Is there a difference between the notion of "conceivable" and the notion of "imaginable"? If so, what is the difference? I have heard these terms used as synonyms in the philosophical literature, but I now wonder whether any philosophers have made a fine distinction between them. I would also like to see some references.
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1This feels like another question better directed to a dictionary, unless you can provide us with examples of where you think the difference matters.– keshlamCommented Nov 14 at 21:58
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1Maverick Philosopher:"To imagine X is to form a mental image of X... Not all imagining is visual. To conceive X is to think X. To say that X is conceivable is to say that someone can think it, that is, has the ability to make it an object of thought. To conceive is to conceptualize coherently, to imagine is to attach some visual or other intuitive details." Also, PhilPapers references– ConifoldCommented Nov 14 at 22:03
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1Please give some examples where you have seen these two terms opposed and explain why you didn't find the given explanation from those examples clear.– David GudemanCommented Nov 14 at 22:14
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A much relevant and hotly debated philosophical question could well be conceivability vs possibility due to Kripke's famous counterexample of necessary a posterior such as 'water is H2O'...– Double KnotCommented Nov 14 at 23:04
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I cannot give you any references but conceivable is determined by a notion of the present state and a plausible prediction of a subsequent state from that state imaginable is a possible future state that is significantly more certain than one which is conceivable from a present state, although they are entangled just like chalk and cheese. Do you like cheese and onion or do you like chalk and cheese its complicated philosophical question with a question like this, I always follow the decision of my stomach– 8Mad0Manc8Commented Nov 14 at 23:36
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2 Answers
The best example I think of is Kant, though he didn't make it as explicit as you are looking for. In the Critique of Pure Reason, the power of imagination is a sort of bridge between understanding and sensibility, and is not bound by the laws of nature in its fabrications (e.g., we can imagine the Sun orbiting the Earth even though that isn't allowed by physics). What is our imagination limited to then? Safe to say it must abide by the a priori forms of sensible intuition: space and time. As Conifold says, imagination presents a fabricated object under the guise of one of our senses.
Conceivability is not limited to the forms of sensibility, merely whatever we can represent to us symbolically in language. For Kant this is part of the problem: philosophers can ponder mere thought-objects without any sensible intuition satisfying these concepts.
You are right that most philosophers do use "imaginable" and "conceivable" interchangeably, but strictly speaking, they are different. The imaginable is limited by our subjectivity, whereas conceivability is limited by . . . logic? language? Depends on what makes a concept—something philosophers still debate over. In fact, until philosophers agree on the role of these various powers of the mind, I doubt there will ever be a consensus on how to use these terms.
We are limited by our epistemological mechanisms that is to said that are prepackaged into us as a species, these of which are used to categorize and make sense of the world outside our heads. Example try to imagine a new color , you cannot as we are hardwired and preloaded with ways to make sense of the world and everything outside us.
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The nature of things depends on the intuiter. If we perceive the darkness, the snake does not perceive the darkness because his eye has the ability to intuit something that we do not but our mind has the ability to perceive. Because we know how a snake sees Commented Nov 19 at 4:36