My resistance paper is going to be absurdly long. Part of the problem is that I’m having much more fun writing the examples than I am having writing the philosophy. So naturally I spend more time on them. But the philosophy has a certain amount of space it needs to take. So the paper will be unmanagable and unpublishable and so on. So I will have to serialise it here. Or I don’t have to but I will anyway.

One of the key points will be something noted by Tamar Gendler and developed somewhat by Stephen Yablo. We have imaginative resistance whenever an author says that in the fiction p, where p is some fact that if it obtains only does so in virtue of some more fundamental facts obtaining, and it is specified in the fiction that those more fundamental facts do not obtain. The moral/descriptive case is only one version of this. Here is another, one with nothing at all to do with morality.

A Quixotic Victory
   —What think you of my redecorating Sancho?
   —It’s rather sparse, said Sancho.
   —Sparse. Indeed it is sparse. Just a television and an armchair.
   —Where are they, Senor Quixote? asked Sancho. All I see are a knife and fork on the floor, about six feet from each other. A sparse apartment for a sparse mind. He said the last sentence under his breath so Quixote would not hear him.
   —They might look like a knife and fork, but they are a television and an armchair, replied Quixote.
   —They look just like the knife and fork I have in my pocket, said Sancho, and he moved as to put his knife and fork besides the objects on Quixote’s floor.
   —Please don’t do that, said Quixote, for I may be unable to tell your knife and fork from my television and armchair.
   —But if you can’t tell them apart from a knife and fork, how could they be a television and an armchair?
   —Do you really think being a television is an observational property? asked Quixote with a grin.
   —Maybe not. OK then, how do you change the channels? asked Sancho.
   —There’s a remote.
   —Where? Is it that floorboard?
   —No, it’s at the repair shop, admitted Quixote.
   —I give up, said Sancho.
   Sancho was right to give up. Despite their odd appearance, Quixote’s items of furniture really were a television and an armchair. This was the first time in months Quixote had won an argument with Sancho.

Not the best bit of fiction ever written, but for a first draft I’m moderately pleased with it. My initial temptation was to run the whole thing as a tribute to the Dead Parrot sketch, but that may have been a little obvious. Not that using Quixote and Sancho Panza is other than obvious.

My resistance paper is going to be absurdly long. Part of the problem is that I’m having much more fun writing the examples than I am having writing the philosophy. So naturally I spend more time on them. But the philosophy has a certain amount of space it needs to take. So the paper will be unmanagable and unpublishable and so on. So I will have to serialise it here. Or I don’t have to but I will anyway.

One of the key points will be something noted by Tamar Gendler and developed somewhat by Stephen Yablo. We have imaginative resistance whenever an author says that in the fiction p, where p is some fact that if it obtains only does so in virtue of some more fundamental facts obtaining, and it is specified in the fiction that those more fundamental facts do not obtain. The moral/descriptive case is only one version of this. Here is another, one with nothing at all to do with morality.

A Quixotic Victory
   —What think you of my redecorating Sancho?
   —It’s rather sparse, said Sancho.
   —Sparse. Indeed it is sparse. Just a television and an armchair.
   —Where are they, Senor Quixote? asked Sancho. All I see are a knife and fork on the floor, about six feet from each other. A sparse apartment for a sparse mind. He said the last sentence under his breath so Quixote would not hear him.
   —They might look like a knife and fork, but they are a television and an armchair, replied Quixote.
   —They look just like the knife and fork I have in my pocket, said Sancho, and he moved as to put his knife and fork besides the objects on Quixote’s floor.
   —Please don’t do that, said Quixote, for I may be unable to tell your knife and fork from my television and armchair.
   —But if you can’t tell them apart from a knife and fork, how could they be a television and an armchair?
   —Do you really think being a television is an observational property? asked Quixote with a grin.
   —Maybe not. OK then, how do you change the channels? asked Sancho.
   —There’s a remote.
   —Where? Is it that floorboard?
   —No, it’s at the repair shop, admitted Quixote.
   —I give up, said Sancho.
   Sancho was right to give up. Despite their odd appearance, Quixote’s items of furniture really were a television and an armchair. This was the first time in months Quixote had won an argument with Sancho.

Not the best bit of fiction ever written, but for a first draft I’m moderately pleased with it. My initial temptation was to run the whole thing as a tribute to the Dead Parrot sketch, but that may have been a little obvious. Not that using Quixote and Sancho Panza is other than obvious.