Abstract
Vendler’s (Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale 84(2):161–173, 1979) puzzle about imagination is that the sentences ‘Imagine swimming in that water’ and ‘Imagine yourself swimming in that water’ seem at once semantically different and semantically the same. They seem semantically different, since the first requires you to imagine ’from the inside’, while the second allows you to imagine ’from the outside.’ They seem semantically the same, since despite superficial dissimilarity, there is good reason to think that they are syntactically and lexically identical. This paper sets out the puzzle and offers a novel solution. Our proposal is that, just as there is knowledge-wh (know-how, know-what etc), there is also imagining-wh (imagining-how, imagining-what etc) and that the inside/outside distinction Vendler points to is properly understood as a distinction within imagining-wh. In particular, to imagine swimming from the inside is to imagine what it feels like to swim, while to imagine swimming from the outside is to imagine what it looks like to swim. We show that this proposal is well grounded in both the semantics and syntax of ‘imagine.’ We also argue it makes better sense than its rivals of the data Vendler found so puzzling.
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Notes
Here we will not attempt to review the extremely rich literature on inside and outside imagination. Some classic contributions are Williams (1973), Wollheim (1974), Vendler (1982) (a follow-up to his [1979]), and Walton (1990). For an excellent introduction and further references, see Ninan (2008, 2016).
A helpful reader points out that ‘imagine’ is constrained in which wh-complements it accepts. For instance, one cannot imagine whether it will rain tomorrow. In his well-known discussion of interrogatives, (Karttunen 1977 p. 5) makes a similar point, noting a range of other verbs that are constrained in just this way. We will leave the question of what accounts for this restriction in the case of ‘imagine’ for future research.
For an introduction to and defence of neo-Davidsonian semantics, see Parsons (1990).
One may point out that imagining is an event rather than a state. We agree, but here we will follow the practice, common in the philosophy of mind, of using the word ‘state’ in a broad sense to pick out events, states, and processes. This fits the practice within neo-Davidsonian semantics of quantifying over eventualities—i.e. states in this very broad sense (Parsons 1990). Accordingly, we will most often talk of entering into or being the subject of states of imagining, but if need be, all of our claims could be reformulated in terms of events.
What is the nature of imagining and how does it differ from belief, memory, perception and so forth? This is obviously a huge issue, but we will not try to solve it in this paper. We will assume that imagining is a state with a distinctive functional, epistemological and phenomenal role, a role that distinguishes it from other states that have different such roles. Exactly how to specify these roles will not matter for our purposes.
Our use of the role ‘subject’ is slightly nonstandard. Where we have used ‘subject’, Parsons would use ‘agent’ or ‘experiencer’. But as we will see below, this use is forced on us by the nature of imagining, which requires us to distinguish between the individual who imagines (the subject, in our sense), the individual who does the thing imagined (the agent), and individual to whom this event is like something (the experiencer).
In the text we modify Forbes’s view slightly. Forbes’s actual view is that char is a relation between an event and a generalized quantifier—a property of properties. But here we treat char as a relation between an event and an ordinary property. Nothing we say in what follows will depend on this difference.
Two features of the the semantics for embedded questions offered by Karttunen (1977) are worth noting. First, Karttunen treats wh-interrogatives as denoting sets of what are sometimes called ‘mention-some’ answers. Second, the answers in question, on his view, must be true answers. This last point has the consequence that verbs that are not themselves factive when they take that-clause complements, such as ‘tell’, behave factively when they take wh-clause complements: ‘The verb tell with a that-complement does not entail that what is told is true; with an indirect question it does’ (Karttunen 1977, p. 11). However, this feature is controversial. While it is endorsed by Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984), Stanley and Williamson (2001), and Stanley (2011), among others, it is denied by Lahiri (2002), Egré and Spector (2007), and George (2011). We will not engage with this controversy here. In the text we will assume that Karttunen’s point about ‘tell’ holds also for ‘imagine’, but our basic points could be made in a framework that does not require wh-interrogatives to denote sets of true answers.
In discussing embedded questions, Karttunen says nothing at all about ‘imagine’; he discusses only ‘know’. On his view, in order to know-wh, one must know that p for every p that is a true, mention-some answer to the embedded question. This account of the relationship between knowing-wh and knowing-that has not been widely adopted. Here our account of interrogatives embedded under ‘imagine’ differs from Karttunen’s account of ‘know’ in that we require, for a subject to imagine-wh, only that the subject imagines that p for some p that is a true, mention-some answer to the embedded question. For similar approaches, see George (2011) and Stanley (2011).
We think that a scopal account of the distinction between specificity and nonspecificity is plausible, but will not try to defend this in the text. In fact, there are three distinctions here that have all been argued to come apart: between specific and nonspecific; between wide and narrow scope; and between de re and de dicto readings. If these distinctions do come apart, there will be many more than just two readings. However, what is important for our purposes is that there are at least two readings available for the indefinite, one of which is not existentially committing. We remain neutral here on how these two readings are best understood. For further discussion, see Montague (1974), Fodor (1970), Keshet (2008, 2011) and Gendler Szabó (2010) for further discussion.
Two things are worth emphasis here. First, we are treating ’how it feels’ and ’what it feels like’ as equivalent in the text; likewise ’how it looks’ and ’what it looks like’. There may be some differences here but these will not matter to the points we want to make. Second, we will sometimes use the infinitive ‘to swim’ as a variant on the gerund ‘swimming’, but strictly speaking our interest is in the latter.
Here it is important to recall a point we made earlier in fn. 10, namely, that on Karttunen’s semantics, imagining wh- has a factivity presupposition: if one imagines wh-, what one imagines must be true. This, together with the proposal articulated in the text, entails that both inside and outside imagining likewise have a factivity presupposition. We will not try here to deal with issues that may arise from this consequence, except to notice two points. First, we could if we wish avoid the consequence by offering slightly broader definitions of inside and outside imagining; for instance, we might treat inside imagining as either a state of imagining what something feels like or a state that would be imagining what something feels like, were its content true. Second, as also noted in fn. 10, our basic suggestions could be made even if we relinquish this feature of Karttunen’s semantics.
Concerning the status of the PRO-ing construction as a noun phrase, see Schachter (1976); Pullum (1991); Grimm and McNally (2015). Abney (1987) treats most gerundive expressions as DPs. This contrasts with the older tradition, initiated by Lees (1960); Ross (1967, 1972); Wasow and Roeper (1972) and endorsed by Chomsky (1970), on which gerunds were seen as clauses transformationally related to sentences. Concerning the semantic view that gerunds denote events, see Portner (1992); Higginbotham (2003); Grimm and McNally (2015). Grimm and McNally (2015) treat ‘swimming’ as a noun phrase that denotes an event-type.
A point made by Paul Snowdon (2010) illustrates both the stability of the connection between ‘what it’s like’ and ‘what it feels like’ and the fact that they do not literally mean the same thing. He points out that one can ask, e.g., ‘what will it be like for Britain to leave the EU?’, without asking how Britain will feel. This shows that they are non-synonymous, but the very strikingness of the example demonstrates their stable connection; it is the exception that proves the rule.
Anand (2011) provides examples similar to the funeral example, such as ‘Imagine being buried, unconscious’, that involve gerundive complements, which he claims do not have an inside reading. On the contrary, we think this sentence does ask you to imagine from the inside—it is simply impossible to comply with. Indeed, it is because it a case of inside imagination that complying with it is impossible. However, a reviewer rightly points out that this example differs importantly from imperatives such as ‘Imagine a round square’. We agree; there are two key differences. First, unlike ‘round square’, there is nothing inconsistent or unsatisfiable about the complement ‘being unconscious’ on its own. Second, even when the question concealed by the complement is made overt, as in ‘Imagine what being unconscious is like’, the imperative still can be complied with. It is only when one moves to the stereotypical interpretation, ‘Imagine what being unconscious feels like’, via a pragmatic mechanism, that the imperative is impossible to comply with.
We do not think that the question of whether the gerund is categorized as a DP rather than an NP bears on whether it can conceal a question. The main point for our purposes is that the gerund is a nominal expression, whatever its phrasal category.
What about a community of blind people? Our claim about the connection between imagining what an object is like and imagining what it looks like is that the connection is contingent, and arises, more or less, because we are inveterate visualisers. So in a community of blind people, depending on the details, it simply might not be true.
One alternative to the view we have proposed here is that (1) and (2) differ in that (2) expresses a propositional attitude while (1) does not. On this view, (2) would permit both inside and outside readings because it is simply a very general attitude—it enjoins you to imagine that you are swimming in that water—and allows you to do so in any number of ways. While this is a way of accommodating the way that (2)’s compliance conditions differ, it does not account for the syntactic data we present in the next section. Specifically, if I imagine that I am swimming in that water, it does not follow that I imagine myself—but as we will see, (2) validates exactly this inference.
An anonymous referee raises the question of how, if ‘yourself swimming’ is an instance of the ACC-ing construction, ‘yourself’ gets accusative case marking. Here we use the label ‘ACC-ing to pick out a particular kind of event-denoting gerundive construction, where the agent of the event is denoted by a DP with accusative case, but we will not adopt any particular syntactic theory of how this occurs.
See White (1986) for similar criticisms of Vendler’s proposal.
An anonymous reader points out that nothing about the reflexive on its own forces the de se reading—it may at least partly be due to the present tense.
Here our presentation ignores important distinctions between different proponents of the indexical view. For example, the forms of the indexical view endorsed by Recanati, Higginbotham, and Ninan all differ significantly in how they are implemented. However, our arguments against this view are addressed to points on which they all agree, and so the differences will not concern us.
For comments and reactions, we are grateful to Ryan Cox, Bronwyn Finnigan, Kristina Liefke, the audience at the Bochum Language Colloquium, and three anonymous reviewers for this journal.
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This article is part of the topical collection “Imagination and its Limits”, edited by Amy Kind and Tufan Kiymaz.
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D’Ambrosio, J., Stoljar, D. Vendler’s puzzle about imagination. Synthese 199, 12923–12944 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03360-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03360-9