Why Do We Imagine?

If we ask why humans perceive and remember, the answer is not far to seek: for the same reason many animals, particularly mammals, perceive and remember, viz. these are obviously useful traits to possess. They enable the reception and storage of information. There is no evolutionary puzzle about the existence of perception and memory in humans (though aspects of these traits can be puzzling). The function of such traits is evident and indisputable (compare muscle and bone). But what about imagination? Imagination isn’t about the reception and storage of information, so it can seem frivolous and surplus to requirements; and it is not so commonly possessed as perception and memory. In fact, it is hard to know which animals possess it—there is no obvious behavioral sign of imaginative mental activity. Do cats and dogs have mental images? If so, can they control them as we can? Can a dog form the image of a horse with a human head? How would we find out? Can a gorilla imagine that he is floating down a river or is hairless? We don’t know. What does seem clear, however, is that human imagination is particularly vivid, extensive, and creative: we are imaginative creatures, endowed with powerful imaginations. The question is why: what led us to acquire such a faculty, and what function did it (and does it) perform? What kind of selective pressure worked on us to develop a brain that permits imaginative mental acts? What’s it for? Why are we so extravagantly imaginative?

We need something specific not just airy handwaving about the glories of the human mind. I think we already have the materials with which to answer the question: it is because we are explorers and travelers, geographically curious and peripatetic; and also, we are builders of artifacts, particularly homes. We are nomadic and industrious: we go on journeys and we make useful objects. To do these things, and to do them intentionally, we need to envisage and anticipate the intended goal: a new habitat, a new dwelling. And this involves the use of imagination—conjuring up in the mind’s eye what it is we seek to achieve. We dream of foreign lands and commodious residences, even if they are only on the other side of that mountain or a modest bamboo shack (we are to think of early humans with realistic goals). Animals that stay put and don’t build anything have no pressing need for an imagination, but once a creature sets out to take a trip or build a home it is necessary for it to picture the future. Expeditions and construction projects are exercises in future management, and imagination is the faculty by which the future is represented. Cats perceive the present and remember the past, but they don’t (as far as we know) imagine the future—they don’t plan, as humans do. We are future-oriented beings, and so we have a use for a faculty of imagination. Migratory and nest-building animals may also have a use for the imagination, envisaging (predicting, expecting) the results of their labors—birds, for example. Whales don’t build nests but they do take long trips, perhaps imagining their destination (all the tasty plankton they will eat). By the time humans mastered the maritime arts they were in full imaginative swing, picturing far-off exotic lands in specially constructed house-like boats. So, we get a neat explanation of imagination based on materials already employed in the explanation of spoken language and intelligent thought, which is a nice confirmation of the overall approach. Imagination enables us to migrate better and build better, so it has adaptive advantage. This is why we are so singularly imaginative, the imagination champions of the animal world—we simply have a greater use for the imagination. Possibly, construction-directed imagination came first, soon after our descent from the trees, to be followed by a re-deployment of the imagination in the search for new territories, and later to flower into the many realms in which imagination now flourishes. Imagination wasn’t just a gratuitous excrescence that added to our enjoyment of life (art, literature, the opera); it was a biological necessity, what stood between us and extinction. For we could not live without imagining future artifacts and hunting grounds—these mental acts enabled us to make the imagined things into realities. Imagination enabled us to defeat tigers and the cold (by building protective dwellings) and prey scarcity and rival tribes (by moving to new territories).

You must be wondering: what about sexual fantasy? What explains that? Good question—because what we have so far falls short of an adequate explanation of the human activity of sexual imagining. True, there is an element of planning and walking around, and so imagining the future; but other animals manage sex without a full-blooded sexual imagination. Nor is there much in the way of house building in sexual fantasy. And it has to be admitted that human sexual imagination is strikingly lively, forceful, time-consuming, and tenacious—why so animated, so gripping? Evidently, we need to introduce a further explanatory factor, over and above travel and carpentry work. The obvious thought is that sex needs to overcome some sort of barrier and sexual fantasy has been enlisted in that effort. Certainly, sexual desire is intimately linked to sexual fantasy, each driving the other—in particular, fantasy makes us want sex more. Without it wouldn’t sex be less compelling, more routine, not as…imaginative? But what kind of barrier might a lively sexual imagination operate to overcome? I can think of two possibilities: violence and disease. To engage in sex is to risk violence: the partners are physically vulnerable, especially the female; defloration can be painful and bloody; the act of intercourse can look and sound violent (I have read that shark sex actually is quite violent, the male shark biting off chunks of the female!). All this is enough to inhibit a sensible creature from engaging in sex, especially a female human; so, it might be necessary to subdue such fears with a compelling desire-infused sexual imagination. This suggestion has the obvious problem that it applies primarily to the female (though some mating female spiders are notoriously homicidal), but the male also has a strong sexual imagination. Thus, the disease explanation recommends itself: both partners could be equally afraid of disease and hence disinclined to engage in sexual intercourse. Recall the prevalence of syphilis in earlier ages (it was probably much worse in prehistoric times when the genetic blueprint was laid down). That would be the end of the line as far as the genes are concerned—no more intercourse, therefore no gene survival. True, the partners might not survive long after the sexual act if it involves the transmission of a deadly disease, or even a debilitating one; but not to have sexual intercourse at all is far worse as far as the genes are concerned. So, they need to install a trait that works against the fear of disease—they accordingly pump up the sexual imagination. They make it into a Siren song, an offer that can’t be refused, a hard Yes (so to speak). They make it scream, “Do it!” So, the biological explanation of the human sexual imagination is that it is designed as a counterweight to disease phobia (or rational disease avoidance). It blots out the prudential pleadings of the disease-avoidance instincts of the organism–brackets them, silences them. Other animals have no knowledge of STDs, so happily proceed to the main event in blissful ignorance (there is actually a lot of sexually borne disease in animal populations); they thus have no need of an irresistible sexual imagination that gets them over the hump. But humans are sexually inhibited in this respect, so the genes have resorted to the expedient of installing a gadget that de-activates the fear reflex—a red hot sex-picturing device. Sexual fantasy is thus explained as a mechanism of (understandable) fear management.

According to the preceding theory, human sexuality is the product of a war conducted at the level of the genes (among other things). We have a gene for shunning sex (I am oversimplifying) and we also have a gene for welcoming it (ditto). The human sexual imagination is a consequence of that war. This kind of conflict or ambivalence is not uncommon in genetic programming: we may be genetically disposed to eat mushrooms, but also wary of eating a strange-looking fungus; or a stag may wish to obtain mating privileges over another stag, but not relish butting heads with that stag. Animals want to keep safe (and their genes want that too) but they also want get ahead in life. Just so, humans want sex but they also want to avoid catching the diseases associated with it. The genes must balance risk from intercourse with the necessity of impregnation; according to the present theory, they designed the human sexual imagination so as to overcome the inhibitory effects of disease avoidance. Both of these imperatives are strong, because they bear directly on gene reproduction, and so sexual imagination is a site of warring emotions—fear and desire combined. By all means take a risk, the genes say, but don’t take too much of a risk. The sexual urge must be powerful but not overwhelming. That is the explanation of its distinctive phenomenology and causal profile. If we add it to the previous two factors—travel and homemaking—we get the evolutionary origins of human imagination in general. Speech, thought, and imagination cluster together around these basic facts of human biology. They reflect ground-floor biological imperatives (travel, build, reproduce).[1]

[1] I hope readers have the good sense to take gene personification with a grain of salt: it is simply convenient shorthand, easily dispensable in favor of more cumbersome formulations. Also, of course, I am presenting theory-sketches here; much more work, conceptual and empirical, would need to be done.

Why Do We Speak?

As has often been remarked, language is a rare biological accomplishment. It is not spread widely across the animal world and took billions of years to evolve. I am referring here to communicative speech not the cognitive machinery that underlies human linguistic competence (which may be directed more towards the use of language as an aid to thought). I want to know why we spend so much time and energy chatting, speechifying, conversing, and asserting—that avalanche of speech acts. The question is pressing because most animals get by without speech, or only rudimentary forms of speech (signaling, directing, expressing). Why do we humans talk so much? After all, speech is costly: the brain has to use up energy in order to speak, which imposes metabolic demands. So, our question might better be put as why most animals don’t speak—why do they get on perfectly well without the incessant communicating. The first thing to say is that speaking supplies information: it gives the hearer knowledge, remedies his ignorance, enables his learning. That is the purpose of speech, its function and rationale. It presupposes relevant ignorance—that the hearer doesn’t know what he or she needs to know. Evidently, animals don’t experience this problem: they don’t need assertions by others (teaching, instructing) in order to function biologically (survive, reproduce). They know by instinct or individual learning (sometimes with a bit of parental nudging) what to do when. Plants need no verbal instruction on how to live their lives, and neither do bacteria, worms, reptiles, and most mammals. So, why do we? If we knew the answer to that, we would know why we speak—speaking being a means of instruction. What is the cause of our relevant ignorance?

Suppose you live in a small social group in an environment that is pretty uniform and predictable—as it might be, the corner of some jungle or other. You never go anywhere far from home and you never meet anyone new. Everything you need to know can be picked up by direct experience plus a dose of instinct. You don’t use sophisticated tools or cooperate much with other people on large construction projects. Then, you really don’t have much use for language, because you know what you need to know. If anyone were to offer to tell you something, you would say (or think) “Yes, I know that”. You would regard it as a waste of your valuable time to be listening to the verbal reports of others about where such-and-such is or what to do about a so-and-so. Nor would you feel any desire to tell other people things—you know that they know already. In such circumstances, speech would not evolve—what would be the point? You would be like a mollusk or a marmot—literally speechless. But imagine that you had cause to move, to travel, to migrate—to go far away, to distant lands, where things are different. You and your group relocate to somewhere completely new, requiring quite different practical knowledge, where your old knowledge will not cut it survival-wise. Suppose, indeed, that you become rootless, nomadic, forever changing your environment. Then speech would become an asset: you can learn a lot from your fellow man by listening to what he or she has to say. Each person in the group may possess information not possessed by everyone, and this would be a valuable characteristic—he who knows most and can communicate it becomes a valued member of society. It might be a matter of life and death: where the food and water are to be found, what trees make the best huts, where the predators lurk, etc. Language solves (or helps to solve) the relevant ignorance problem. Natural selection then begins its patient work; and before you know it, human speech has achieved its mature form, to be exploited for less practical ends too. So, the reason humans speak and other animals don’t is that humans have traveled all over the globe for many thousands of years, occupying new habitats, learning local facts, and communicating these facts to each other. And, of course, we know that this happened: from Africa to the Arctic, from Norway to England, from Manchester to Liverpool—always encountering new conditions and challenges. The gypsy is the original speaker. Stay-at-homes tend to stay mum. Language is all about geographical education, originally and primitively.[1]

But isn’t there an obvious objection to this story–what about migratory animals, like birds, bison, and whales? They don’t have anything like human language and yet they yearly find themselves in fresh and contrasting environments. So, the migration story can’t be sufficient for language (though it may be necessary). Here we run up against the complexities of evolution, its multi-factor nature. First, it is notable that birds and whales are more verbal than most animals: they have elaborate communication systems, some more than others. Second, the variations in their environment are relatively limited and fixed—nothing like human exploration and variety in modes of living. Third, there is another factor at work in addition to the multiple environment problem, namely the relatively long maturation period of human childhood. Human children require lengthy instruction over many years before they can survive independently, so they need more verbal coaching and guidance than other animal offspring. They need an education in a more or less formal sense. Without a verbal education they would be much slower to develop the skills and knowledge necessary for survival. The family accordingly becomes a linguistic unit—the source of educational speech. Human children have a lot to learn about both the physical and social environment, and this would be difficult without language as a means of learning. Transporting children to a new home (biological niche) poses a significant challenge to parents; they need language to meet that educational challenge. Whales face a similar problem, though not as severe as in the case of humans, and it is notable that they have a relatively sophisticated system of communication, thus confirming the migration theory. Mark, however, that language is rare in the animal kingdom—it doesn’t evolve simply because it is nice to have, or the reason for species dominance; for it imposes significant costs that have be borne by the animal’s brain and vocal organs. There has to be a clear reason for it to take root and grow—an adaptive demand that it meets. And the demand has to be specific and necessary—as the migration theory (the diaspora theory) recognizes. Humans are uniquely widespread and environmentally adaptable, and also uniquely linguistic: the two things go together. They go together because they are connected: the former explains the latter. The explanation has nothing to do with such facts as that humans have “big brains” or “enquiring minds” or “complicated thoughts”; it has to do with a basic fact of human physical evolution, viz. inter-continental travel. We are the globe-trotting species and therefore the speaking species, the exploring species and therefore the fact-stating species. We rely on each other’s speech in order to navigate the alien territories that we encounter on our travels. We wander; therefore, we communicate. If we stayed boringly at home, we would remain silent, except for the odd sigh or grunt, because there would be nothing worth talking about, nothing new and interesting to report. Meaningful speech requires novelty, presupposes ignorance, and aims for enlightenment. Knowledge is thus the enemy of language—that is, generally shared knowledge. Language requires asymmetries of knowledge, and they arise when novel things have to be learned. Travel, as they say, broadens the mind—and it gives you something important to talk about. Sitting around the same campfire every night with the same old people provides little in the way of lively topics of conversation: “I saw a new rat today” will only get you so far in the conversation game. And remember that a trait like language will only be selected by evolution if it serves some vital purpose; otherwise, it is an energy suck. Humans could only survive in new environments if they acquired the ability to talk about them, the better to tame them. The basic speech act is: “You’ll never guess what I saw today”.

Language is like clothing. Back there in old Africa there was little need for clothing, given the temperatures, but colder climates call for heavier garments. As humans spread out across the globe, clothes became a necessary tool of survival; so, they were invented. Other animals don’t bother, though a change of habitat can prove lethal. Humans dress because they travel—because they have come from somewhere far away with a different climate. They are the only species to do so. Clothing didn’t evolve because of a taste for fashion but because changes of geographical location necessitated it. We dress because we live in environments that differ from the environment in which the human race initially evolved (a tropical climate). Of course, clothes take on new functions and meanings once they have been adopted, but their initial biological rationale arises from survival requirements under conditions of diaspora. Novelty of environment, occasioned by travel, is the trigger and shaper of the new adaptation. No doubt these acquisitions (speech and dress) were gradual and halting; people didn’t start dressing and speaking overnight. They are still being refined and perfected. But they didn’t happen in a vacuum; they were driven by the need to adapt to the variegated planet on which we live and move. Clothing arose because people were too cold without it; speech arose because people were too ignorant without it. Cold new worlds led to dressing and speaking; to put it simply, it was Europe that did it. Did our distant ancestors (say, Homo erectus) speak in Africa before they spread to other continents? The migration hypothesis suggests they did not, or not much, but it is hard to say. Maybe our prehistoric ancestors were contentedly taciturn, secure in their familiar world, locally omniscient, not in need of updates and news reports. That is how apes seem to us today (not that we evolved from any of these species)—quietly going about their business with only the most rudimentary linguistic skills. But perhaps our ancestors were actually quite chatty, if they had arrived from somewhere else in Africa, or were still adjusting to life on the ground after their descent from trees. I see the human race as accelerating their pace of language development as they reached new destinations with different wildlife, different predators, different weather patterns, different land elevations—then they became really loquacious. They excitedly report what they have seen that day to their curious neighbors. That was when human nature, as we know it today, was forged—clothes, speech, endless learning, perpetual restlessness. We are deracinated creatures in our essence. We talk because we are of no fixed abode.[2]

[1] A consequence of this emphasis on travel and geography is that space and time will have a central place in language (a Kant-Strawson theme): what we primarily talk about will be places, what is at them, and how long it takes to get from A to B (not sense data and the like). Our linguistic scheme will be fundamentally spatiotemporal. Call this naturalized (biologized) linguistics.

[2] Some say that we are essentially rational, some that we are essentially free, some that we are essentially warlike, some that we are essentially sinful; I say that we are essentially homeless. This is our great anxiety, but also our great strength, the reason for our species dominance. It makes us able to boldly go where no other animal has been before. Without language that would not be possible. Language is the adaptation that permitted unlimited geographical dispersal.

Anthropocentric Physical Empiricism

Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge derives from something called “experience”. Alternatively, all (non-trivial) knowledge comes from the senses. Knowledge is ultimately reducible to “impressions” or “sense data” originating in the human sense organs. In some forms it takes on a metaphysical cast: all of realityderives from experience and is reducible to it. Thus, phenomenalism is empiricism with respect to the external world. Both knowledge and reality come down to sense data—epistemological and metaphysical empiricism. But it is seldom observed that this doctrine can be pushed further: all knowledge (and possibly all reality) derives from, or reduces to, the activities of the sense organs. Impressions cause ideas, sense data cause beliefs, but activity in the eyes and ears (etc.) cause impressions and sense data—the latter are “copies” of the former. The physical sense organs are the conduits through which information flows. Let’s be more specific: it is retinal stimulation and eardrum vibration that cause experiences—the activation of the rods and cones in the eye, the quivering of the tympanic membrane in the ear. These connect with deeper structures, such as the optic nerve and the cochlear, but they are where the body and the world make initial contact. So, really, the empiricist should be saying that all knowledge traces back to the retina and the eardrum (also the skin, nose, and mouth, but these are less important to knowledge than the other two senses, especially vision). Clearly, the retina and the eardrum are physical (bodily) and anthropocentric (species-specific): so, knowledge is held to reduce to bits of human anatomy and physiology, these being the causal origins of experience (whatever quite that is). There is no human knowledge but that these bodily structures are involved—that does not go through these structures. Likewise for metaphysical empiricism.

Already we are wondering if that can be right, given that knowledge is mental and the retina and ear drum are physical (biological). But putting that aside, there is this worry: how can such small and localized entities constitute all of human knowledge (and possibly all the world)? Does our knowledge of reality really reduce to irritations in the small patch of tissue known as the retina? You might reply that visual experience is a good deal more than the retina: it has representational content, is conscious, and figures in reasoning. That is what true empiricism takes to be the foundation and form of all knowledge—full-blooded human experience. Then does experience add something to the retinal stimulations? Of course, you retort—we can’t reduce experience to physical processes in the retina! You are quite right, but notice that you have helped yourself to the inner resources of the mind by insisting on the transcendence of experiences over retinas. And that isn’t true empiricism, since the mind is now not a blank tablet on this way of looking at things: it contributes to, enriches, the retinal input—not everything derives from the senses alone. Thus, we have diluted empiricism with rationalism or nativism by crediting the mind with properties not derivable from bare sensory input. The mind is not remotely a blank tablet under the current dispensation; it is a seething, amply furnished, hothouse. So, the determined empiricist might dig in his heels at this point and assert that it is retinal input that is the source of all knowledge (Quine held such a view). The claim might seem preposterous given our customary conception of human knowledge, but the physical empiricist might junk this mentalistic conception and replace it with some scaled-back notion of cortical configurations. Would that be the end of his troubles?

No, because of the implied anthropocentrism. There won’t be anything universal about human knowledge as so viewed. The human eye and ear are quite species-specific (or genus-specific), much more so than our system of knowledge purports to be, which we take to be more universal—objective, absolute. We don’t think our scientific knowledge, say, is relative to us, like our anatomy in general; that would undermine its claim to be knowledge. Rods and cones are hardly epistemological universals, woven into everything we know. Nor is our knowledge of reality confined to objects of a size that can stimulate the retina differentially, thus giving rise to perceptions of particular types of objects (medium sized dry goods); for we know about other things too (e.g., atoms). Consider the following (admittedly extreme) thought experiment: there are microscopic men that are no bigger than atoms, and they have a thirst for knowledge. But their eyes respond only to objects at their scale, seeing only atoms and their parts (electrons, protons). They have no perception of macroscopic objects (as we understand that term), yet they wonder whether the particles they see might compose such large objects. The empiricist philosophers among them insist that all their knowledge is derived from, and reduces to, the evidence of their senses, anything else being problematic at best. It would clearly be wrong for them to claim that reality reduces to what they can see with their eyes, just as it is wrong for us to claim that reality reduces to what we can see with ours—the microscopic and the macroscopic, respectively. Their visual set-up is biased in its picture of the world, just as ours is (very low resolution). Similarly, a giant intelligence that sees only whole galaxies, never their constituent stars and planets, has a biased view of the universe—is, in fact, blind to huge swathes of it. The senses are highly selective and species-relative, providing biased pictures of reality. If knowledge seeks to correct this bias, as it clearly does, sense-based empiricism must be false: our knowledge attains a level of universality, and hence objectivity and absoluteness, that cannot be accommodated by what might be called “retinal empiricism”. We can only satisfy the demands of knowledge by moving away from the senses considered as items of human anatomy. Just so, reality itself possesses a degree of universality that is inconsistent with retinal empiricism. The human senses simply don’t have the scope and generality required to constitute human knowledge or reality as a whole. They are too circumscribed, species-specific, idiosyncratic, and variable to fix any knowledge worthy of the name, still less any reality worthy of the name. True, we can learn things by deploying our eyes, but that is a far cry from constituting the entire nature of human knowledge. We certainly cannot hope to define anything by means of language referring to the excitations of the retina, or the vibrations of the tympanic membrane. Such sensory activities cannot create human knowledge by themselves, nor can they suffice to construct an external world. When empiricism is pushed to the limit its limitations become apparent. The sense organs are not the sole organs of knowledge.[1]

[1] The original empiricists knew little about the workings of the sense organs and tended to adopt a first-person perspective on the nature of perception.  Once we learn more and take an objective perspective on the senses their inadequacy as a source of knowledge become apparent. They are just physical transducers of impinging energy; they are not mirrors held up to reality. All the talk of “impressions” and “sense data” is scientifically naive; a complex multi-stage process leads up to their formation. At what point does the empiricist want to fix his epistemic origins? Aren’t there many things that could qualify as the foundations of the whole enterprise? The lesson is that human knowledge is an active corrective to the senses not a passive reflection (mirroring) of them.

2024 Resolutions

I don’t have any, except one I can’t implement. I would like to ban all teaching of my work in American philosophy departments. Why should I let the products of my labor be used for free by people who refuse to employ me? Shouldn’t there be a law against this? Shouldn’t I have the right to prohibit this kind of exploitation? But it isn’t so: people can use my work in their teaching completely against my wishes, and be paid to do so! Why should people who have been cancelled have to accept that other people can use their work for profit? Suppose someone uses my writing on the mind-body problem in a couple of classes but would refuse to invite me to give a talk, or even have me on campus: is that morally acceptable? It is not acceptable to me—I don’t want someone like that teaching my work. So, please desist. Moreover, I don’t want philosophers in America to use my work for research purposes—discussing me in print, citing me, or otherwise benefitting from my labors. I wish they would stop, because I have no desire to be part of the conversation in this country. Read me if you must, but don’t take my name in vain. There may be exceptions to this rule, where I would be willing to relax my ban—I may grant special permission to teach and cite me—but in general I forbid people to make use of my work, all fifty years of it. I must be the first academic in history who doesn’t want his work discussed by a large section of the academic community (sic). It’s a pity I can’t bring the weight of the law upon violators.[1]

[1] I have no objection to the rest of the world making use of my work. I particularly resent being taught at the University of Miami, where I am banned from the campus, though there is probably no danger of that.