Conceiving as Evidence of Possibility

Abstract

In this thesis I argue that at least one type of conceiving, namely imagining, provides reliable evidence of non-actual metaphysical possibility. My argument requires two main tasks. I need to show that conceiving can provide evidence at all of mere (non-actual) metaphysical possibilities. To put it another way, how could what we imagine or otherwise conceive stand in any representational relation whatsoever to a mere possibility? I argue by analogy with perception that the contents of our imaginings correspond with (some) merely possible states of affairs. Imagination is not perception of merely possible objects, of course. If one imagines that an F is G, the imagining indicates that a certain class could be non-empty—namely, the class of Fs that are G. This position is meant to avoid the specificity problem famously raised by Quine (1948) and emulated by Paul Tidman (1994). I also need to explain how conceiving that p, where p is a proposition, say, can reliably lead to true beliefs about p’s possibility. I do not have a unified or knock-down argument to this effect, but I do offer several reasons to think that such a connection obtains.