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Imaginability, morality, and fictional truth: dissolving the puzzle of ‘imaginative resistance’

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Abstract

This paper argues that there is no genuine puzzle of ‘imaginative resistance’. In part 1 of the paper I argue that the imaginability of fictional propositions is relative to a range of different factors including the ‘thickness’ of certain concepts, and certain pre-theoretical and theoretical commitments. I suggest that those holding realist moral commitments may be more susceptible to resistance and inability than those holding non-realist commitments, and that it is such realist commitments that ultimately motivate the problem. However, I argue that the relativity of imaginability is not a particularly puzzling feature of imagination. In part 2, I claim that it is the so-called ‘alethic’ puzzle, concerning fictional truth, which generates a real puzzle about imaginative resistance. However, I argue that the alethic puzzle itself depends on certain realist assumptions about the nature of fictional truth which are implausible and should be rejected in favour of an interpretive view of fictional truth. Once this is done, I contend, it becomes evident that the supposed problem of imaginative resistance as it has hitherto been discussed in the literature is not puzzling at all.

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Notes

  1. For further discussions see the references listed in the bibliography.

  2. In fact, Weatherson (2004) identifies four different puzzles. I will be concerned only with his discussion of the alethic and imaginative puzzles.

  3. This formulation is due to Matravers (2003), who follows Gendler (2000), but I have added ‘is willing/unwilling’ to the respective propositions to reflect the current debate.

  4. This example recurs throughout his paper and throughout the literature on the topic.

  5. I shall not be concerned to explore the differences between these various imaginative projects, and there may well be overlaps between all of them. For an important discussion of these issues and their interrelations see Moran (1994).

  6. Explanations of imaginative resistance in terms of unwillingness to imagine can be found in Gendler (2000) and Matravers (2003). Those who offer explanations based on inability to imagine include Walton (1994), Mothersill (2002), and Weatherson (2004). For extensive discussion of the debate on both sides see Weatherson (2004), Stock (2005), Walton (2006), Gendler (2006).

  7. This response is rejected by Walton in his recent paper (2006).

  8. As Stock (2005, p. 617) puts it, the unimaginable propositions are thus conceptually impossible in the sense that they: ‘seek to relate a morally evaluative judgement to (a) descriptive proposition(s), where the respective governing conditions of at least one of the moral concepts employed in the judgement are such that manifestly they would be violated by such a relation, so that the judgement is incoherent.’

  9. That is, Walton’s argument assumes that the principle of supervenience governing moral propositions must be a very strong one, namely, the natural facts must necessitate the moral facts: in every possible world where the descriptive facts are the same, the moral facts are the same. From this it would follow that moral judgements cannot be imagined to be different on pain of conceptual confusion, or without a change in the meaning or extension of the terms at issue. But this looks too strong. For moral argument to be possible, we need to allow that the opposing view is both comprehensible and possibly right, and hence cannot be subject to conceptual confusion. There are also good grounds for scepticism about any supposedly clear divide between ‘natural’ or ‘base’ and ‘supervenient’ moral facts. See Moran (1994), and Tanner (1994) for illuminating discussion of these issues. I shall argue in Sect. 3 below (against Weatherson (2004) and Gendler (2006)) for a parallel scepticism about any clear distinction between lower-level and higher-level facts on which a solution to the puzzle might be thought to rest.

  10. A point made forcefully by Tanner (1994) and Mothersill (2002).

  11. In fact, this hints at an explanation for at least some types of imaginative resistance, as a response to what we might term ‘aesthetic flaws’ in a work. I shall return to this issue briefly later, but such cases of resistance are not particularly puzzling.

  12. An alternative solution is proposed by Gendler (2000) who argues that cases of imaginative resistance concern an unwillingness, rather than inability, to imagine. However, see Gendler (2006) for an updated and more nuanced version of this position. Partly for reasons of space I cannot treat her original views here, but will briefly discuss her most recent account in Sect. 3.2.3 below. For persuasive criticisms of Gendler’s (2000) original position see Weatherson (2004) and Stock (2005).

  13. Whatever particular view of moral judgement one holds, whether one is a particularist or generalist, and irrespective of whether a proposition concerns thick or thin moral concepts, ‘whether it is appropriate to relate a given moral judgement … to an act, described in terms of only a single descriptive proposition, will depend on what other descriptions are also posited as true of the act’ (Stock 2005, pp. 617–618).

  14. Stock does not exclude cases of resistance explicable in terms of conceptual impossibility where this entails unimaginability; she merely holds that this does not explain the cases discussed in terms of singular, a-contextual moral propositions.

  15. For instance, John punched Clare in order to save her from a worse beating (hence, compassionately), or Giselda killed her daughter to save her from a worse fate.

  16. Or ones involving concepts, thick or thin, applied to bizarre descriptive or evaluative conditions in virtue of which it is difficult (in some yet to be specified way) to imagine their obtaining. For example: ‘Nutmeg is the summum bonum and one’s highest/only obligation is to maximise the quantity of nutmeg in the universe’ (Walton 1994, p. 48).

  17. Naturally, many of these contexts will inevitably involve various labyrinthine flights of fancy, and it is worth emphasising again that this oddness to a large extent merely reflects the artificial use of single propositions outside fictional contexts. But the powerful and valuable suggestiveness of language should not be underestimated, and the connotations and allusions and imagery with which writers imbue their work often require combinations of prima facie incompatible elements for their effect: ‘her lewdness was delicate’; ‘she enjoyed the freedom of her slavery’; ‘his act of cowardice was brave’; ‘he stayed by her side throughout the ordeal thereby demonstrating his treacherous nature’. Here, with more or less skill and imagination, we ‘simply’ fill out ‘treacherous’, ‘kind’, ‘brave’, ‘wrong’ or ‘lewd’ in terms of certain other contextual conditions obtaining. I leave the reader to indulge their imagination by doing so.

  18. For further detailed discussion see Blackburn (1992), who argues that no thick concepts have their evaluative meanings essentially. The opposing view is propounded by Gibbard (1992).

  19. Of course, we could perhaps invent more fine-grained words here to describe specific acts of murder, but for the present we must work with the language we have.

  20. The term ‘commitments’ should be understood broadly, to encompass a range from mere intuitions to highly articulated philosophical positions.

  21. Importantly, as I will argue below, it also concerns various interpretive aspects of the fictional context itself which determine what we take to be fictionally true.

  22. It may also be that certain normative claims are more susceptible to resistance, such as Gendler (2000) argues, and that certain non-normative claims are more susceptible to inability, but pursuing this issue further here would take us into murkier waters than I’m ready to enter.

  23. For detailed discussion see Gendler (2000, p. 67), Stock (2003), Weatherson (2004, esp. 9–11, and 25). Intuitions about such cases are not very clear or fine-grained, and the imaginability of conceptual, logical, mathematical and other types of impossibility is a highly disputed area. Partly, the problem in determining this issue hinges on what is meant, in any particular case, by ‘imagine’, for imagining comes in many guises and degrees. More on this below.

  24. It seems likely that the relativity of imaginability will be affected by, for instance, what sort of meta-ethical position or commitments one holds, and given the complexity and variety of such views it is unsurprisingly difficult to say anything precise about the imaginability of the relevant claims.

  25. Perhaps some kind of naturalistic account of these features of imagination could be given along the lines suggested by Weinberg and Meskin (2006) in terms of the interaction of different cognitive systems. I remain neutral on this, but see note 41 below.

  26. ‘Supposing can be coarse in a way that imagining cannot’ (Weatherson 2004, p. 20). This seems to be what Walton (2006) has in mind when he claims that a proposition is fictional if we ought to imagine it, but where this does not imply that we can imagine it.

  27. For a comprehensive discussion of the differences and similarities between imagination and supposition see Weinberg and Meskin (2006, pp. 191–202). Although their account is compatible with the general point being made here, they also stress that there will be intermediate cases that do not fit squarely into either category.

  28. This distinction has since been discussed by Walton (2006) and Gendler (2006).

  29. Gendler’s (2006) position is in some respects similar to this, as I shall discuss in Sect. 3.2.3.

  30. That is, if supposition really is subject to no normative or even epistemic constraints. However, if it is the case that certain evaluative concepts have their meanings essentially, then there might be limits to what we can even merely suppose about them, without losing our grip on the very concept itself. See Weinberg and Meskin (2006) for further discussion of the nature of supposition, though it is unclear to me what the implications of their account are for such essential meanings, if there are any. Cf. n. 25 above.

  31. There is no doubt a great deal more to be said about these issues, and perhaps one could even develop a taxonomy of imaginability, describing the general principles governing the interaction between (a) realist/anti-realist views, (b) thick and thin normative concepts, and (c) full-blooded imagining and thin-blooded supposition. Unfortunately this takes us too far beyond the scope of the present discussion, nor am I at all confident of being able to make any more precise claims about this. I should note, however, that the anonymous reviewer for this journal has pointed out that, in contrast to the relatively high-level and theoretical claims I discuss, the phenomenon of imaginative ‘resistance’ seems much lower-level. I am not sure whether the phenomenon is lower-level, but nonetheless, it may well be that (some?) lower-level and pre-theoretical intuitions and commitments (for certain types of claims?) exert a stronger ‘pressure’ on our imaginative capacities than I have explicitly acknowledged. But to demonstrate this would require far more work than I can undertake here. My thanks to the anonymous reviewer of this journal for raising these points.

  32. A quasi-realist, for example, will reject the idea that moral concepts are response-enabling. See Stock (2005, p. 615) for discussion.

  33. For further discussion of these issues regarding Weatherson’s view, see Weinberg and Meskin (2006, pp. 187–188). In particular, they argue that Weatherson cannot explain cases where imagining a conceptual impossibility with respect to the lower-level claims that constitute it is crucial to the appreciation of fiction.

  34. This is the second analysis Lewis offers which, I think, is more plausible than the first.

  35. For an excellent discussion of many of these complexities see Moran (1994) and Tanner (1994).

  36. Indeed, as Lamarque (2002, p. 159) points out, the relationship between fictional truth and interpretation forms a hermeneutic circle: ‘A general interpretive scheme will determine many of the truths within a fictional world, but these truths will in turn give support to the interpretation. There is no neutral ground from which to judge the truth of such propositions.’

  37. In fact, both Weatherson (2004) and Gendler (2006, p. 158, n. 24) suggest in places, without further elaboration, that it may be a question of relative difficulty rather than absolute impossibility, but my argument against their overall accounts of how fictional truths are established remains unaffected by this.

  38. Gendler (2006) holds that insofar as ‘appraisals’ concern whether certain concepts could be legitimately applied to certain sets of facts, ‘this is a concern that transcends the bounds of the fictional’ (p. 163). But if the interpretive process is thoroughly holistic in the way I suggest, this statement is far from obviously true.

  39. It is worth noting that Gendler’s (2006) account is in many respects far more nuanced and insightful than the brief picture given of it here might suggest. Moreover, she takes her account to be primarily concerned with the imaginative rather than the alethic problem. Nonetheless, insofar as her positing of the phenomenon of ‘pop-out’ and her explanation of it depend on a false understanding of fictional truth and interpretation, her account is substantially weakened.

  40. Indeed, even if this were just a matter of intuition bashing, my counter-intuitions should be enough to cast serious doubt on the discussions of imaginative resistance offered, because I see no problem in allowing that the supposedly problematic propositions are fictionally true, if at first rather baffling.

  41. It is worth briefly mentioning here the account given by Weinberg and Meskin (2006) of what they call the ‘puzzle of imaginative blockage’. They offer a naturalistic explanation of what happens in such cases in terms of our cognitive architecture, which appeals to a conflict between types of content produced by different cognitive mechanisms or systems. On the one hand the ‘Inputter’ is responsible for stipulating in our engagement with fiction, for example, a morally abhorrent proposition A, while on the other hand our ‘moral judgement system’ stipulates not-A. It is not clear to me that their account offers a solution to the problem of imaginative resistance, so much as an explanation of the underlying cognitive mechanisms that might explain how it arises in the form of an inability to imagine in certain cases. In any case, if I am right about the interpretive nature of fictional truth, their account has no obvious implications for my dissolution of the alethic problem. Although, in light of my account, it should be acknowledged that Weinberg and Meskin do allow that authors can use a range of ‘tricks’ that can prevent the relevant conflicting cognitive systems from doing their usual job.

  42. They might include ‘epistemic’ constraints, such as a presumption of verisimilitude and a presumption of truthfulness. But they may also include certain ‘aesthetic’ constraints determining that we interpret the work (charitably) in the best evaluative light. For discussion of these see Lamarque (2002, p. 157).

  43. Gendler (2006, n. 25, 158) makes a similar point.

  44. It is in this light highly significant that the puzzles Weatherson, Gendler and others discuss are restricted to paragraph-long examples and ‘detachable parts’ of longer stories, all of which are made-up in order to illustrate the puzzle. Perhaps it would be more baffling if the sentence had been written in the middle of a long and well structured work of realistic fiction. In fact, it is actually quite difficult to imagine such a work or to produce any real example of one, which at least shows the limitations of the problem in respect of genuine fiction. In fairness, however, Weatherson (2004, p. 7) himself seems to acknowledge the limitations of his account in this respect.

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Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to the editor of this journal for his enormous help in preparing this paper for publication. I am also extremely grateful to the anonymous reviewer whose comments have been remarkably thorough, insightful, encouraging, and prompt. The paper has been improved immeasurably as a result. I would also like to thank Alix Cohen for prolonged discussions of these issues, and for her general help and support, and Kathleen Stock for allowing me to see earlier versions of her paper on this topic. Audiences at the Moral Sciences Club in Cambridge, and the Philosophy Department at the University of Geneva have helped greatly in clarifying and enriching my thoughts on these issues.

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Todd, C.S. Imaginability, morality, and fictional truth: dissolving the puzzle of ‘imaginative resistance’. Philos Stud 143, 187–211 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9198-5

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