Conceivability and possibility: some dilemmas for Humeans

Abstract

The Humean view that conceivability entails possibility can be criticized via input from cognitive psychology. A mainstream view here has it that there are two candidate codings for mental representations (one of them being, according to some, reducible to the other): the linguistic and the pictorial, the difference between the two consisting in the degree of arbitrariness of the representation relation. If the conceivability of P at issue for Humeans involves the having of a linguistic mental representation, then it is easy to show that we can conceive the impossible, for impossibilities can be represented by meaningful bits of language. If the conceivability of P amounts to the pictorial imaginability of a situation verifying P, then the question is whether the imagination at issue works purely qualitatively, that is, only by phenomenological resemblance with the imagined scenario. If so, the range of situations imaginable in this way is too limited to have a significant role in modal epistemology. If not, imagination will involve some arbitrary labeling component, which turns out to be sufficient for imagining the impossible. And if the relevant imagination is neither

Taming the runabout imagination ticket

“…Many(Byrne 2007;Fiocco 2007;Jago 2014;Kung 2014;Priest 2016) think that, contra Hume, we can imagine the absolutely impossible. I agree, seeBerto and Schoonen (2017).…”

Knowing how things might have been

“…So I reject Hume's maxim, as do Berto and Schoonen (2017), Byrne (2007), Fiocco (2007), Kung (2010), Priest (2016), and many others. But I won't rest my overall case on this argument, which would take us too far afield to establish fully.…”

“…According to Siegel (2006) and Siewert (1998), such labelling is needed whenever perceptual experience has a content that goes beyond mere shapes and colours. Kung (2010) and Berto and Schoonen (2017) argue that this stipulative labelling component allows us to stipulate freely the identity of the imagined objects. Imagine Tim kissing John.…”

Impossible Worlds

“…We argued in Berto and Schoonen (2018) that, if mental representations involved in conceivability represent linguistically, then Hume's maxim cannot even get off the ground. If we make the plausible assumption that linguistic mental representations have at least the same representational power as the expressions of natural languages like English, then of course we can conceive, by linguistically mentally representing it, the impossible.…”

“…Then it may be that scenarios imagined in this way must be possible. But mental imagery of this kind would be quite limited in scope (Berto and Schoonen 2018). Some labelling seems to be needed whenever perceptual experience has a content that goes beyond mere shapes and colours (Siegel 2006, Siewert 1998.…”