This post has been hanging in Limbo land for awhile, waiting for me to find time to get it finished. I haven't had much time to blog lately but hope to squeeze more blogging in. Also, I hope we can make a renewed push to get some of our on-air guests to contribute as well.

Thanks toSteven Meyerfor being our guest on recent show on thewilling suspension of disbelief．史蒂夫是我们项目上的第一位英语教授。考虑到现在哲学家和文学类型之间仍然存在着一些敌对情绪和出于不同目的的谈话，我们都或多或少地站在同一战线上，进行一次富有成效的交流是一件好事。

I've been thinking a bit more about the phenomenon of imaginative resistance and that's the main subject of this post.

I recall saying during our on-air conversation that we are inclined to go along and imagine whatever the author of a well-constructed fiction invites us to imagine. Without the slightest resistance, we accept invitations to imagine scenarios that contradict the known laws of nature or that rewrite some large or small fragment of the history of the world. We have no resistance to imagining scenarios that, on one way of measuring, might be seen as altogether metaphysically impossible. Our imaginations resist violating the most obvious laws of logic, but imagination can clearly accept the suspension of the least obvious laws of logic. If you think that quantum theory involves violation of the laws of classical logic and requires a new "quantum logic" then perhaps you should say that the imagination refuses to heed and can even help us reconfigure logic itself.

从表面上看，想象力受到的限制很少。“表面上”与这样一个事实有关，即有时要明确想象情节的具体内容有点棘手。假设我让你想象这样一个场景:肯·泰勒，萨姆和瑟瑞莎·泰勒的儿子，不是萨姆和瑟瑞莎的儿子，而是很久以前某个遥远国度里的一对想象中的皇室夫妇的儿子。你真的能想象这个人，独一无二的肯·泰勒，来自不同的父母吗?还是你真的在想象一个和我很像的人，只是父母不同，在不同的年龄出生长大?信不信由你，人们可能会花很长时间来争论这类问题。但在这里我就不这么做了。

What I'm intrigued by at the moment is the extent of our imaginative resistance to scenarios which violate the dictates of what we take to be morality. I gave the example of the show of being invited to imagine that its a morally good thing to kill a perfectly innocent child in cold blood. I think we experience a great deal of imaginative resistance to any such scenario. During the show I was taking the line that that's because our in tact moral sense is part of the "frame" relative to which we (morally) evaluate imagined scenarios. If we are asked to alter the very content of what we take to be morality, we don't really have any place to stand when it comes to morally evaluating the proffered scenario. Part of the point of imagined worlds, on this way of thinking about things, is to provide imagined experiments in living on which to exercise the moral sense.

But on further reflection while I think there is something to this line, I now think that there is less to it than I first thought. First of all, I'm a pretty thoroughgoing relativist about morality. And I think there is a certain plasticity to our moral sense. The moral sense is relentlessly pushed and pull, figured and reconfigured by all sorts of things. I suspect that the imagination plays an important role in reconfiguring our moral sense. We tell ourselves stories that enable us to gain imaginative acquaintance, for the first time, with the common humanity of those with whom we have been at odds. We tell ourselves stories that show us how much our own moral fortunes depend on moral luck. It's not to hard to imagine, for example, a story about an ordinary German, whose character differs little from our own, becoming, during the Nazi period, one of Hitler's willing executioners by a series of small steps that we ourselves might have taken in the same circumstances.

If fiction has the power to challenge and reconfigure our moral sense through invitations to re-imagine the moral order, does it follow that the we don't, after all, imaginatively resist what goes against our own current standards of morality? I think we can still say that the answer to this last question is no. But I also think one shouldn't conclude from that fact that, therefore, anything goes with respect to imagining alternative moral frameworks. We don't allow another to simply "stipulate away" the contents of our current moral sense in the same way that we do allow another to stipulate away the contents of our current best science or our current understanding of the history of the universe.

为什么会这样并不令人费解。我们的道德感与我们对生活应该是什么、社会应该如何秩序的具体概念深深交织在一起。重新想象道德秩序，不仅要重新想象与道德无关的事实，还要重新想象我们生活的基础。我们不能简单地规定这些基础，而不规定我们的道德感的生活和感觉的基础。想象杀死一个孩子是不对的，要么就是想象让我们认为孩子是无辜的，要么就是想象无辜的道德意义。我们如何在不完全改变童年观念的情况下做到这两点呢?有人让我去规定孩子们的天真无邪或者这种天真无邪的道德意义，但他却让我做了一件我不太知道该怎么做的事。当我被邀请去想象这样一个世界的时候，我不知道我被邀请去的是一个什么样的世界。没错，我也不知道曲速引擎是怎么工作的。但我知道，在一个有曲速引擎的世界里，宇宙飞船从一个地方飞到另一个地方的速度比光还快。

To be sure, there are many works of fiction that are not "aimed" at us or at people with moral senses exactly like our own. Think of fiction aimed at the members of cultures radically unlike our own in times radically unlike our own. What are we to do when we encounter such works? Might not such a work offer me a way into an alien moral order? Perhaps there are times and cultures in which children are considered the mere property of their parents rather than vessels of moral innocence to whom nurture and protection are morally due. Perhaps richly constructed scenarios of such world can provide me the wherewithal to do what I cannot do by the power of mere stipulation.

Suppose that so. How should we, here and now, regard invitations to imagine issued from such cultural milieus? Two different sorts of responses seem available. We might simply read works which issue such invitations by using our own current normative lights as our guide. That's, I suspect, is mostly what we, in fact, do when faced with such fiction. But we can also try to imaginatively project ourselves into that different moral order. The former is easy. The latter is difficult, but still perhaps psychologically possible.

Whether the latter ismorallypermissible is another question. Even if it is psychologically possible, should I permit myself to put on the moral sense of a racist, sexist, imperialist milieu in order that I am able to achieve -- what exactly? Fuller appreciation of a morally repugnent work that glorifies empire, or the subjection of women or the enslavement of peoples of color?

My gut instinct is to say no. On the other hand, it seems right that I should permit myself to be "morally stretched" by a work that challenges me, say, to expand my compassion beyond my own class and kind What's the big difference? Why should I resist the one but go along with the other?

One might answer that the one promises moral improvement, moral improvement by my own lights, while the other does not. But might I not be improved in a different way by projecting myself into the moral universe of the jerk? For example, if I want to speak with and perhaps persuade the sexist, imperialist, racist jerk to abandon his jerky ways, might it not be useful for me to gain full imaginative acquaintance with the world as that jerk sees it, might it not even be morally mandatory to equip myself as best as possible to deal with the jerk? It would be one thing, I suppose, if the invitation to imagine had the power to permanently reconfigure my moral sense, but if I think I am immune to such reconfiguration, then what?