5 - Imagination, metaethics and rights

Summary

The second half of our initial discussion of definition took as its base the wider notion of connotation mentioned by Hospers. This centred on the power of various terms to affect people who hear or see them in different ways. Pictorial and poetic meanings are among the chief examples offered by Hospers. Emotive meaning is another example. It was suggested that such understandings are not mere subjective reactions to a term, not just an instance of the ‘pragmatics’ of a term, but also part of the ‘semantics’ of a term or concept. This approach led us to consider in an introductory manner the possibility of an imaginative analysis of terms, recognising that images may often be richer in terms of meaning than the concepts which attempt to pin them down. As Sallie McFague suggested, concepts may discipline images, but images also feed concepts. A concept may become so widely accepted that we forget its limitations in bringing out the full meaning of an image. Returning to the connection between image and concept we may see the value of criticising a particular conceptualisation, replacing it with one or more new concepts which represent the image in a more satisfactory way.

In the following pages I hope to bring out the importance of imagination in elucidating the meaning of rights, and thus the importance of imagination in metaethics as well as in normative ethics. Beginning with some initial points on the importance of imagination in general I want to pass on as quickly as possible to consider the value of metaphors and models.