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It is not the case that Clarke's argument conflates conceivability with possibility: failing to imagine space's removal may reflect cognitive limits, not metaphysical necessity.
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Reasons For
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Reason for
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1.
Clarke's actual argument doesn't rest on simple conceivability but on spatial properties being logically fundamental to substance.
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2.
The distinction between cognitive limits and necessity requires independent criterion for 'genuine possibility' beyond our best rational judgments.
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3.
If imagination unreliably tracks possibility, we lose epistemological access to modal facts entirely, making metaphysics impossible.
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Reasons Against
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Reason against
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1.
Humans cannot visualize many genuine possibilities (higher dimensions, quantum superposition), showing conceivability is unreliable for metaphysics.
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2.
Our spatial imagination evolved for survival, not metaphysical accuracy, so its limits don't track what's truly possible.
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3.
If conceivability entailed possibility, contradictions would be possible (we can conceive of round squares via confused imagination).
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