I was sitting at a bar last week, when I had the misfortune of being asked the following question by the person next to me. In a profound tone of voice: “Do you believe in the Law of Attraction?”

The so-called Law of Attraction is one of the cornerstones of New Age positive thinking, and one version of it (out of many) goes like this:if you sincerely believe with all your power that you already have what you want, then it will come to you.

例如，如果你想进入法学院，那么根据吸引力法则，你应该“尽你所有的力量”相信你已经被录取了——然后你就会被录取。如果你想拥有一段浪漫的关系，你应该尽你所能去相信……

Being asked this put me in the unfortunate position of trying to navigate between politeness and honesty. Honesty would yield a brusk dismissal of this so-calledlaw of the universe，我的谈话对象很喜欢。出于礼貌，应该给出更温和的评价。

I decided to attempt a middle route, which involved pointing out that the Law of Attraction is a textbook case of what Dan Dennett calls adeepity.

“什么?我的谈话伙伴问道。

A deepity, as Dennettcharacterizes it, is a sentence or other utterance that has more than one interpretation; it has “two readings and balances precariously between them. On one reading it is true but trivial, and on another it is false but would be earth-shattering if true.”

Dennett’s toy example of a deepity is this: “Love is just a word.”

Consider these two readings:

1. “Love” is just a word.
2. Love is just a word.

The first is obviously true—the string of four letters inside the quotation marks really just is a word. But the second, while itseemsprofound in some way, is false: as Dennett points out, love might be an emotion, or a relation, or a commitment, or many possible things, but it’s not aword! Words are strings of sound or written marks that constitute a unit of language—loveitselfis not one ofthose.

The impact of deepities arises as follows: the first reading convinces you of its truth, while the second reading convinces you that it says something profound, even mind blowing.

So I explained this to my conversation partner in relation to the Law of Attraction. First, there isa阅读它是真实的，但却是微不足道的，也就是说:在你的脑海中呈现某物通常是获得它的工具;毕竟，如果你清楚地表达你想要的东西，这可能会帮助你弄清楚如何得到它。但这并不比祖父母建议你提前计划和考虑你的目标更有见地，它当然也不意味着任何像万有引力定律这样具有宇宙意义的东西。Second, there is a reading of the so-called law that would be earth shattering if true:justby intensely visualizing, wanting, and believing you have something—poof!—you have it…the universe will align itself to make it happen. And yes, that would be completely amazing. But obviously, it’s false. Magic, I explained, doesn’t actually exist.

The disappointment on my conversation partner’s face was palpable. I enjoyed my drink in relative peace after that.

But that conversation did get me thinking, and that takes us to the question of this blog.Are deepities always bad?

For hard-nosed analytic philosophers, the immediate impulse is to sayyes. After all, clarity is next to godliness, as one of my former professors liked to say. And deepities are the opposite of clear. Furthermore, deepities seem to convince by equivocation, which is a hateful tactic in the circles in which I move.

But in the last couple of days I thought of another perspective on deepities—at least some of them—that I wanted to float without actually endorsing.

平凡的阅读“吸引力法则”是一个很好的建议，尽管它很无聊。常识告诉我们，在脑海中清晰地呈现某样东西可以帮助你获得它，只要你也想出如何到达那里的中间步骤。(I suggested something similar under the headinghonest imagining早在2009年)。但平凡的阅读并没有那么令人兴奋。所以深度结构的心理力量可能是它将平凡的阅读与令人惊讶的事物结合起来，从而增加与平凡阅读相关的动机和持久力。这是一套令人兴奋的明智建议，可能真的很有帮助。

I confess, however, that I’m shocked that I just wrote that. As a philosopher, I’ve been a fan of Harry Frankfurt’sOn Bullshit(alsothis episodeof中国伊朗亚洲杯比赛直播), which in various ways implies that representations such as deepities are deleterious to ethical life and honest communication. So I don’twantdeepities to be good. Still, I have a sneaking suspicion that a well-chosen deepity or two (which might be few and far between) could provide useful motivational mantras, for any task from getting in shape to overcoming a drug addiction.

Ultimately, of course, empirical evidence will have to decide whether deepities happen to work in the useful way I just suggested. I remain skeptical—most are probably just useless quackery that works on weak minds like revelation (to use Karl Popper’s phrase)—but I can’t rule it out either. Either way, however, I do think we should have a default presumption against them: ambiguity is often an impediment to acquiring knowledge, which is valuable both practically and intrinsically.

In any case, my now more open stance toward the earth-shattering half of any given deepity might make my conversation partner happy to hear about, if she ever does. And for all I know, she could be at a bar somewhere right this moment,believing with all her mightthat I might one day come around…