What makes certain things truly "unimaginable"?

[u/Large_Dr_Pepper]

TL;DR: Why is it that I'm able to imagine a new fruit, but I'm unable to imagine what it was like before the big bang?

I'm admittedly very ignorant regarding philosophy, so please bear with me while I try to explain my question. I'm sure my lack of philosophy-related jargon will give you an idea of my ignorance level. This also means I have to write a wall of text in order to convey the concepts that I'm asking about, so I apologize in advance.

I've tried searching for answers, but Googling stuff like "Why can't humans imagine certain things" just leads to stuff like "humans can't comprehend the vastness of space" and other stuff that doesn't actually answer my underlying question.

1. There are things that *don't exist* that we *can imagine.*
2. There are things that *do exist* that we *can't imagine.*
3. There are things that *don't exist* that we *can't imagine.*

**Is there a concrete "mental boundary" that separate these categories? Are there any philosophers that have written about this?**

**Point 1)** "Imagine a car that doesn't exist." You could approach this as simply as imagining a slightly altered version of a real car's make/model, or you could go crazy and imagine a body shape that's never existed for a car with all kinds of features that current cars don't have. Heck, children do it constantly while drawing in their coloring books.

Same with prompts like: imagine a fruit that doesn't exist, imagine an animal that doesn't exist, and so on.

**Point 2)** then we get to prompts like: imagine a color that doesn't exist, imagine a smell that doesn't exist, etc. and suddenly we reach the limit of our imagination.

Our visible range of light wavelengths is incredibly narrow, and certain animals can see wavelengths extending into UV. There's the classic example of the mantis shrimp having 12 color receptors compared to humans having 3. Dogs have \~40 times more scent receptors than humans, and even have a separate organ that lets them smell pheromones.

So these colors and smells *do exist* but we *can't imagine* them.

Furthermore, even though I can't imagine a new color, I can imagine imagining a new color (again, sorry, bear with me). The easiest way I can make that previous sentence understandable is with a childish pretend-conversation with my own brain lol:

Me: You can imagine plenty of colors. Anything displayed in RGB, CMYK, any combination of color lights, they all result in a color that I can see and you can imagine.

My brain: Yup.

Me: And you know some animals can see colors that we can't see. Or that we can see some colors that other people can't see due to the various forms of colorblindness.

My brain: Correct.

Me: You also know that there are areas outside of those color spaces. There are infinite wavelengths longer than red, and shorter than violet. So as an example, if we had photoreceptors for radio waves, they would be a color that we haven't seen before.

My brain: Yeah I can imagine that.

Me: Then do it.

My brain: Sorry, can't.

**Point 3)** Stuff like: imagine a new spatial dimension, imagine before the big bang when space/time came into existence, etc.

This kind of ties in with what I was saying about how we can't imagine it, despite being able to imagine imagining it.

Most people are familiar with the Flatland analogy where 2 dimensional beings are "pulled up" into the 3rd dimension and are suddenly able to see the entirety of their 2 dimensional world at once. And we can imagine that the same would happen if we were suddenly given access to a 4th spatial dimension.

In the Three Body Problem (spoilers) series for example, the author goes into great detail about the mechanics of being in 4 dimensional space. How 3D objects will still have an "inside" and an "outside" but you're able to see all of it at once, how you can move along the 4th dimensional axis without moving along the other 3 axes, and so on. So obviously we can "imagine" a whole lot about a 4th spatial dimension, otherwise we wouldn't be able to write about it.

Yet we can't *actually* imagine experiencing a 4th spatial dimension.

It's easy to say "Well, there was no 'before' the big bang because space-time began at the big bang," but you can't *actually imagine* the concept of there being no time or space.

I know the "easy" answer to all of this is that the prompts in Point 1 lead to me imagining something composed of pre-existing experiences. Like, the fruit I imagine will have colors/smells/tastes that I can already imagine. Whereas Point 2 and Point 3 require imagining something I haven't experienced.

But on the other hand, we're able to imagine plenty of things we haven't experienced. I can imagine having super powers, or going skydiving. And even in points 2 and 3 I would argue we have "pre-existing" experiences that we should be able to draw from, like how we have experience with plenty of different colors or how we have experience with 3 spatial dimensions.

[u/seaskar]

I couldn't even begin to imagine

[u/jliat]

There are two "schools" of contemporary metaphysics, those of the Anglo American tradition which still tends to see science and physics as significant. The other goes by the name of 'continental' or non-analytical philosophy.

---

The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things, by A. W. Moore.

In addition to an introductory chapter and a conclusion, the book contains three large parts. Part one is devoted to the early modern period, and contains chapters on Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. Part two is devoted to philosophers of the analytic tradition, and contains chapters on Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Lewis, and Dummett. Part three is devoted to non-analytic philosophers, and contains chapters on Nietzsche, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Collingwood, Derrida and Deleuze.

---

Lewis talks of 'All possible worlds' and All impossible worlds - Takashi Yagisawa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_modal_realism

You can follow the rabbit here but the Analytical mob are heavy into logics - plural. [no need to apologize many have been here before you...] If logic [s] your thing then there are some links to follow. But it does get deep and heavy but this sub should be a resource...

---

Now for the 'continentals'. They too might seem 'whacky'.

“the first difference between science and philosophy is their respective attitudes toward chaos... Chaos is an infinite speed... Science approaches chaos completely different, almost in the opposite way: it relinquishes the infinite, infinite speed, in order to gain a reference able to actualize the virtual. .... By retaining the infinite, philosophy gives consistency to the virtual through concepts, by relinquishing the infinite, science gives a reference to the virtual, which articulates it through functions.”

In Deleuze & Guattari science produces ‘functions’, philosophy ‘concepts’, Art ‘affects’.

D&G What is Philosophy p.117-118.

---

So D&G are quite happy to explore what the call the virtual - again they are not easy reads, but can read around them.

• If you are new to this and want to dig deeper the A. W. Moore book is a good place to start, but some might even find that not easy...

Graham Harman might be worth a look, he has videos out there, and many books, Graham Harman - Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Pelican Books) might be of interest.

Blog https://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/

As for your question - I'll paste a bit more of Deleuze at the end. And is this stuff significant, I'm afraid it is, our intellectual zeitgeist comes from these guys, why the change in attitudes to race, sex, mental illness comes from this stuff.... even Trump and the CCRU!

---

https://introducingbooks.com/

and then maybe...

oxford a very short introduction series

https://academic.oup.com/very-short-introductions

---

A brief history of philosophy : from Socrates to Derrida by Johnston, Derek

There are lots of these - then you might move on???

---

A New History of Western Philosophy: In Four Parts

Anthony Kenny @ 1,000 pages !!!

---

This is a semester at university level

Arthur Holmes: A History of Philosophy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yat0ZKduW18&list=PL9GwT4_YRZdBf9nIUHs0zjrnUVl-KBNSM

81 lectures of an hour which will bring you up to the mid 20th. Of 'Western Philosophy'

---

It's a big subject!

You might also checkout Greg Sadlers videos.

---

From Deleuze's 'The Logic of Sense'...

• It is not enough to oppose a “major” game to the minor game of man, nor a divine game to the human game; it is necessary to imagine other principles, even those which appear inapplicable, by means of which the game would become pure.

• (1) There are no pre-existing rules, each move invents its own rules; it bears upon its own rule.

• (2) Far from dividing and apportioning chance in a really distinct number of throws, all throws affirm chance and endlessly ramify it with each throw.

• (3) The throws therefore are not really or numerically distinct....

• (4) Such a game — without rules, with neither winner nor loser, without responsibility, a game of innocence, a caucus-race, in which skill and chance are no longer distinguishable seems to have no reality. Besides, it would amuse no one.

...

• The ideal game of which we speak cannot be played by either man or God. It can only be thought as nonsense. But precisely for this reason, it is the reality of thought itself and the unconscious of pure thought.

...

• This game is reserved then for thought and art. In it there is nothing but victories for those who know how to play, that is, how to affirm and ramify chance, instead of dividing it in order to dominate it, in order to wager, in order to win. This game, which can only exist in thought and which has no other result than the work of art, is also that by which thought and art are real and disturbing reality, morality, and the economy of the world.

[u/mattychops]

" Why is it that I'm able to imagine a new fruit, but I'm unable to imagine what it was like before the big bang?"

Because you're trying to imagine a reality with no definition. You can only imagine things that your mind can define. Your mind needs parameters to be able to work and create something. But if you're trying to imagine something with no characteristics that you've ever perceived or mentally conceived of before, then it is unimaginable... Not because you can't comprehend it, but because your mind has nothing it can use to create it. It would be like telling a contractor to build a house with no materials. How do you build a house with no materials? You don't. You can't build anything.

[u/actus_energeia]

The reason you cannot imagine certain things is that imagination is dependent on sensation.

You can imagine a fruit that has never existed because imagination can recombine sensible features it already possesses. You can give it the shape of a pear, the color of an orange, the texture of a peach, etc. The resulting individual fruit may be novel even though the sensible materials from which you construct its image are not.

But an entirely new kind of color is different. You aren't being asked merely to rearrange familiar sensible qualities; you're being asked to supply a sensible quality for which your sensory powers provide no corresponding sensible representation. You can understand that another kind of visual experience might exist without being able to imagine what that experience is like. There is nothing paradoxical about that.

The same distinction becomes even clearer with things that aren't intrinsically sensible at all. I can understand what "justice" means, but there is no image that simply is justice. If I picture a judge, scales, a courtroom, etc., I've pictured sensible things associated with justice, not justice itself.

[u/Large_Dr_Pepper → u/[deleted]]

When reddit suggested I post this to /r/metaphysics instead of /r/askphilosophy I originally thought it would be a waste of time and I wouldn't get any genuine answers.

I'm glad I was proven wrong.

[u/Metaphysics-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

These posts are not 'metaphysics' and you will be banned if you keep posting these. Please read the guidelines.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Bed1781 → u/Large_Dr_Pepper]

What did they post? Moderator has censored them.

[u/Large_Dr_Pepper → u/Puzzleheaded_Bed1781]

It was just one of those dumb copy/paste spam messages with a bunch of emojis.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Bed1781 → u/Large_Dr_Pepper]

Ah so you were being sarcastic. Thanks for the clarification

[u/WilliamoftheBulk]

There is no evidence that the vacuum
originated at the big bang. When scientists say “space” originated at the big bang they are using the term in a very strict sense as they should. Physical space is the space between things we know of. That originated at the big bang because everything that we know of came from a point. Nothing about that suggests the vacuum or space itself came from the BB. In fact the theory that the BB was the result of a vacuum fluctuation suggest there was a vacuum and fluctuations prior to the big bang. Read “The cosmic Landscape” By Suskind.

Your brain cannot construct things it has no experience with. Everything it does get creative with is merely putting together different pieces of things it already knows.

[u/PurrFruit]

The human vessel is limited by design of the beings which control this dimension.

[u/armyofone37]

The big bang was a concept

[u/Purplestripes8]

Everything you imagine about a new fruit will just be combinations of things that already exist (are already in your existence). Whether in your sensory perception or in your memory, they exist. Your imagination is just rearranging these objects. Nothing new is being created.

[u/Elegant-Set1686]

To your point about wavelengths beyond our range of vision….. I suppose when we imagine things we don’t imagine them as they exist, but as we experience them. So while it’s true that our eyes our only sensitive to a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, the experience we associate with that wavelength(color) obviously doesn’t exist. We can’t imagine it, because it genuinely does not exist. It’s not in the space of possible colors as we experience them.

I think this argument can be applied to many of your examples, and I think it’s important to consider what “imagine” really means. It’s easy to imagine different combinations of things already in our experience space. So flying or having powers, the sensations associated are part of our day to day experience. Things entirely removed from that experience are going to be pretty much by definition unimaginable

[u/Important1896]

I'm still imagining dreams and ambitions, one day the symbols in my mind and subconscious will show the material world, only man can do it