A post by Christopher Badura

According to Aaron Smuts prescriptions to imagine are rare:

we might ask if we are ever morally required to imagine something or another. Some might think that we are occasionally morally required to imagine ourselves in another’s shoes, so to speak. But this kind of prescription is unusual. Prohibitions on imagining are far more familiar, though still rare. (Smuts, 2016, p. 381)

I’ll discuss an example, suggesting that obligations to believe entail obligations to imagine.[i] Since similar cases occur frequently, prescriptions to imagine are quite common – counting tokens.[ii]

Suppose child A hits child B on the head with a shovel. Parent C observes this. C blames A and exclaims “What if someone did that to you?”, “Would you want that done to you?”, “Imagine you were B”, or something similar. This example is familiar, and instantiates a general case in which A wrongs B and some other person C blames A.[iii]

Below, I argue that C (correctly) presupposes an obligation for A to believe that they do not want to be hit, or, generally, don’t desire being subjected to the action(-type) they subjected someone else to. Second, I argue that this obligation entails an obligation to imagine. I assume that C believes this version of the Golden Rule:[iv]

GR: if one doesn’t desire X to be done to oneself, then one shouldn’t do X (to others).

I think GR suggests itself due to C’s exclamation. Pragmatics suggests that C intends with their exclamation that A comes to realize that A doesn’t desire being hit. If A also accepted GR (and was rational), A would accept that they shouldn’t hit B.[v]

Moreover, I assume that an ethical system typically comes with a doxastic Meta-Norm, namely, we should believe all norms of the system:[vi]

MN: if GR, then we should believe GR.

I assume C accepts MN, too. From GR and MN, we can derive[vii] that if it ought to be that one believes that one doesn’t desire that X is done to oneself, it should be that one believes that one shouldn’t do X. Or, in plain(er) English,

Principle 1: if one should believe that one doesn’t desire X, then one should believe that one shouldn’t do X.

Assuming C is rational, C accepts Principle 1 because it follows from GR and MN. Moreover, from any of C’s questions/requests, one can reasonably conclude that C expects A to admit (and believe) that they don’t desire being hit. Consider “Would you want that done to you?” When asking this question, C expects A to answer “no”. Of course, in the other two cases, A could reply “well, I’d hit back” or something similar. I think it’s fair to assume, this isn’t an answer that would satisfy C. Similarly, for “Imagine how B must feel”. This request aims to establish that A comes to believe that A doesn’t want to feel how B feels. Hence, C thinks that A should believe that A doesn’t desire being hit.[viii] Consequently, C accepts the antecedent of Principle 1 and thus presupposes that there is an obligation for A to believe that they don’t want to be hit.

But how does C get A to believe that they don’t want to be hit? I suggest that imagination plays a key role here. C wants A to believe that A doesn’t want to be hit by a shovel and points out a means of how to come to believe this, namely considering a “What if”-scenario, or explicitly asking A to imagine something. Although this is not accepted by everyone, a great deal of philosophers, cognitive scientists and others hypothesize that imagination is involved in evaluating “What if”-statements.[ix] So, in asking A to consider a scenario in which A was hit, C is asking A to imagine such a scenario. By requesting A to consider how A would feel if hit, C points out that imagining being in such a situation is a means for A to achieve a belief that A doesn’t want to be hit.

Now consider the following principle:

Principle 2: If it ought to be that X and Y is a means to achieve X (and Y doesn’t conflict with other norms), one ought to do Y.

From this it follows that A should imagine being hit. So, assuming that C’s presupposition is correct, A should imagine being wronged in the way they wronged B (or imagine being B, etc.).[x]

Someone might object to Principle 2: imagining being hit might not be the only means to acquire the belief that one doesn’t want to be hit. Suppose there are other means to acquire the belief that one doesn’t want to be hit, and hence, one should see to it that these means obtain. Such an obligation doesn’t necessarily conflict with an obligation to imagine that one doesn’t want to be hit. Moreover, even if there is a conflict between norms, this doesn’t mean that either of the norms loses its force in general or is not present in the scenario. It might just be trumped by the other one in a specific scenario and it is acted according to the trumping norm.[xi]

Finally, A might fail to come to believe that they don’t want to be hit based on their imagination for whatever reason. They might even like being hit. But this is independent from the obligation to believe that one doesn’t desire being hit, and the corresponding obligation to imagine being hit. If there is such an obligation to believe, there’s also the corresponding obligation to imagine.

Notes

[i] I use “obligation” and “prescription” synonymously. Similarly, I use “ought”, (normative) “should” and “must” synonymously.

[ii] I investigate elsewhere whether my case study can be generalized and thus that there are even many type-prescriptions to imagine.

[iii] As will become clear below, C doesn’t only blame A for their action, but also for failing to hold a certain belief. Such doxastic blame is different from blaming actions, see, e.g., (Peels, 2017), (Basu, 2018).

[iv] For other formulations, see (Puka, 2020). It is for another post, or maybe a paper, to explore other versions of The Golden Rule and other ethical principles at work, e.g., the categorical imperative, or some consequentialist principle.

[v] I’ll go into more detail below, and I’ll also mention why GR alone doesn’t suffice to establish that A ought to imagine being hit by a shove, see also fn. ix below.

[vi] If this meta-norm doesn’t hold, what’s the point of the ethical system? If we don’t have to believe the norms, why should we act according to them?

[vii] To derive this, it is assumed that belief, ought-to-do, and ought-to-be, are each modeled by a normal modal operator. ("Normal" means that each operator satisfies the K axiom and the rule of necessitation and that we can use modus ponens).

[viii] This is in fact, why GR and C’s exclamation alone do not suffice to establish the obligation to imagine. It is because C wants A to believe that A doesn’t desire being hit by a shovel that C wants A to imagine being hit by a shovel.

[ix] See, e.g., (Byrne, 2005), (Williamson, 2007) for endorsing that imagination is used in evaluating conditionals (especially counterfactuals), and see (Mallozzi, forthcoming) criticizing Williamson’s account.

[x] The various expressions used to express that A ought to imagine something might differ in what they ask A to imagine, e.g., imagine being in B’s situation,  imagine how B must feel, imagine how A would feel in B’s situation, etc. All I need for my argument here is that A ought to imagine something. See (Roelofs, forthcoming) for a discussion of the relation between the various expressions.

[xi] For example, this is witnessed by the “Conflict of Laws” (Hay, Drobnig, & Rheinstein, 2018).

References

Basu, R. (2018). Can Beliefs Wrong? Philosophical Topics, 46(1), pp. 1-17.

Byrne, R. M. (2005). The Rational Imagination. How People Create Alternatives t o Reality. The MIT Press.

Edgington, D. (2020). Indicative Conditionals. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/conditionals/

Hay, P., Drobnig, U. M., & Rheinstein, M. (2018, April 12). Conflict of laws. (I. Encyclopædia Britannica, Editor) Retrieved September 14, 2020, from Encyclopædia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/conflict-of-laws/The-nature-of-conflicts-law

Mallozzi, A. (forthcoming). Superexplanations for Counterfactual Knowledge. Philosophical Studies.

Peels, R. (2017). Responsible Belief: A Theory in Ethics and Epistemology. Oxford University Press.

Puka, B. (2020). The Golden Rule. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 09 03, 2020, from https://iep.utm.edu/goldrule/

Ramsey, F. P. (1929). General Propositions and Causality. In D. H. Mellor (Ed.), Philosophical Papers (pp. 145-163). Cambridge University Press.

Roelofs, L. (forthcoming). "Imagine if they did that to you!": Self-Reference in Empathy and Imagination. In C. Badura, & A. Kind (Eds.). Epistemic Uses of Imagination. Routledge.

Williamson, T. (2007). The Philosophy of Philosophy. Oxford University Press.

Williamson, T. (2020). Suppose and Tell. Oxford University Press.