Brian’s Research
December 06, 2003 06:39 PM
Brian Weatherson lists his areas of interest and research, and provides this interesting topic under the heading of "Imagination."
Brian’s Research:We can … imagine the logically impossible, such as a person both dying and not dying in 1985. (We accept invitations to imagine such things all the time in cheap time-travel stories.) But in certain respects we cannot imagine the world is morally different. We cannot imagine that gratuitous acts of torture are morally praiseworthy. And what goes for imagination goes for truth in fiction. We cannot have a story in which it is true that gratuitous acts of torture are morally praiseworthy, although we can of course have stories in which such acts are widely praised.
