Illusory possibilities and imagining counterparts

Abstract

Given Kripke's semantic views, a statement, such as 'Water is H20', expresses a necessary a posteriori truth. Yet it seems that we can conceive that this statement could have been false; hence, it appears that we can conceive impossible states of affairs as holding. Kripke used a de dicto strategy and a de re strategy to address three illusions that arise with respect to necessary a posteriori truths: (1) the illusion that a statement such as 'Water is H20' possibly expresses a falsehood, (2) the illusion that conceivability can fail to latch on to a genuine metaphysical possibility, and (3) the illusion that one can access a real metaphysical possibility by conceiving that water is not H20. In this paper I argue that while Kripke's de dicto strategy dispeFs (1), his strategies do not enable him to dispel (2) and (3).Though we now acknowledge that the sun does not revolve around the earth, to many it may still seem that we can imagine that it could have so revolved, for it is thought that this is a real metaphysical possibility, one that our imaginations can train. By contrast, states of affairs, such as that Hesperus is not Phosphorus or that heat is not identical to the motion of molecules, are believed by many to be unimaginable, on the ground that we cannot imagine impossibilities, and these states of affairs surely are impossible. Moreover, given that we believe in the truth of a particular identity, and given that we take identity to be a necessary relation, it would seem to violate a principle of rationality to claim that one has imagined a real possibility in which a true identity fails to hold.Under the umbrella of illusions of possibility philosophers have sought to explain what has gone wrong when such apparently false claims are made. Has

You Really Do Imagine It: Against Error Theories of Imagination

“…He writes, “…if a philosopher has not attempted to [imagine a naturally purple cow's DNA], then that philosopher has not, in any useful sense , attempted to imagine a possible world in which there are naturally purple cows” (p. 78, emphasis mine). See also Jones (), who writes, “I want to simply suggest that really imagining salt producing in us the sensations caused by water—imagining this in the way a scientist or philosopher should try to, not a science‐fiction writer —is a more difficult task than it might appear at first sight…. I will not be convinced that one has really imagined— in the relevant sense (i.e., where the imagining is supposed to serve as evidence for metaphysical possibility )—salt producing the sensations that water actually causes in us until a fairly rich and coherent account can be given of how this is possible ” (p. 36, emphasis mine).…”