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En Garde, whole no. 16, January 1946
Page 6
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page 6: assuring you it was the most interesting and entertaining bunch of reviews I've read in a long time. And I like reviews. To me, one of the most intriguing features of FAPA is the opportunity to observe the reactions of the members to the ideas of others. Your comment on Evans' views regarding imagination reminds me that I've never set forth my side of that argument in print. What Jack, Ollie Saari and I maintained was that given a man with absolutely all knowledge, he would have nothing left to prevent boredom but to wallow in sensory debauch. EEE maintained that he would still have his imagination to fall back on. To make clear what we implied by all knowledge we went into more detail. The man knew every fact about the universe. But also, all knowledge must imply that he knew every possible, and impossible, inter-relation of two or more of these facts. In other words, he knew everything that had happened, or could happen, or couldn't happen. Still Everett maintained that through some mystic thing called imagination the guy could dream up new concepts to entertain himself. We held that imagination was only the building of new concepts from existing knowledge, and that our definition of all knowledge implied that the guy had already considered all possible combinations. Evena maintained that imagination could still dream up something new. In other words than his, me maintained that imagination was some undefinable ability to create a new concept from nothing. To sum it all up, Evans believes imagination is the power to creating the full, original meaning of the word---sort of an effect without cause other than the will to do so. The rest of us believe it consists only of dreaming up new combinations of known facts, or making inference from them.
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page 6: assuring you it was the most interesting and entertaining bunch of reviews I've read in a long time. And I like reviews. To me, one of the most intriguing features of FAPA is the opportunity to observe the reactions of the members to the ideas of others. Your comment on Evans' views regarding imagination reminds me that I've never set forth my side of that argument in print. What Jack, Ollie Saari and I maintained was that given a man with absolutely all knowledge, he would have nothing left to prevent boredom but to wallow in sensory debauch. EEE maintained that he would still have his imagination to fall back on. To make clear what we implied by all knowledge we went into more detail. The man knew every fact about the universe. But also, all knowledge must imply that he knew every possible, and impossible, inter-relation of two or more of these facts. In other words, he knew everything that had happened, or could happen, or couldn't happen. Still Everett maintained that through some mystic thing called imagination the guy could dream up new concepts to entertain himself. We held that imagination was only the building of new concepts from existing knowledge, and that our definition of all knowledge implied that the guy had already considered all possible combinations. Evena maintained that imagination could still dream up something new. In other words than his, me maintained that imagination was some undefinable ability to create a new concept from nothing. To sum it all up, Evans believes imagination is the power to creating the full, original meaning of the word---sort of an effect without cause other than the will to do so. The rest of us believe it consists only of dreaming up new combinations of known facts, or making inference from them.
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