s attention. When reading a book, say, it will seem that the text is all that exists, everything beyond the page being relegated to obscurity. Though our perceptual frame never vanishes, there are certain occasions, such as absorption in a daydream, when we become completely oblivious to its content, and on reflection cannot decide whether we were truly conscious of it or not. The imaginal frame, unlike its counterpart, is in no way permanent. It is created as soon as something suggests an image, and vanishes as soon as one’s attention is withdrawn from it. Images are formed continuously during the reading of a novel, and rarely or never at all during the viewing of a film or television program. During the remaining time the pace of the flow of images is located somewhere in between these two extremes. 

Having explicated the nature of imagination sufficiently for our purposes, we shall now concentrate on the abuses that philosophers have made of this faculty. I believe these may be divided into three major categories: abuses of amphiboly, abuses of improper imputation, and abuses of misapplication.

1. The abuse of amphiboly: The confusion of the noumenal and phenomenal sense of a term, or the mistaking of an image or perception for the thing itself, as this relates to philosophical arguments.

Example: Hume said that a man, lacking in the requisite experience, could not deduce from the qualities of FIRE, that it would burn him. But fire of the sort Hume means has never burnt anyone, and never will. For the ‘fire’ he is thinking of is naught but a certain conjunction of sensory qualities, viz.; hot, red, semi-translucent, etc. Our mind may conjure as much in a dream, without us suffering any ill effects. But if we were to take a studious pupil, whose subjects were chemistry and physics, and ask him what effects would ensue, upon the excitation of the molecules in my hand past a certain point; I cannot help but think that his answer would be “ignition”, even though he had never experienced for himself such a thing as ‘flame’.

2. The abuse of improper imputation: When imagining, to think or tell yourself something that you have not made the sensory qualities adequately represent. Or, to not imagine what the definition of the object or concept would entail, either fully or partially.

Example: McTaggart’s B-series. Whenever we try and represent to ourselves a tenseless timeline [I.e., a view of time according to which there is no "passage of time" and that all times are equally real], we find that we always imagine the events as simultaneously given, and subsisting in time. But that completely fails the conception of a temporal series, for it is the essence of time that its moments are not simultaneously given, and its component parts do not subsist. And when McTaggart said that the poker would always be hot on Tuesday, it is evident that he was using this picture, viz., the still image of a glowing poker, because that image does indeed subsist temporally. But the instants of the actual day would not exist in such a manner, even though that is how he represented them to himself.

3. The abuse of misapplication: The taking of the standard of our ability to form mental images as the standard of the possibility of things.

This abuse consists of three subsections:

1. The first form of the abuse of misapplication consists in the belief that whatever is imaginable and non-contradictory is also, for that reason, possible. In recent years, this principle has borne the title of “analytic-synthetic dichotomy”. It seems a bit odd, if I do say so myself, that this doctrine should be advanced by the empiricists as self-evident, without any further argument or experiment. Is there a way to test this hypothesis, so that we may see whether or not everything imaginable and non-contradictory is possible? I believe there is.
Let us suppose, for our example, a crystalline sphere. Let us also suppose that this concept we have conjured up possesses a very special property: once thought, this magical sphere will cease to exist merely as a concept or mental image, but will instead manifest itself in physical reality. Now, let us conceive of the proposed object. We do so, and… nothing happens.

Why?

To any sensible person, the answer to this question should seem exceedingly obvious. But our goal here is to be rational, not sensible.

We ask ourselves: Is there any obstacle to our imagining this event? No, there certainly is not. We can quite clearly imagine ourselves thinking of the sphere, and then that the sphere appears in the space outside us. And we may be sure the the proposed event is not ‘logically impossible’, for the thought of such an occurrence engenders no contradiction. Since this magical concept is both imaginable and non-contradictory, it must, according to the principle, be a genuine possibility. But we have thought of the concept, and it has refused to manifest itself. Therefore, we must conclude that the proposed event was never really possible.
Allow me to clarify this line of reasoning:

p. Whatever is imaginable and non-contradictory is possible.

q. A concept which, when thought, will obtain in physical reality.

1. (q.) is imaginable and non-contradictory, and so according to (p.) must be possible.

2. (q.) is thought, but does not obtain.

3. (2.) creates a conflict between (1.) and (p.).

4. We cannot reject (1.), because (q.) is imaginable and non-contradictory.

5. Therefore, we must reject (p.)

Thus we must conclude that we cannot give to our concepts such a magical property, merely by thinking it, even though we can imagine ourselves doing so.

2. The second form of the abuse of misapplication consists in the violation of the the boundaries of the reference frame. For example, it has been argued by some (such as Kant, in his antinomy concerning space and time) that we must always think of space as being infinite, and cannot imagine that it comes to an end. From whence is this belief derived? I imagine it arises from a thought experiment like this: Imagine any colored shape, such as a square, or perhaps a tree. Regardless of the shape, you must always represent it as being against some background, whether black, or white, or blue, but it must always be some color. From this, you may come to the conclusion that for any colored area, there must be a colored border. The opposite you will decry as unimaginable, entirely inconceivable. Allow me to ask you a question. Does your visual field stretch on to infinity? No, I do not believe you can affirm that it does. Very well, then what lies outside it? Your very reference frame is a colored area outside of which there is no colored border! But if that is so, then your perceptual space comes to an end. So what’s going on here?

Everything that we see lies in our visual field, and thus within the borders of the reference frame. In order for us to see where the reference frame ends, we would have to drag its borders within themselves, which is absurd. Because we cannot “see” its boundary as we could the juncture of two colored areas, we feign it has no boundary at all. There arises a similar illusion regarding our perception of time. Whatever we perceive, we perceive at a certain moment in time. Because perception must occur at a given moment, we cannot technically experience its ‘beginning’ or ‘end’ (And, in my opinion, it is this that gives rise to the ‘specious present’ [The 'specious present' is the notion that our perception of time always involves extended intervals of time rather than durationless instants, and hence that what we experience as present is an interval of time.]). Here, as in the previous case, our experience terminates in a boundary that is itself unobservable. Because of this, we find that we cannot imagine a beginning or an end to time, though it is certainly possible in itself. When Kant plucked time from out the world, he dragged the antinomy the removal was supposed to efface in its train. It is all very well and good to say: “There is no time in the world, so there is no fact of the matter of time’s beginning or not.” But can one likewise affirm: “There is time in the mind, and there is no fact of the matter of time’s beginning or not”? The question comes down to this: “Is our past temporal history finite or eternal?” [In other words, what I meant was this: Consider the set consisting of all your past experiences. The set is either infinite in the "past direction" or not. If it is infinite, there was never a first moment at which you had a conscious experience, and so even if there is no fact about whether the physical world has existed forever, you and your experiences have always existed. If, on the other hand, the set is finite in the "past direction", there is a first conscious experience that you had, and so for you there is no time prior to that. In that case there is a beginning to your "experiential time", and if so, why should a beginning to time be inconceivable in the case of the physical world? Either way, I didn't see--and still don't, for that matter--any reason to think that Kant has established his antinomy.] If we are to take Kant’s first antinomy as proving its conclusion, then it is absolutely impossible for him to answer this question. Hence, there must be some defect in his conception of time. Therefore, I declare Kant’s first antinomy to be fallacious, for he has committed the abuse of misapplication.
3. The third form of the abuse of misapplication consists in the belief that whatever is unimaginable must, as a consequence, be impossible. This opinion, I suspect, is derived from a certain arrogance of the mind. Being naturally overconfident, it overestimates the power of its faculties, and if it finds that it cannot drag anything within its sphere, it must suppose the difficulty to arise from some defect in the thing, and so declares it to be nugatory and impossible in itself. 

It has been alleged by many, though most famously by Hume and Berkeley, that the human mind has no power of conjuring up any image that is not fully determinate and particular in every degree. I shall advance no arguments against this position. Indeed, I heartily endorse it. But I shall not proceed with them in drawing their conclusion, viz., that an indeterminate image is impossible. For if they had been more attentive to their own perception, they would have realized that it is positively littered with indeterminacies! If you don’t believe me, you may try this experiment and see for yourself. Go into any room, preferably one that is brightly lit with a diversity of variously colored objects. Now, stare straight ahead, and focus your eyes on the very center of your visual field. While leaving your eyes where they are, focus your attention on the outermost periphery, preferably fifty degrees or more from the center. I believe you will notice that, though you can see that something is there, you cannot see it as being in a determinate shape, or having a determinate color. If you feign that you do, then try and tell yourself what its shape and color are without looking! This is especially evident in the case of text. Try focusing your eyes on one page of an open book, whilst focusing your attention on the page opposite it. Though you can discern the general shape that the words together form, it is quite impossible for you to honestly affirm that you see any individual character, or if you can, that you see what shape it is in. These experiences, though possible, are entirely unimaginable. Now, if our imagination cannot tell us about what it may be possible to experience, then a fortiori it applies even less to what is possible in reality. Thus, whenever a philosopher should henceforth proclaim something to be unimaginable, our reply shall be a resounding “So what?”
Finally, we shall draw our conclusions:

1. The mere fact that we can imagine something does not prove it to be possible, and the mere fact that we cannot imagine something does not prove it to be impossible.

2. Since we can have and now remember ‘unimaginable’ experiences, our inability to form such images stems not from a defect in their nature, but a defect in ours.

3. Hume, Berkeley, and innumerable others have committed the abuse of misapplication.

Our knowledge of nature, be it ever so great, has taught us but one thing throughout the ages, that humanity, through its blindness, refuses to learn: Reality is not quite so narrow as to be confined to our conception of it.