Is imagination too liberal for modal epistemology?

Abstract

Appealing to imagination for modal justification is very common. But not everyone thinks that all imaginings provide modal justification. Recently, Dominic Gregory (2010) and Peter Kung (2010) have independently argued that, whereas imaginings with sensory imageries can justify modal beliefs, those without sensory imageries don't because of such imaginings' extreme liberty. In this essay, I defend the general modal epistemological relevance of imagining. I argue, first, that when the objections that target the liberal nature of non-sensory imaginings are adequately developed, those objections also threaten the sensory imaginings. So, if we think that non-sensory imaginings are too liberal for modal justification, we should say the same about sensory imaginings. I'll finish my defense by showing that, when it comes to deciding between saying that all imaginings are prima facie justificatory and saying that no imaginings are justificatory, there is an independent reason for accepting the former. 1 Justifying Modal Beliefs The goal of this essay is to defend the following Yablo-style modal epistemological policy against a particular kind of skeptical objection: For any statement S, if z can conceive that S, then z is prima facie justified in believing that S is possible. I'll call this principle Imaginative I would like to thank Ross Cameron, Brie Gertler, and Harold Langsam for commenting on multiple 1 early drafts of this paper and for their patience with my stubbornness in philosophical conversations. My gratitude also goes to Matt Duncan, Trenton Merricks, Peter Tan, and the audience in the departmental retreat of the Corcoran Department of Philosophy, University of Virginia for their valuable feedback. I must also thank Nick Rimell and Jim Darcy, who kindly offered to help me with the linguistic aspect of the paper. Finally, I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers of Synthese for their suggestions that helped make this a much better paper. ! 2 Conservatism. Following those who defend a similar view, I take conceiving and imagining to 2 be the same attitude; 'imagining' and 'conceiving' will be used interchangeably. 3 In the recent literature, two kinds of moderate skepticism have been raised against the general principle of Imaginative Conservatism. They are moderate in the sense that, instead of banishing all conceivings from modal epistemology, they argue that some but not all conceivings provide modal justification. And these moderate skeptics differ in their ways of distinguishing the 'good' from the 'bad' conceivings. The first kind of moderate skeptic distinguishes the good conceivings from the bad ones based on the subject matter of those conceivings. It says that only conceivings about mundane facts can justify beliefs about possibilities; conceivings about facts distant from our everyday life cannot. I call this Type-1 moderate skepticism (van Inwagen 1997; Hawke 2011). The second kind separates the good ones from the bad ones, roughly speaking, based not on the subject matter of the conceivings but o...

The blurred line between epistemic and metaphysical modalities in the modal epistemology of imagination

“…However, for Lam, this feature of Truth Relating, of having a non-(epistemic possibility) reading of metaphysical modality, would only be the case for infallible modal claims, not fallible ones. If Truth Relating is true, then, according to Lam (2018), "to have bad [epistemic] justification is to have no justification at all", and if we understand that bad justification can be due to beliefs that are false, then "false beliefs aren't justified at all. Surprisingly, this is infallibilism about epistemic justification" (p. 2171), which is entailed by the acceptance of Truth Relating as a necessary condition for epistemic justification (p. 2167).…”

“…(p. 87) This is different from the idea that, 'if it is contradictory then it cannot be imagined', which is a widely held claim. 14 The difference obtains because "not all impossibilities are plain contradictions", since some may be metaphysical impossibilities (Lam, 2018(Lam, , p. 2158. Hanson (1959) points in this general direction, while discussing the logical impossibility of "X, e.g., a quadrilateral triangle", by questioning whether "the connection between X being impossible and X being unthinkable may only be an empirical one", in that "[t]here simply never has been a case of anyone thinking, imagining, picturing the logically impossible."…”

The Productive Anarchy of Scientific Imagination

“…2 These are the same constraints we place on scientific models. Some version of this strategy is pursued by Byrne (2005), Gregory (2010), Kung (2010), Lam (2018), Miščević (1992Miščević ( , 2007 and Nersessian (1993Nersessian ( , 2007.…”

The Problem of Modally Bad Company

“…For example, Geirsson (2005) -"[w]hat is important is that regardless of whether one uses propositional or pictorial imaging one can construct scenarios" (p. 293, original emphasis) -and Dohrn (2019) -"[o]ne is justified to believe that p is possible if one entertains a suitably concrete and consistent representation of a world which one takes to verify p" (p. 8). To give a sense of how widespread the idea is, the following authors also discuss (and sometimes defend) theories that, according to the above definition, are theories of QALC imagination: Kripke (1980); Gregory (2004); Byrne (2007); Fiocco (2007); Stoljar (2007); Doggett & Stoljar (2010); Gregory (2010); Kung (2010); Hartl (2016); Lam (2017);Berto (2018). 15 The linguistic content does a lot of work in these theories, so let us discuss it in a bit more detail.…”