Can you deliberate about this...

[PLOlover]

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I waiting for the aha! moment in this thread.

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I thought it was a belief in god metaphor.

[madnak]

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But all philosophers who have thought about deliberation agree on one point: one cannot deliberate about whether to perform a certain act unless one believes it is possible for one to perform it.

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Back this up. And explain exactly what Van Inwagen means by "deliberation."

I can deliberate about whether to fly around like Superman, and I know that's impossible. It's a matter of suspending my disbelief and allowing myself to accept that I have the power to fly like Superman, within the context of my imagination. But I can perform the deliberations in a the same manner that I would if I actually had those powers (with perhaps a slight difference, but not a significant one).

My deliberations over whether to fly like Superman are very similar to my deliberations over whether to get some milk from my fridge and have cereal right now. Give me a moment...there.

Okay, but there's no milk in my fridge. I'll buy some milk later today and perform the deliberation again, when I actually have milk, and I'll report the differences in this thread.

[luckyme]

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On your point about George Bush, I don't think that we can imagine things that are metaphysically impossible, and I think that it is metaphysically impossible for you to be someone other than who you are. That's why I think that it is impossible for you to imagine yourself being George Bush.

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ok, maybe there's a clue about this thread in the above.
I agree it is impossible for me to BE GBush.
That doesn't seem even a slight obstacle to my "Imagining" I am. That's a breeze compared to when I WAS Napoleon for over a week before the drugs kicked in.

luckyme

[Philo]

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On your point about George Bush, I don't think that we can imagine things that are metaphysically impossible, and I think that it is metaphysically impossible for you to be someone other than who you are. That's why I think that it is impossible for you to imagine yourself being George Bush.

[/ QUOTE ]

ok, maybe there's a clue about this thread in the above.
I agree it is impossible for me to BE GBush.
That doesn't seem even a slight obstacle to my "Imagining" I am.

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you can imagine what it would be like for you to be the President of the U.S., or for you to make decisions as Commander-in-Chief, or even what it would be like if you looked like George Bush, but if it's metaphysically impossible for you to be someone other than who you are (as I think it is), then I think it's not possible for you to imagine you actually being someone else.

[Philo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
But all philosophers who have thought about deliberation agree on one point: one cannot deliberate about whether to perform a certain act unless one believes it is possible for one to perform it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Back this up. And explain exactly what Van Inwagen means by "deliberation."

I can deliberate about whether to fly around like Superman, and I know that's impossible. It's a matter of suspending my disbelief and allowing myself to accept that I have the power to fly like Superman, within the context of my imagination. But I can perform the deliberations in a the same manner that I would if I actually had those powers (with perhaps a slight difference, but not a significant one).

My deliberations over whether to fly like Superman are very similar to my deliberations over whether to get some milk from my fridge and have cereal right now. Give me a moment...there.

Okay, but there's no milk in my fridge. I'll buy some milk later today and perform the deliberation again, when I actually have milk, and I'll report the differences in this thread.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't have a view about van Inwagen's point about deliberation. My interest in asking the original queston was to see what people thought they could imagine in the situation van Inwagen described.

There are many different senses of possibility; physical, nomological, epistemic, logical, metaphysical. I don't think that we can imagine or conceive states of affairs that are logically or metaphysically impossible. So I think that it is impossible to imagine a square circle, and I think that it is impossible to imagine you being someone else. I do think that we can imagine or conceive states of affairs that are physically, nomologically, or epistemically impossible, however.

I think you can imagine being able to fly like Superman, and if pressed on van Inwagen's point about deliberation I would say that I don't think you can deliberate about whether to get milk from the fridge if you know that there is no milk in the fridge.

[madnak]

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I think you can imagine being able to fly like Superman, but if pressed on van Inwagen's point about deliberation I don't think you can deliberate about whether to get milk from the fridge if you know that there is no milk in the fridge.

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I just did. Either there's a semantic break happening, or you're wrong. And I can imagine logical impossibilities, too - I just have to sufficiently insulate the contradictory elements, so that they never simultaneously cohabit the same frame of consciousness. For instance, I can imagine that a door is locked, then imagine myself opening the door and going through, temporarily "forgetting" that the door is locked, and then I can restore the awareness that the door is locked after I've imagined passing through it.

I can imagine opening the door without even considering its lock status at all, so even if I believe that the lock status of the door is "locked," that doesn't have to interfere with my imagination of opening the door. Now, if my imagination of opening the door were different in approach, and depended on the lock status being "open," then it might be impossible for me to imagine opening the door. In this sense I also think a sufficiently flexible (perhaps superhuman) imagination is capable of imagining a square circle. I think a disjointed (psychotic) imagination might also be capable of such by virtue of inherently disconnecting properties that we ordinarily view as inseparable.

On that note, I think the human brain is hypothetically capable of very many such feats. For example, I think it's entirely possible for someone to have an intuitive understanding that 2+2=3. Our thoughts are, IMO, composed of basic processes that are subject to error. Thus, any of our thought processes may arrive at the wrong conclusion. In general this doesn't happen when the thought process is sufficiently basic, but our brains aren't built for complex chains of reasoning. The more advanced the reasoning, the higher the probability of error. So even if we could establish that it's (almost always) impossible to imagine opening a locked door, we can't necessarily extend that principle to higher applications of imagination.

[Philo]

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Yeah, I can imagine looking like George Bush and having everyone think I am George Bush but I can't really imagine BEING George Bush.

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I hope somebody expands on this because I can imagine diving into the full swimming pool right now, even though it's empty. I can imagine what it's like to be a bat ( I just doubt that I'm bang on ) and I can imagine being GB and being frustrated because people don't think I look like GB.

what is the actual claim being made?

luckyme

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I do think that you can imagine diving into the full swimming pool right now, even if it's empty. What you can't imagine is diving into the full swimming pool right now while it's empty. I also think you can imagine what it's like to be a bat, if by that you mean imagining what it would be like to have a sense of echolocation, having wings, etc., but I don't think you can imagine yourself being a bat.

[luckyme]

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[ QUOTE ]
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On your point about George Bush, I don't think that we can imagine things that are metaphysically impossible, and I think that it is metaphysically impossible for you to be someone other than who you are. That's why I think that it is impossible for you to imagine yourself being George Bush.

[/ QUOTE ]

ok, maybe there's a clue about this thread in the above.
I agree it is impossible for me to BE GBush.
That doesn't seem even a slight obstacle to my "Imagining" I am. That's a breeze compared to when I WAS Napoleon for over a week before the drugs kicked in.

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you can imagine what it would be like for you to be the President of the U.S., or for you to make decisions as Commander-in-Chief, or even what it would be like if you looked like George Bush, but if it's metaphysically impossible for you to be someone other than who you are (as I think it is), then I think it's not possible for you to imagine you actually being someone else.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm poking and prodding trying to decipher how you use the word 'imagine' so your claim makes sense to me. The closest I can come is you are morphing being/imagining somehow.
Your " actually being" doesn't seem any different to me than "being". I can imagine myself being hungry, one foot taller and with twelve toes. Imagining I am GB must be possible since I WAS napoleon which seems a much harder transformation to pull off. Why can I BE Napoleon and not even imagine being GB ( ok, there is the lobotomy problem, but that aside).

luckyme

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I can imagine looking like George Bush and having everyone think I am George Bush but I can't really imagine BEING George Bush.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hope somebody expands on this because I can imagine diving into the full swimming pool right now, even though it's empty. I can imagine what it's like to be a bat ( I just doubt that I'm bang on ) and I can imagine being GB and being frustrated because people don't think I look like GB.

what is the actual claim being made?

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

I do think that you can imagine diving into the full swimming pool right now, even if it's empty. What you can't imagine is diving into the full swimming pool right now while it's empty. I also think you can imagine what it's like to be a bat, if by that you mean imagining what it would be like to have a sense of echolocation, having wings, etc., but I don't think you can imagine yourself being a bat.

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I can imagine diving into the full swimming pool while it's empty simultaneously, or so it seems to me, which is where 'imagine' resides. my 'seemings'. I can imagine diving into it full while it's empty and coming out either wet or dry as I desire.
We don't know what it's like to be a bat but that's no obstacle to imagining what it's like to be one.

luckyme

[Philo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
On your point about George Bush, I don't think that we can imagine things that are metaphysically impossible, and I think that it is metaphysically impossible for you to be someone other than who you are. That's why I think that it is impossible for you to imagine yourself being George Bush.

[/ QUOTE ]

ok, maybe there's a clue about this thread in the above.
I agree it is impossible for me to BE GBush.
That doesn't seem even a slight obstacle to my "Imagining" I am. That's a breeze compared to when I WAS Napoleon for over a week before the drugs kicked in.

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you can imagine what it would be like for you to be the President of the U.S., or for you to make decisions as Commander-in-Chief, or even what it would be like if you looked like George Bush, but if it's metaphysically impossible for you to be someone other than who you are (as I think it is), then I think it's not possible for you to imagine you actually being someone else.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm poking and prodding trying to decipher how you use the word 'imagine' so your claim makes sense to me. The closest I can come is you are morphing being/imagining somehow.
Your " actually being" doesn't seem any different to me than "being". I can imagine myself being hungry, one foot taller and with twelve toes. Imagining I am GB must be possible since I WAS napoleon which seems a much harder transformation to pull off. Why can I BE Napoleon and not even imagine being GB ( ok, there is the lobotomy problem, but that aside).

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

I take "imagine" to mean being able to conceive or conceptualize, perhaps to 'picture' in some less clear sense, the state of affairs in question.

You weren't Napoleon unless you are Napoleon, and I doubt that very much. There are two constraints operating in this case. The first is the idea that a thing cannot be identical to two different things. If you today are not Napoleon, but you once were, then that flouts the logic of identity. In particular, it flouts the transitivity of identity, where if A=B and B=C, then A=C. If you were once identical to Napoleon, and you are now identical to luckyme, then luckyme must be identical to Napoleon.

The other constraint has to do with the necessity of origins thesis, associated with Kripke. The basic claim is that the origin of any object is essential to its identity. In your case this means that you cannot have come from a different sperm and egg, for example, or have been born at a time hundreds of years before you were actually born.

It is metaphysically impossible for an object to be a different object than what it is (this of course does not mean that an object cannot have different properties at different times during which it exists, since continuants do typically change over time). But it is metaphysically (and logically) impossible for one object to be another, numerically distinct, object.