Imagination and essence

A central question regarding Wittgenstein’s appeal to our imaginative capabilities (most prominently in in Philosophical Investigations, II~xii, 365: ‘… we can also invent fictitious natural history for our purposes’) is there, and if so how, he is still able to steer clear from the craving of generality’ that he thinks is the main source of the wrong way of doing philosophy. It is clear that Wittgenstein thinks philosophical analysis differs from a scientific investigation by not being bound by ‘the facts’ (in a broad sense, i.e., not just the facts about our actual practices of using a concept, but als facts of a historical or socio-cultural nature, i.e., facts about how we used the concept in the past or facts about the different ways in which others use it). But then the question is how a philosopher who makes free use of their imaginative capabilities with regard to ways concepts can be used can stay clear from essentialism?

That we are able to imagine different practices than we have is obvious, and it is equally obvious that our imaginative capabilities are a crucial factor in almost everything that we do. Imagination is not just key to literature and other aesthetic practices, it also plays a central rol in science, and is an essential ingredients of our everyday lives: planning and decision making depend on it. The question then is this: do the limits of our imaginative capabilities with regard to how a concept can be used coincide with what we would like to call the `essence’ of that concept? If the answer is positive, then it seems that Wittgenstein’s appeal to our imagination lands him in exactly the position that he wants to avoid.

At this juncture the crucial observation, I think, is this, viz., that our imagination itself is a `moving target’ in the sense that it, too, is determined by historical, social, cultural, … factors. If that is correct, then philosophical analysis in Wittgenstein’s sense, in which imagination plays a key role, does indeed occupy a position that differs both from that of scientific inquiry, which is factual in nature, and from that of traditional philosophical analysis, which aims at uncovering essences.

This is the difference between an investigation into ‘What is X?’ (factual, as in science, or essentialistic, as in traditional philosophy) and an investigation into ‘What is X-for-us?’: the concepts that a Wittgensteinian philosophy deals with are travelling concepts’ and its method, too, has a ‘travelling’ dimension.

A question that arises then is: what determines what are possible travelling concepts? One observation concerns the role played by ‘facts of nature’. These provide limits, by do not force a particular set of concepts on us, they determine a space of possibilities, different sets of concepts that we can employ practically. Now what is interesting to note is that, on the one hand, these limits set by nature are a given: reality (nature) is what it is, but that, on the other hand, we can imagine them to be different (think: science fiction) but not in a completely unlimited way. So there is a complex dynamics between what is the case and what we can think differently, and that is a dynamics that itself changes also.

That might suggest a very open space of speculative possibilities and possibilities to speculate, but as far as Wittgenstein is concerned there is third factor that plays a key role and that limits what makes sense to do with and in that space. It is the matter of `having a point’. A language game or practice needs to have practical value, and that applies both to the ones that we have as well as to the ones we can imagine. Now practical value itself is a very diverse concept. However, it does restrict what makes senses to do in this space of imaginative possibilities. Pure imaginability is not enough: any practice, be it factual or imaginable, need to have practical value, practical meaning for us to be a practice to begin with.

To what extent Wittgenstein’s position here manages to avoid essentialism is, I guess, a moot point. It seems that Wittgenstein would consider that not a very interesting question, and that he is much more interested in how the space of possible practices is constituted and how it can change. The observation that such a plurality of such spaces exist, and that each of time changes over time, is probably for him enough to support his anti-essentialism.

Martin Stokhof
from: Aantekeningen/Notes
date: 19/20-07-2023