Persuasion and Imagination in Philosophy

Persuasion and Imagination in Philosophy

Persuasion clearly plays a large role in philosophical practice. We do it by means of logical argument based upon generally accepted premises; we don’t tend to marshal new evidence. In consequence of this we encounter a good deal of refutation, or at least resistance and rejection. We try to persuade people and respond to their objections. We are trained to be good at it, with some better than others. We also make liberal use of the imagination: we imagine possible scenarios and construct thought experiments. Do these activities have counterparts elsewhere? Indeed they do—in human life and in other species. People and animals act persuasively all the time, and also use their imagination. We philosophers are employing basic biological traits. What kinds of persuading and imagining are most common and salient in human and animal populations? I take it that I will surprise and shock no one if I cite sexual varieties of these talents: animals persuade other animals to mate with them, and human beings (I don’t know about animals) engage in sexual fantasy. Attempts at procreative persuasion may be met with rejection and resistance, just like philosophical arguments. Sexual imagination can be more or less ingenious and can be performed alone. It is a not implausible theory that imagination in general stems from sexual imagination, though the biological function of such imagination is obscure (private practice?). A person might, on occasion, imagine a sexual act and then try to persuade someone else to do it with them. Persuasion and imagination are clearly basic human traits, and sex is just as clearly written deep into them.

The point I am laboriously leading up to is that (you guessed it!) these two traits lend to philosophy an erotic edge—a sexual vibe. All that persuading and imagining, performing and fantasizing! I hereby offer the following compelling proof of this bold conjecture: you can “proposition” someone for sex and you can also do it when delivering a philosophy paper (“I would like you to accept the following proposition”). You are trying to get their assent. You are trying to persuade someone to believe that p, and you are trying to persuade someone to agree to F (you see what I did there). When you invite your audience to imagine a state of affairs in a philosophy talk, you are asking them to do something resembling sexual fantasy. The same faculty is being activated. If your talk is about the philosophy of sex, you might ask them to imagine merely possible ways of having sex. The sexual connotations of persuasion and imagination will not trail far behind, contributing to the sexual aura of the activity. Socrates was always propositioning people in the marketplace. Kant was a tireless seducer (of opinion). Russell had a highly alluring patois. Sartre knew how to turn on the dialectical charm. Wittgenstein knew how to mesmerize. Of course, we suppress these connotations normally, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that they operate somewhere in the background. The mind is susceptible to natural affinities. They can be added to other ways in which sex and philosophy intersect, as I have discussed elsewhere.[1]

[1] See various papers on this blog. The social psychology of philosophy should not be ignored: theatrical performance, charisma, humor, style, competition, intellectual fashion, peacocking, charm. In Plato’s Symposium, the assembled individuals relax on couches, eating and drinking, and proceed to give rousing speeches on love, aiming for persuasion, employing imaginative examples; the atmosphere is thoroughly sexualized. Socrates is the star turn and he turns in an erotically charged performance in front of his would-be lover Alcibiades. This is the model for many a philosophical “symposium”.