Imagination

Random thoughts on random topics

Martin Stokhof Various Tags: ,
La Vieille, Finistère

Imagine this

This is the situation: I observe something happening and I imagine that I tell someone about it, in all details, i.e., including the fact that I imagine that I tell someone about it, in all details, i.e., including the fact that I imagine that I imagine that I tell someone about it, in all details, i.e., …

What does this show? That I can simply create an impossible situation from a contingent one. I observe something happening and I intend to tell someone about it: that is contingent. I also intend to tell someone about this intention: that, too, is contingent. Now I intend to tell everything, i.e., including this intention: that is impossible. To put it differently, the content of my intention (‘And then I will say: I saw something happening …, and then I thought, I should tell someone about it …’) cannot contain the intention itself: if the intention becomes part of the content, it is part of the content of another intention created by that.

The source of the impossibility seems to be self-reflection, in much the same way as self-reference forms the root of the Liar paradox. What can be concluded from this? A parallel that suggests itself is that with regressing awareness. I can be aware of my environment, myself, my actions, my thoughts, … I can also be aware of the fact that I am aware of my environment, myself, … But being aware of everything, including my awareness of that awareness is impossible: content and awareness can never coincide.

Martin Stokhof
from: Aantekeningen/Notes
date: 13/02/1992

Rambling thoughts on random topics

Martin Stokhof Wittgenstein Tags: ,
New York

Imagination

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 398:

[…] Think of a picture of a landscape, an imaginary landscape with a house in it. –Someone asks “Whose house is that?” – The answer, by the way, might be “It belongs to the farmer who is sitting on the bench in front of it”. But then he cannot, for example, step into his house.

A possible interpretation. Perhaps we should read Wittgenstein here as follows: Whenever we imagine something it is our responsibility to determine what it is that we are imagining. So, we can imagine a landscape, and a house, and a man sitting on the bench in front to the house. And it is we who can say: ‘That’s the owner of the house.’ (And not, say, the guy in the field in the distance who is also part of this imagined landscape.) Now what Wittgenstein might mean when he says ‘But then he can not for example enter his home’ is this: If that is going to happen, it is not because the man himself decides to do that, but because we imagine that as well. That is to say, everything about the picture, and in the picture, is the responsibility of the one who imagines it. (Which need not be the maker: if it is an actual picture, it could be anyone who is looking at it.) This way of reading the passage puts it more in line with the point that Wittgenstein makes in the same section, immediately before, viz., the lack of ‘ownership’ of the visual room. 

Martin Stokhof
from: PI Discussion Board
date: spring 2016