Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches
Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts
Monday, March 7, 2022
Sunday, December 12, 2021
Conjurations #1: Reliquary
Conjurations is a new free TTRPG zine from Conjured Games, and the first issue, Reliquary, has a loose theme of relics. I contributed curator's notes on some cursed objects, drawn by Ewerton Lua for last year's Inktober challenge.
Friday, May 14, 2021
Speculative Public Health in The Physicians of Vilnoc
The word wellbeing might be familiar to many of us as a shibboleth of oppressors and lackeys. We exploit you, we subjugate you, we destroy the ecological basis of life, and we care deeply for your wellbeing: here's an app. (The Out of Office responds: "Thanks for getting in touch. Have the courage to take your boots off our necks, and we'll take the power we need to care for our wellbeing.")
But there is a little more to wellbeing. It is a mixed and contested concept, with roots in moral philosophy, welfare economics, positive psychology, and environmental sustainability. In other words, it’s grounded in debates around the nature of the good life; in the recognition that traditional economic concepts such as utility, and indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), fail to capture the complexity of freedom and flourishing; in the recognition that health means much more than merely the absence of pathology; and in a holistic concern for a complex, interconnected, more-than-human world.
Speculative fiction should have things to say about wellbeing. The democratization of wellbeing, its transformation into something more participatory and responsive to the lived experience of health interventions, must therefore be a central concern for utopian and anti-utopian thinking. Speculative fiction should have things to say about public health policy, about health outcomes and health inequalities, about the relationship of health and care . . . What it might wish to say, of course, could mean rejecting these terms and their embedded perspectives altogether. It could mean devising an alternative language.
Has speculative fiction had things to say? Or has speculative fiction struggled to imagine wellbeing policy — or any holistic stance on the myriad factors that inform the health, happiness and flourishing of populations — except where the interested party is some sinister elite, perhaps a paternalistic and unaccountable dystopian government, or a clandestine sect of eugenicists like the Bene Gesserit of Frank Herbert’s Dune?
Some counterexamples come from a perhaps unexpected direction: epic fantasy.
Works such as Anne McCaffrey’s Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern (1983) and Tamora Pierce’s Briar’s Book (1999) explore themes such as plagues, quarantine, sanitation, mass vaccination, the influence of socio-economic inequality on health outcomes, and the perils of improperly regulated scientific (magical) research. Lengthy sieges in works like Mary Gentle’s Ash: A Secret History (2000), Umberto Eco’s Baudilino (2002), or K.J. Parker’s Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City (2019) dramatise the protection and management of imperilled populations. Magic in works by Robin Hobb, N.K. Jemisin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Vonda N. McIntyre, Brandon Sanderson, and others fantastically reimagine human health and healing within a broader ecological framework and — insofar as such magic systems are concerned with debts, prices, side-effects, balance, resource management, stocks and flows, contracts and the like — within an economic framework too.
Healing magic is a richly intriguing seam. Dungeons & Dragons and tabletop roleplaying games generally probably have a lot to answer for here, with the frequent emphasis on healthcare as merely the efficient management of a meagre resource pool, and the tendency to elide the experiential dimension of health and wellbeing and focus on health as the capacity to fulfil functions within a relatively fixed division of paramilitary labor. There are plenty of exceptions. A massive critical cultural history of the Hit Point is probably long overdue.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Physicians of Vilnoc (2020), one richly intriguing specimen. The sorcerer Penric is a medical detective posed with the epidemiological puzzle of a new plague, centred on a military outpost. The social dimension of public health is prominent, as Penric proactively manages the risks of rumours, superstition, and panic.
Many aspects of the tale reinforce a rather conservative and hierarchical health ideology. We are invited to take pleasure in Penric’s competence, experience, and specialist expertise, as he works himself to the bone on behalf of his patients — sick people who sometimes don’t know what’s good for them, and must be slightly misled about the investigations and treatments they are receiving. To some extent, perhaps, the projection of the professionalization of medicine into an early modern fantasy world (the World of Five Gods) may exaggerate the naturalness or inevitability of the dominant paradigm of medical power, and foreclose the possibility of reterritorializing and mutualizing medical knowledge.
The divine order of this universe is solidly anthropocentric too, with Penric’s ‘uphill’ healing magic performed on human patients counterbalanced by ‘downhill’ magical processes that result in the slaughter of fleas, rats, chickens, and the odd pig.
The nearby community of incarcerated migrants are also soon afflicted but they are, conveniently, so resistive to Penric’s attentions that he never really has to choose whom he cares for. In fact, although Bujold keeps the theme of differential access to scarce healthcare resources bubbling in the background, no ‘Cold Equations’ style hard dilemma ever comes forcefully to the fore. You get the impression that Penric may be making such choices often, but you are not troubled with the details (leave it to the experts). I think I’d venture that nothing Penric or his assistants do is ever really framed as morally questionable.
On the other hand, even if the quasi-medieval Physicians of Vilnoc does not thematise democracy in any straightforward way, perhaps it has another way of gesturing toward the entanglement of wellbeing and democracy. That is via the fantastical entanglement of entities. First, in a relatively mundane sense, learned Penric is endlessly learning and teaching. And, as Una McCormack points out, “scientific method has to be supported by information gained by divine revelation and folk knowledge.”1 In this respect, the tale does gesture toward the construction and reconstruction of medical power, and gesture toward the possibility of reconstructing it in far more democratic and participatory configurations.
More fantastically, Penric himself is something of an assemblage protagonist: the character is really Penric and Desdemona, the demon with which he is blended, as well as imprints of a long lineage of Desmemona’s previous ‘riders,’ including nonhuman entities. How large is the universe of morally meaningful beings, and how are we entangled with one another? In this sense, the novella also gestures toward the interconnection of human wellbeing with more-than-human wellbeing, and indeed the role that 'the human' as an immanent concept in history has played in the definition and distribution of the good life. However we define wellbeing, speculative fiction can propose entities with altogether different capabilities, including perhaps capabilities for wellbeing.
1. "The Cure at Vilnoc: scientific method, revelation, and folk wisdom in ‘The Physicians of Vilnoc.’" In Short But Concentrated: An essay symposium on the works of Lois McMaster Bujold, eds Una McCormack and Regina Yung Lee.
Friday, October 6, 2017
BristolCon
I'm going to be there, fresh from Glasgow and quite possibly even more dazed and unkempt than usual. I'm on on a panel about the internet of things, and moderating another about magic and sufficiently advanced technology.
BristolCon is on October 28th.
I was talking to a friend last night who is kind of a witch and definitely an astrologer. It sort of made me think ...
"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Hmm. Hmmmmm.
BristolCon is on October 28th.
I was talking to a friend last night who is kind of a witch and definitely an astrologer. It sort of made me think ...
"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Hmm. Hmmmmm.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Fairy-Stories
The quotation from Tolkien's talk / essay On Fairy-Stories in that last review deserves a little more context. It's online here, and I'll reproduce two relevant sections below. Some of my favourite bits include “I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty” and “To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will [...] demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft” and the marvellous dorks vs. jocks chic of “A real enthusiast for cricket is in the enchanted state: Secondary Belief. I, when I watch a match, am on the lower level. I can achieve (more or less) willing suspension of disbelief, when I am held there and supported by some other motive that will keep away boredom: for instance, a wild, heraldic, preference for dark blue rather than light.”
*
Children
[...]
The value of fairy-stories is thus not, in my opinion, to be found by considering children in particular. Collections of fairy-stories are, in fact, by nature attics and lumber-rooms, only by temporary and local custom play-rooms. Their contents are disordered, and often battered, a jumble of different dates, purposes, and tastes; but among them may occasionally be found a thing of permanent virtue: an old work of art, not too much damaged, that only stupidity would ever have stuffed away.
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books are not, perhaps, lumber-rooms. They are more like stalls in a rummage-sale. Someone with a duster and a fair eye for things that retain some value has been round the attics and box-rooms. His collections are largely a by-product of his adult study of mythology and folk-lore; but they were made into and presented as books for children. Some of the reasons that Lang gave are worth considering.
The introduction to the first of the series speaks of “children to whom and for whom they are told.” “They represent,” he says, “the young age of man true to his early loves, and have his unblunted edge of belief, a fresh appetite for marvels.” “ ‘Is it true?’ ” he says, “is the great question children ask.”
I suspect that belief and appetite for marvels are here regarded as identical or as closely related. They are radically different, though the appetite for marvels is not at once or at first differentiated by a growing human mind from its general appetite. It seems fairly clear that Lang was using belief in its ordinary sense: belief that a thing exists or can happen in the real (primary) world. If so, then I fear that Lang's words, stripped of sentiment, can only imply that the teller of marvellous tales to children must, or may, or at any rate does trade on their credulity, on the lack of experience which makes it less easy for children to distinguish fact from fiction in particular cases, though the distinction in itself is fundamental to the sane human mind, and to fairy-stories.
Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
A real enthusiast for cricket is in the enchanted state: Secondary Belief. I, when I watch a match, am on the lower level. I can achieve (more or less) willing suspension of disbelief, when I am held there and supported by some other motive that will keep away boredom: for instance, a wild, heraldic, preference for dark blue rather than light. This suspension of disbelief may thus be a somewhat tired, shabby, or sentimental state of mind, and so lean to the “adult.” I fancy it is often the state of adults in the presence of a fairy-story. They are held there and supported by sentiment (memories of childhood, or notions of what childhood ought to be like); they think they ought to like the tale. But if they really liked it, for itself, they would not have to suspend disbelief: they would believe—in this sense.
Now if Lang had meant anything like this there might have been some truth in his words. It may be argued that it is easier to work the spell with children. Perhaps it is, though I am not sure of this. The appearance that it is so is often, I think, an adult illusion produced by children's humility, their lack of critical experience and vocabulary, and their voracity (proper to their rapid growth). They like or try to like what is given to them: if they do not like it, they cannot well express their dislike or give reasons for it (and so may conceal it); and they like a great mass of different things indiscriminately, without troubling to analyse the planes of their belief. In any case I doubt if this potion—the enchantment of the effective fairy-story— is really one of the kind that becomes “blunted” by use, less potent after repeated draughts.
[...]
Fantasy
The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present. The faculty of conceiving the images is (or was) naturally called Imagination. But in recent times, in technical not normal language, Imagination has often been held to be something higher than the mere image-making, ascribed to the operations of Fancy (a reduced and depreciatory form of the older word Fantasy); an attempt is thus made to restrict, I should say misapply, Imagination to “the power of giving to ideal creations the inner consistency of reality.” Ridiculous though it may be for one so ill-instructed to have an opinion on this critical matter, I venture to think the verbal distinction philologically inappropriate, and the analysis inaccurate. The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. The perception of the image, the grasp of its implications, and the control, which are necessary to a successful expression, may vary in vividness and strength: but this is a difference of degree in Imagination, not a difference in kind. The achievement of the expression, which gives (or seems to give) “the inner consistency of reality,” is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation. For my present purpose I require a word which shall embrace both the Sub-creative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression, derived from the Image: a quality essential to fairy-story. I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use Fantasy for this purpose: in a sense, that is, which combines with its older and higher use as an equivalent of Imagination the derived notions of “unreality” (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary World), of freedom from the domination of observed “fact,” in short of the fantastic. I am thus not only aware but glad of the etymological and semantic connexions of fantasy with fantastic: with images of things that are not only “not actually present,” but which are indeed not to be found in our primary world at all, or are generally believed not to be found there. But while admitting that, I do not assent to the depreciative tone. That the images are of things not in the primary world (if that indeed is possible) is a virtue, not a vice. Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent.
Fantasy, of course, starts out with an advantage: arresting strangeness. But that advantage has been turned against it, and has contributed to its disrepute. Many people dislike being “arrested.” They dislike any meddling with the Primary World, or such small glimpses of it as are familiar to them. They, therefore, stupidly and even maliciously confound Fantasy with Dreaming, in which there is no Art; and with mental disorders, in which there is not even control: with delusion and hallucination.
But the error or malice, engendered by disquiet and consequent dislike, is not the only cause of this confusion. Fantasy has also an essential drawback: it is difficult to achieve. Fantasy may be, as I think, not less but more sub-creative; but at any rate it is found in practice that “the inner consistency of reality” is more difficult to produce, the more unlike are the images and the rearrangements of primary material to the actual arrangements of the Primary World. It is easier to produce this kind of “reality” with more “sober” material. Fantasy thus, too often, remains undeveloped; it is and has been used frivolously, or only half-seriously, or merely for decoration: it remains merely “fanciful.” Anyone inheriting the fantastic device of human language can say the green sun. Many can then imagine or picture it. But that is not enough—though it may already be a more potent thing than many a “thumbnail sketch” or “transcript of life” that receives literary praise.
To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.
In human art Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature. In painting, for instance, the visible presentation of the fantastic image is technically too easy; the hand tends to outrun the mind, even to overthrow it (E). Silliness or morbidity are frequent results. It is a misfortune that Drama, an art fundamentally distinct from Literature, should so commonly be considered together with it, or as a branch of it. Among these misfortunes we may reckon the depreciation of Fantasy. For in part at least this depreciation is due to the natural desire of critics to cry up the forms of literature or “imagination” that they themselves, innately or by training, prefer. And criticism in a country that has produced so great a Drama, and possesses the works of William Shakespeare, tends to be far too dramatic. But Drama is naturally hostile to Fantasy. Fantasy, even of the simplest kind, hardly ever succeeds in Drama, when that is presented as it should be, visibly and audibly acted. Fantastic forms are not to be counterfeited. Men dressed up as talking animals may achieve buffoonery or mimicry, but they do not achieve Fantasy. This is, I think, well illustrated by the failure of the bastard form, pantomime. The nearer it is to “dramatized fairy-story” the worse it is. It is only tolerable when the plot and its fantasy are reduced to a mere vestigiary framework for farce, and no “belief” of any kind in any part of the performance is required or expected of anybody. This is, of course, partly due to the fact that the producers of drama have to, or try to, work with mechanism to represent either Fantasy or Magic. I once saw a so-called “children's pantomime,” the straight story of Puss-in-Boots, with even the metamorphosis of the ogre into a mouse. Had this been mechanically successful it would either have terrified the spectators or else have been just a turn of high-class conjuring. As it was, though done with some ingenuity of lighting, disbelief had not so much to be suspended as hanged, drawn, and quartered.
In Macbeth, when it is read, I find the witches tolerable: they have a narrative function and some hint of dark significance; though they are vulgarized, poor things of their kind. They are almost intolerable in the play. They would be quite intolerable, if I were not fortified by some memory of them as they are in the story as read. I am told that I should feel differently if I had the mind of the period, with its witch-hunts and witch-trials. But that is to say: if I regarded the witches as possible, indeed likely, in the Primary World; in other words, if they ceased to be “Fantasy.” That argument concedes the point. To be dissolved, or to be degraded, is the likely fate of Fantasy when a dramatist tries to use it, even such a dramatist as Shakespeare. Macbeth is indeed a work by a playwright who ought, at least on this occasion, to have written a story, if he had the skill or patience for that art.
A reason, more important, I think, than the inadequacy of stage-effects, is this: Drama has, of its very nature, already attempted a kind of bogus, or shall I say at least substitute, magic: the visible and audible presentation of imaginary men in a story. That is in itself an attempt to counterfeit the magician's wand. To introduce, even with mechanical success, into this quasi-magical secondary world a further fantasy or magic is to demand, as it were, an inner or tertiary world. It is a world too much. To make such a thing may not be impossible. I have never seen it done with success. But at least it cannot be claimed as the proper mode of Drama, in which walking and talking people have been found to be the natural instruments of Art and illusion (F).
For this precise reason—that the characters, and even the scenes, are in Drama not imagined but actually beheld—Drama is, even though it uses a similar material (words, verse, plot), an art fundamentally different from narrative art. Thus, if you prefer Drama to Literature (as many literary critics plainly do), or form your critical theories primarily from dramatic critics, or even from Drama, you are apt to misunderstand pure story-making, and to constrain it to the limitations of stage-plays. You are, for instance, likely to prefer characters, even the basest and dullest, to things. Very little about trees as trees can be got into a play.
Now “Faërian Drama”—those plays which according to abundant records the elves have often presented to men—can produce Fantasy with a realism and immediacy beyond the compass of any human mechanism. As a result their usual effect (upon a man) is to go beyond Secondary Belief. If you are present at a Faërian drama you yourself are, or think that you are, bodily inside its Secondary World. The experience may be very similar to Dreaming and has (it would seem) sometimes (by men) been confounded with it. But in Faërian drama you are in a dream that some other mind is weaving, and the knowledge of that alarming fact may slip from your grasp. To experience directly a Secondary World: the potion is too strong, and you give to it Primary Belief, however marvellous the events. You are deluded—whether that is the intention of the elves (always or at any time) is another question. They at any rate are not themselves deluded. This is for them a form of Art, and distinct from Wizardry or Magic, properly so called. They do not live in it, though they can, perhaps, afford to spend more time at it than human artists can. The Primary World, Reality, of elves and men is the same, if differently valued and perceived.
We need a word for this elvish craft, but all the words that have been applied to it have been blurred and confused with other things. Magic is ready to hand, and I have used it above (p. 39), but I should not have done so: Magic should be reserved for the operations of the Magician. Art is the human process that produces by the way (it is not its only or ultimate object) Secondary Belief. Art of the same sort, if more skilled and effortless, the elves can also use, or so the reports seem to show; but the more potent and specially elvish craft I will, for lack of a less debatable word, call Enchantment. Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World. It does not matter by whom it is said to be practised, fay or mortal, it remains distinct from the other two; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills.
To the elvish craft, Enchantment, Fantasy aspires, and when it is successful of all forms of human art most nearly approaches. At the heart of many man-made stories of the elves lies, open or concealed, pure or alloyed, the desire for a living, realized sub-creative art, which (however much it may outwardly resemble it) is inwardly wholly different from the greed for self-centred power which is the mark of the mere Magician. Of this desire the elves, in their better (but still perilous) part, are largely made; and it is from them that we may learn what is the central desire and aspiration of human Fantasy—even if the elves are, all the more in so far as they are, only a product of Fantasy itself. That creative desire is only cheated by counterfeits, whether the innocent but clumsy devices of the human dramatist, or the malevolent frauds of the magicians. In this world it is for men unsatisfiable, and so imperishable. Uncorrupted, it does not seek delusion nor bewitchment and domination; it seeks shared enrichment, partners in making and delight, not slaves.
To many, Fantasy, this sub-creative art which plays strange tricks with the world and all that is in it, combining nouns and redistributing adjectives, has seemed suspect, if not illegitimate. To some it has seemed at least a childish folly, a thing only for peoples or for persons in their youth. As for its legitimacy I will say no more than to quote a brief passage from a letter I once wrote to a man who described myth and fairy-story as “lies”; though to do him justice he was kind enough and confused enough to call fairy-story-making “Breathing a lie through Silver.”
“Dear Sir,” I said—Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons—'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.”
Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.
For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen.
Fantasy can, of course, be carried to excess. It can be ill done. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in this fallen world is that not true? Men have conceived not only of elves, but they have imagined gods, and worshipped them, even worshipped those most deformed by their authors' own evil. But they have made false gods out of other materials: their notions, their banners, their monies; even their sciences and their social and economic theories have demanded human sacrifice. Abusus non tollit usum. Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.
*
Children
[...]
The value of fairy-stories is thus not, in my opinion, to be found by considering children in particular. Collections of fairy-stories are, in fact, by nature attics and lumber-rooms, only by temporary and local custom play-rooms. Their contents are disordered, and often battered, a jumble of different dates, purposes, and tastes; but among them may occasionally be found a thing of permanent virtue: an old work of art, not too much damaged, that only stupidity would ever have stuffed away.
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books are not, perhaps, lumber-rooms. They are more like stalls in a rummage-sale. Someone with a duster and a fair eye for things that retain some value has been round the attics and box-rooms. His collections are largely a by-product of his adult study of mythology and folk-lore; but they were made into and presented as books for children. Some of the reasons that Lang gave are worth considering.
The introduction to the first of the series speaks of “children to whom and for whom they are told.” “They represent,” he says, “the young age of man true to his early loves, and have his unblunted edge of belief, a fresh appetite for marvels.” “ ‘Is it true?’ ” he says, “is the great question children ask.”
I suspect that belief and appetite for marvels are here regarded as identical or as closely related. They are radically different, though the appetite for marvels is not at once or at first differentiated by a growing human mind from its general appetite. It seems fairly clear that Lang was using belief in its ordinary sense: belief that a thing exists or can happen in the real (primary) world. If so, then I fear that Lang's words, stripped of sentiment, can only imply that the teller of marvellous tales to children must, or may, or at any rate does trade on their credulity, on the lack of experience which makes it less easy for children to distinguish fact from fiction in particular cases, though the distinction in itself is fundamental to the sane human mind, and to fairy-stories.
Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
A real enthusiast for cricket is in the enchanted state: Secondary Belief. I, when I watch a match, am on the lower level. I can achieve (more or less) willing suspension of disbelief, when I am held there and supported by some other motive that will keep away boredom: for instance, a wild, heraldic, preference for dark blue rather than light. This suspension of disbelief may thus be a somewhat tired, shabby, or sentimental state of mind, and so lean to the “adult.” I fancy it is often the state of adults in the presence of a fairy-story. They are held there and supported by sentiment (memories of childhood, or notions of what childhood ought to be like); they think they ought to like the tale. But if they really liked it, for itself, they would not have to suspend disbelief: they would believe—in this sense.
Now if Lang had meant anything like this there might have been some truth in his words. It may be argued that it is easier to work the spell with children. Perhaps it is, though I am not sure of this. The appearance that it is so is often, I think, an adult illusion produced by children's humility, their lack of critical experience and vocabulary, and their voracity (proper to their rapid growth). They like or try to like what is given to them: if they do not like it, they cannot well express their dislike or give reasons for it (and so may conceal it); and they like a great mass of different things indiscriminately, without troubling to analyse the planes of their belief. In any case I doubt if this potion—the enchantment of the effective fairy-story— is really one of the kind that becomes “blunted” by use, less potent after repeated draughts.
[...]
Fantasy
The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present. The faculty of conceiving the images is (or was) naturally called Imagination. But in recent times, in technical not normal language, Imagination has often been held to be something higher than the mere image-making, ascribed to the operations of Fancy (a reduced and depreciatory form of the older word Fantasy); an attempt is thus made to restrict, I should say misapply, Imagination to “the power of giving to ideal creations the inner consistency of reality.” Ridiculous though it may be for one so ill-instructed to have an opinion on this critical matter, I venture to think the verbal distinction philologically inappropriate, and the analysis inaccurate. The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. The perception of the image, the grasp of its implications, and the control, which are necessary to a successful expression, may vary in vividness and strength: but this is a difference of degree in Imagination, not a difference in kind. The achievement of the expression, which gives (or seems to give) “the inner consistency of reality,” is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation. For my present purpose I require a word which shall embrace both the Sub-creative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression, derived from the Image: a quality essential to fairy-story. I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use Fantasy for this purpose: in a sense, that is, which combines with its older and higher use as an equivalent of Imagination the derived notions of “unreality” (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary World), of freedom from the domination of observed “fact,” in short of the fantastic. I am thus not only aware but glad of the etymological and semantic connexions of fantasy with fantastic: with images of things that are not only “not actually present,” but which are indeed not to be found in our primary world at all, or are generally believed not to be found there. But while admitting that, I do not assent to the depreciative tone. That the images are of things not in the primary world (if that indeed is possible) is a virtue, not a vice. Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent.
Fantasy, of course, starts out with an advantage: arresting strangeness. But that advantage has been turned against it, and has contributed to its disrepute. Many people dislike being “arrested.” They dislike any meddling with the Primary World, or such small glimpses of it as are familiar to them. They, therefore, stupidly and even maliciously confound Fantasy with Dreaming, in which there is no Art; and with mental disorders, in which there is not even control: with delusion and hallucination.
But the error or malice, engendered by disquiet and consequent dislike, is not the only cause of this confusion. Fantasy has also an essential drawback: it is difficult to achieve. Fantasy may be, as I think, not less but more sub-creative; but at any rate it is found in practice that “the inner consistency of reality” is more difficult to produce, the more unlike are the images and the rearrangements of primary material to the actual arrangements of the Primary World. It is easier to produce this kind of “reality” with more “sober” material. Fantasy thus, too often, remains undeveloped; it is and has been used frivolously, or only half-seriously, or merely for decoration: it remains merely “fanciful.” Anyone inheriting the fantastic device of human language can say the green sun. Many can then imagine or picture it. But that is not enough—though it may already be a more potent thing than many a “thumbnail sketch” or “transcript of life” that receives literary praise.
To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.
In human art Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature. In painting, for instance, the visible presentation of the fantastic image is technically too easy; the hand tends to outrun the mind, even to overthrow it (E). Silliness or morbidity are frequent results. It is a misfortune that Drama, an art fundamentally distinct from Literature, should so commonly be considered together with it, or as a branch of it. Among these misfortunes we may reckon the depreciation of Fantasy. For in part at least this depreciation is due to the natural desire of critics to cry up the forms of literature or “imagination” that they themselves, innately or by training, prefer. And criticism in a country that has produced so great a Drama, and possesses the works of William Shakespeare, tends to be far too dramatic. But Drama is naturally hostile to Fantasy. Fantasy, even of the simplest kind, hardly ever succeeds in Drama, when that is presented as it should be, visibly and audibly acted. Fantastic forms are not to be counterfeited. Men dressed up as talking animals may achieve buffoonery or mimicry, but they do not achieve Fantasy. This is, I think, well illustrated by the failure of the bastard form, pantomime. The nearer it is to “dramatized fairy-story” the worse it is. It is only tolerable when the plot and its fantasy are reduced to a mere vestigiary framework for farce, and no “belief” of any kind in any part of the performance is required or expected of anybody. This is, of course, partly due to the fact that the producers of drama have to, or try to, work with mechanism to represent either Fantasy or Magic. I once saw a so-called “children's pantomime,” the straight story of Puss-in-Boots, with even the metamorphosis of the ogre into a mouse. Had this been mechanically successful it would either have terrified the spectators or else have been just a turn of high-class conjuring. As it was, though done with some ingenuity of lighting, disbelief had not so much to be suspended as hanged, drawn, and quartered.
In Macbeth, when it is read, I find the witches tolerable: they have a narrative function and some hint of dark significance; though they are vulgarized, poor things of their kind. They are almost intolerable in the play. They would be quite intolerable, if I were not fortified by some memory of them as they are in the story as read. I am told that I should feel differently if I had the mind of the period, with its witch-hunts and witch-trials. But that is to say: if I regarded the witches as possible, indeed likely, in the Primary World; in other words, if they ceased to be “Fantasy.” That argument concedes the point. To be dissolved, or to be degraded, is the likely fate of Fantasy when a dramatist tries to use it, even such a dramatist as Shakespeare. Macbeth is indeed a work by a playwright who ought, at least on this occasion, to have written a story, if he had the skill or patience for that art.
A reason, more important, I think, than the inadequacy of stage-effects, is this: Drama has, of its very nature, already attempted a kind of bogus, or shall I say at least substitute, magic: the visible and audible presentation of imaginary men in a story. That is in itself an attempt to counterfeit the magician's wand. To introduce, even with mechanical success, into this quasi-magical secondary world a further fantasy or magic is to demand, as it were, an inner or tertiary world. It is a world too much. To make such a thing may not be impossible. I have never seen it done with success. But at least it cannot be claimed as the proper mode of Drama, in which walking and talking people have been found to be the natural instruments of Art and illusion (F).
For this precise reason—that the characters, and even the scenes, are in Drama not imagined but actually beheld—Drama is, even though it uses a similar material (words, verse, plot), an art fundamentally different from narrative art. Thus, if you prefer Drama to Literature (as many literary critics plainly do), or form your critical theories primarily from dramatic critics, or even from Drama, you are apt to misunderstand pure story-making, and to constrain it to the limitations of stage-plays. You are, for instance, likely to prefer characters, even the basest and dullest, to things. Very little about trees as trees can be got into a play.
Now “Faërian Drama”—those plays which according to abundant records the elves have often presented to men—can produce Fantasy with a realism and immediacy beyond the compass of any human mechanism. As a result their usual effect (upon a man) is to go beyond Secondary Belief. If you are present at a Faërian drama you yourself are, or think that you are, bodily inside its Secondary World. The experience may be very similar to Dreaming and has (it would seem) sometimes (by men) been confounded with it. But in Faërian drama you are in a dream that some other mind is weaving, and the knowledge of that alarming fact may slip from your grasp. To experience directly a Secondary World: the potion is too strong, and you give to it Primary Belief, however marvellous the events. You are deluded—whether that is the intention of the elves (always or at any time) is another question. They at any rate are not themselves deluded. This is for them a form of Art, and distinct from Wizardry or Magic, properly so called. They do not live in it, though they can, perhaps, afford to spend more time at it than human artists can. The Primary World, Reality, of elves and men is the same, if differently valued and perceived.
We need a word for this elvish craft, but all the words that have been applied to it have been blurred and confused with other things. Magic is ready to hand, and I have used it above (p. 39), but I should not have done so: Magic should be reserved for the operations of the Magician. Art is the human process that produces by the way (it is not its only or ultimate object) Secondary Belief. Art of the same sort, if more skilled and effortless, the elves can also use, or so the reports seem to show; but the more potent and specially elvish craft I will, for lack of a less debatable word, call Enchantment. Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World. It does not matter by whom it is said to be practised, fay or mortal, it remains distinct from the other two; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills.
To the elvish craft, Enchantment, Fantasy aspires, and when it is successful of all forms of human art most nearly approaches. At the heart of many man-made stories of the elves lies, open or concealed, pure or alloyed, the desire for a living, realized sub-creative art, which (however much it may outwardly resemble it) is inwardly wholly different from the greed for self-centred power which is the mark of the mere Magician. Of this desire the elves, in their better (but still perilous) part, are largely made; and it is from them that we may learn what is the central desire and aspiration of human Fantasy—even if the elves are, all the more in so far as they are, only a product of Fantasy itself. That creative desire is only cheated by counterfeits, whether the innocent but clumsy devices of the human dramatist, or the malevolent frauds of the magicians. In this world it is for men unsatisfiable, and so imperishable. Uncorrupted, it does not seek delusion nor bewitchment and domination; it seeks shared enrichment, partners in making and delight, not slaves.
To many, Fantasy, this sub-creative art which plays strange tricks with the world and all that is in it, combining nouns and redistributing adjectives, has seemed suspect, if not illegitimate. To some it has seemed at least a childish folly, a thing only for peoples or for persons in their youth. As for its legitimacy I will say no more than to quote a brief passage from a letter I once wrote to a man who described myth and fairy-story as “lies”; though to do him justice he was kind enough and confused enough to call fairy-story-making “Breathing a lie through Silver.”
“Dear Sir,” I said—Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons—'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.”
Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.
For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen.
Fantasy can, of course, be carried to excess. It can be ill done. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in this fallen world is that not true? Men have conceived not only of elves, but they have imagined gods, and worshipped them, even worshipped those most deformed by their authors' own evil. But they have made false gods out of other materials: their notions, their banners, their monies; even their sciences and their social and economic theories have demanded human sacrifice. Abusus non tollit usum. Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.
Monday, February 11, 2013
From "Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow"
By David Lewis (text here).
[...] Let W0 also be a world that fits our worst fantasies about the button: there is such a button, it is connected to a fully automatic command and control system, the wired-in war plan consists of one big salvo, everything is in faultless working order, there is no way for anyone to stop the attack, and so on. Then I agree that Fine's counterfactual is true at W0: if Nixon had pressed the button, there would have been a nuclear holocaust.
There are all sorts of worlds where Nixon (or rather, a counterpart of Nixon) presses the button at t. We must consider which of these differ least, under the appropriate similarity relation, from woo Some are non-starters. Those where the payload of the rockets consists entirely of confetti depart gratuitously from W0 by any reasonable standards. The more serious candidates fall into several classes.
One class is typified by the world Wl. Until shortly before t, Wl is exactly like W0. The two match perfectly in every detail of particular fact, however minute. Shortly before t, however, the spatio-temporal region of perfect match comes to an end as Wl and W0 begin to diverge. The deterministic laws of W0 are violated at Wl in some simple, localized, inconspicuous way. A tiny miracle takes place. Perhaps a few extra neurons fire in some corner of Nixon's brain. As a result of this, Nixon presses the button. With no further miracles events take their lawful course and the two worlds Wl and W0 go their separate ways. The holocaust takes place. From that point on, at least so far as the surface of this planet is concerned, the two worlds are not even approximately similar in matters of particular fact. In short, the worlds typified by Wl are the worlds that meet the conditions listed in Analysis 1, our asymmetry-by-fiat analysis. What is the case throughout these worlds is just what we think would have been the case if Nixon had pressed the button (assuming that we are at W0, and operating under the standard resolution of vagueness). Therefore the worlds typified by Wl should turn out to be more similar to W0, under the similarity relation we seek, than any of the other worlds where Nixon pressed the button.
(When I say that a miracle takes place at Wl, I mean that there is a violation of the laws of nature. But note that the violated laws are not laws of the same world where they are violated. That is impossible; whatever else a law may be, it is at least an exceptionless regularity. I am using "miracle" to express a relation between different worlds. A miracle at W1, relative to W0, is a violation at WI of the laws of W0, which are at best the almost-laws of WI. The laws of W1 itself, if such there be, do not enter into it.)
A second class of candidates is typified by W2. This is a world completely free of miracles: the deterministic laws of W0 are obeyed perfectly. However, W2 differs from Wo in that Nixon pressed the button. By definition of determinism, W2 and W0 are alike always or alike never, and they are not alike always. Therefore they are not exactly alike through any stretch of time. They differ even in the remote past. What is worse, there is no guarantee whatever that W2 can be chosen so that the differences diminish and eventually become negligible in the more and more remote past. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how two deterministic worlds anything like ours could possibly remain just a little bit different for very long. There are altogether too many opportunities for little differences to give rise to bigger differences. Certainly such worlds as W2 should not turn out to be the most similar worlds to W0 where Nixon pressed the button. That would lead to back-tracking unlimited. (And as Bennett observes in [2], it would make counterfactuals useless; we know far too little to figure out which of them are true under a resolution of vagueness that validates very much backtracking.) The lesson we learn by comparing WI and W2 is that under the similarity relation we seek, a lot of perfect match of particular fact is worth a little miracle.
A third class of candidates is typified by W3. This world begins like WI. Until shortly before t, W3 is exactly like W0. Then a tiny miracle takes place, permitting divergence. Nixon presses the button at t. But there is no holocaust, because soon after t a second tiny miracle takes place, just as simple and localized and inconspicuous as the first. The fatal signal vanishes on its way from the button to the rockets. Thereafter events at W3 take their lawful course. At least for a while, worlds W0 and W3 remain very closely similar in matters of particular fact. But they are no longer exacly alike. The holocaust has been prevented, but Nixon's deed has left its mark on the world W3. There are his fingerprints on the button. Nixon is still trembling, wondering what went wrong - or right. His gin bottle is depleted. The click of the button has been preserved on tape. Light waves that flew out the window, bearing the image of Nixon's finger on the button, are still on their way into outer space. The wire is ever so slightly warmed where the signal current passed through it. And so on, and on, and on. The differences between W3 and W0 are many and varied, although no one of them amounts to much.
I should think that the close similarity between W3 and W0 could not last. Some of the little differences would give rise to bigger differences sooner or later. Maybe Nixon's memoirs are more sanctimonious at W3 than at W0. Consequently they have a different impact on the character of a few hundred out of the millions who read them. A few of these few hundred make different decisions at crucial moments of their lives, and we're off! But if you are not convinced that the differences need increase, no matter. My case will not depend on that.
If Analysis 2 is to succeed, such worlds as W3 must not turn out to be the most similar worlds to W0 where Nixon pressed the button. The lesson we learn by comparing W1 and W3 is that under the similarity relation we seek, close but approximate match of particular fact (especially if it is temporary) is not worth even a little miracle. Taking that and the previous lesson of W2 together, we learn that perfect match of particular fact counts for much more than imperfect match, even if the imperfect match is good enough to give us similarity in respects that matter very much to us. I do not claim that this pre-eminence of perfect match is intuitively obvious. I do not claim that it is a feature of the similarity relations most likely to guide our explicit judgments. It is not; else the objection we are considering never would have been put forward. (See also the opinion survey reported by Bennett in [2].) But the preeminence of perfect match is a feature of some relations of overall similarity, and it must be a feature of any similarity relation that will meet our present needs.
A fourth class of candidates is typified by W4. This world begins like W1 and W3. There is perfect match with W0 until shortly before t, there is a tiny divergence miracle, the button is pressed. But there is a widespread and complicated and diverse second miracle after t. It not only prevents the holocaust but also removes all traces of Nixon's button-pressing.
The cover-up job is miraculously perfect. Of course the fatal signal vanishes, just as at W3, but there is much more. The fingerprint vanishes, and the sweat returns to Nixon's fingertip. Nixon's nerves are soothed, his memories are falsified, and so he feels no need of the extra martini. The click on the tape is replaced by innocent noises. The receding light waves cease to bear their incriminating images. The wire cools down, and not by heating its surroundings in the ordinary way. And so on, and on, and on. Not only are there no traces that any human detective could read; in every detail of particular fact, however minute, it is just as if the button-pressing had never been. The worlds W4 and W0 reconverge. They are exactly alike again soon after t, and exactly alike forevermore. All it takes is enough of a reconvergence miracle: one involving enough different sorts of violations of the laws of W0, in enough different places. Because there are many different sorts of traces to be removed, and because the traces spread out rapidly, the cover-up job divides into very many parts. Each part requires a miracle at least on a par with the small miracle required to prevent the holocaust, or the one required to get the button pressed in the first place. Different sorts of unlawful processes are needed to remove different sorts of traces: the miraculous vanishing of a pulse of current in a wire is not like the miraculous rearrangement of magnetized grains on a recording tape.
The big miracle required for perfect reconvergence consists of a multitude of little miracles, spread out and diverse. Such worlds as W4 had better not turn out to be the most similar worlds to Wo where Nixon pressed the button. The lesson we learn by comparing W1 and W4 is that under the similarity relation we seek, perfect match of particular fact even through the entire future is not worth a big, widespread, diverse miracle. Taking that and the lesson of W2 together, we learn that avoidance of big miracles counts for much more than avoidance of little miracles. Miracles are not all equal. The all-or-nothing distinction between worlds that do and that do not ever violate the laws of W0 is not sensitive enough to meet our needs.
This completes our survey of the leading candidates. There are other candidates, but they teach us nothing new. There are some worlds where approximate reconvergence to W0 is secured by a second small miracle before t, rather than afterward as at W3: Haig has seen fit to disconnect the button. Likewise there are worlds where a diverse and widespread miracle to permit perfect reconvergence takes place mostly before and during t: Nixon's fingers leave no prints, the tape recorder malfunctions, and so on.
Under the similarity relation we seek W1 must count as closer to W0 than any of W2, W3, and W4. That means that a similarity relation that combines with Analysis 2 to give the correct truth conditions for counterfactuals such as the one we have considered, taken under the standard resolution of vagueness, must be governed by the following system of weights or priorities.
(1) It is of the first importance to avoid big, widespread, diverse violations of law.
(2) It is of the second importance to maximize the spatiotemporal region throughout which perfect match of particular fact prevails.
(3) It is of the third importance to avoid even small, localized, simple violations of law.
(4) It is of little or no importance to secure approximate similarity of particular fact, even in matters that concern us greatly.
(It is a good question whether approximate similarities of particular fact should have little weight or none. Different cases come out differently, and I would like to know why. Tichy ([20]) and Jackson ([7]) give cases which appear to come out right under Analysis 2 only if approximate similarities count for nothing; but Morgenbesser has given a case, reported in Slote ([ 19]), which appears to go the other way. This problem was first brought my attention by Ernest Loevinsohn.)
Plenty of unresolved vagueness remains, of course, even after we have distinguished the four sorts of respect of comparison and ranked them in decreasing order of importance. But enough has been said to answer Fine's objection; and I think other versions of the future similarity objection may be answered in the same way.
THE ASYMMETRY OF MIRACLES [...]
[...] Let W0 also be a world that fits our worst fantasies about the button: there is such a button, it is connected to a fully automatic command and control system, the wired-in war plan consists of one big salvo, everything is in faultless working order, there is no way for anyone to stop the attack, and so on. Then I agree that Fine's counterfactual is true at W0: if Nixon had pressed the button, there would have been a nuclear holocaust.
There are all sorts of worlds where Nixon (or rather, a counterpart of Nixon) presses the button at t. We must consider which of these differ least, under the appropriate similarity relation, from woo Some are non-starters. Those where the payload of the rockets consists entirely of confetti depart gratuitously from W0 by any reasonable standards. The more serious candidates fall into several classes.
One class is typified by the world Wl. Until shortly before t, Wl is exactly like W0. The two match perfectly in every detail of particular fact, however minute. Shortly before t, however, the spatio-temporal region of perfect match comes to an end as Wl and W0 begin to diverge. The deterministic laws of W0 are violated at Wl in some simple, localized, inconspicuous way. A tiny miracle takes place. Perhaps a few extra neurons fire in some corner of Nixon's brain. As a result of this, Nixon presses the button. With no further miracles events take their lawful course and the two worlds Wl and W0 go their separate ways. The holocaust takes place. From that point on, at least so far as the surface of this planet is concerned, the two worlds are not even approximately similar in matters of particular fact. In short, the worlds typified by Wl are the worlds that meet the conditions listed in Analysis 1, our asymmetry-by-fiat analysis. What is the case throughout these worlds is just what we think would have been the case if Nixon had pressed the button (assuming that we are at W0, and operating under the standard resolution of vagueness). Therefore the worlds typified by Wl should turn out to be more similar to W0, under the similarity relation we seek, than any of the other worlds where Nixon pressed the button.
(When I say that a miracle takes place at Wl, I mean that there is a violation of the laws of nature. But note that the violated laws are not laws of the same world where they are violated. That is impossible; whatever else a law may be, it is at least an exceptionless regularity. I am using "miracle" to express a relation between different worlds. A miracle at W1, relative to W0, is a violation at WI of the laws of W0, which are at best the almost-laws of WI. The laws of W1 itself, if such there be, do not enter into it.)
A second class of candidates is typified by W2. This is a world completely free of miracles: the deterministic laws of W0 are obeyed perfectly. However, W2 differs from Wo in that Nixon pressed the button. By definition of determinism, W2 and W0 are alike always or alike never, and they are not alike always. Therefore they are not exactly alike through any stretch of time. They differ even in the remote past. What is worse, there is no guarantee whatever that W2 can be chosen so that the differences diminish and eventually become negligible in the more and more remote past. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how two deterministic worlds anything like ours could possibly remain just a little bit different for very long. There are altogether too many opportunities for little differences to give rise to bigger differences. Certainly such worlds as W2 should not turn out to be the most similar worlds to W0 where Nixon pressed the button. That would lead to back-tracking unlimited. (And as Bennett observes in [2], it would make counterfactuals useless; we know far too little to figure out which of them are true under a resolution of vagueness that validates very much backtracking.) The lesson we learn by comparing WI and W2 is that under the similarity relation we seek, a lot of perfect match of particular fact is worth a little miracle.
A third class of candidates is typified by W3. This world begins like WI. Until shortly before t, W3 is exactly like W0. Then a tiny miracle takes place, permitting divergence. Nixon presses the button at t. But there is no holocaust, because soon after t a second tiny miracle takes place, just as simple and localized and inconspicuous as the first. The fatal signal vanishes on its way from the button to the rockets. Thereafter events at W3 take their lawful course. At least for a while, worlds W0 and W3 remain very closely similar in matters of particular fact. But they are no longer exacly alike. The holocaust has been prevented, but Nixon's deed has left its mark on the world W3. There are his fingerprints on the button. Nixon is still trembling, wondering what went wrong - or right. His gin bottle is depleted. The click of the button has been preserved on tape. Light waves that flew out the window, bearing the image of Nixon's finger on the button, are still on their way into outer space. The wire is ever so slightly warmed where the signal current passed through it. And so on, and on, and on. The differences between W3 and W0 are many and varied, although no one of them amounts to much.
I should think that the close similarity between W3 and W0 could not last. Some of the little differences would give rise to bigger differences sooner or later. Maybe Nixon's memoirs are more sanctimonious at W3 than at W0. Consequently they have a different impact on the character of a few hundred out of the millions who read them. A few of these few hundred make different decisions at crucial moments of their lives, and we're off! But if you are not convinced that the differences need increase, no matter. My case will not depend on that.
If Analysis 2 is to succeed, such worlds as W3 must not turn out to be the most similar worlds to W0 where Nixon pressed the button. The lesson we learn by comparing W1 and W3 is that under the similarity relation we seek, close but approximate match of particular fact (especially if it is temporary) is not worth even a little miracle. Taking that and the previous lesson of W2 together, we learn that perfect match of particular fact counts for much more than imperfect match, even if the imperfect match is good enough to give us similarity in respects that matter very much to us. I do not claim that this pre-eminence of perfect match is intuitively obvious. I do not claim that it is a feature of the similarity relations most likely to guide our explicit judgments. It is not; else the objection we are considering never would have been put forward. (See also the opinion survey reported by Bennett in [2].) But the preeminence of perfect match is a feature of some relations of overall similarity, and it must be a feature of any similarity relation that will meet our present needs.
A fourth class of candidates is typified by W4. This world begins like W1 and W3. There is perfect match with W0 until shortly before t, there is a tiny divergence miracle, the button is pressed. But there is a widespread and complicated and diverse second miracle after t. It not only prevents the holocaust but also removes all traces of Nixon's button-pressing.
The cover-up job is miraculously perfect. Of course the fatal signal vanishes, just as at W3, but there is much more. The fingerprint vanishes, and the sweat returns to Nixon's fingertip. Nixon's nerves are soothed, his memories are falsified, and so he feels no need of the extra martini. The click on the tape is replaced by innocent noises. The receding light waves cease to bear their incriminating images. The wire cools down, and not by heating its surroundings in the ordinary way. And so on, and on, and on. Not only are there no traces that any human detective could read; in every detail of particular fact, however minute, it is just as if the button-pressing had never been. The worlds W4 and W0 reconverge. They are exactly alike again soon after t, and exactly alike forevermore. All it takes is enough of a reconvergence miracle: one involving enough different sorts of violations of the laws of W0, in enough different places. Because there are many different sorts of traces to be removed, and because the traces spread out rapidly, the cover-up job divides into very many parts. Each part requires a miracle at least on a par with the small miracle required to prevent the holocaust, or the one required to get the button pressed in the first place. Different sorts of unlawful processes are needed to remove different sorts of traces: the miraculous vanishing of a pulse of current in a wire is not like the miraculous rearrangement of magnetized grains on a recording tape.
The big miracle required for perfect reconvergence consists of a multitude of little miracles, spread out and diverse. Such worlds as W4 had better not turn out to be the most similar worlds to Wo where Nixon pressed the button. The lesson we learn by comparing W1 and W4 is that under the similarity relation we seek, perfect match of particular fact even through the entire future is not worth a big, widespread, diverse miracle. Taking that and the lesson of W2 together, we learn that avoidance of big miracles counts for much more than avoidance of little miracles. Miracles are not all equal. The all-or-nothing distinction between worlds that do and that do not ever violate the laws of W0 is not sensitive enough to meet our needs.
This completes our survey of the leading candidates. There are other candidates, but they teach us nothing new. There are some worlds where approximate reconvergence to W0 is secured by a second small miracle before t, rather than afterward as at W3: Haig has seen fit to disconnect the button. Likewise there are worlds where a diverse and widespread miracle to permit perfect reconvergence takes place mostly before and during t: Nixon's fingers leave no prints, the tape recorder malfunctions, and so on.
Under the similarity relation we seek W1 must count as closer to W0 than any of W2, W3, and W4. That means that a similarity relation that combines with Analysis 2 to give the correct truth conditions for counterfactuals such as the one we have considered, taken under the standard resolution of vagueness, must be governed by the following system of weights or priorities.
(1) It is of the first importance to avoid big, widespread, diverse violations of law.
(2) It is of the second importance to maximize the spatiotemporal region throughout which perfect match of particular fact prevails.
(3) It is of the third importance to avoid even small, localized, simple violations of law.
(4) It is of little or no importance to secure approximate similarity of particular fact, even in matters that concern us greatly.
(It is a good question whether approximate similarities of particular fact should have little weight or none. Different cases come out differently, and I would like to know why. Tichy ([20]) and Jackson ([7]) give cases which appear to come out right under Analysis 2 only if approximate similarities count for nothing; but Morgenbesser has given a case, reported in Slote ([ 19]), which appears to go the other way. This problem was first brought my attention by Ernest Loevinsohn.)
Plenty of unresolved vagueness remains, of course, even after we have distinguished the four sorts of respect of comparison and ranked them in decreasing order of importance. But enough has been said to answer Fine's objection; and I think other versions of the future similarity objection may be answered in the same way.
THE ASYMMETRY OF MIRACLES [...]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)