Philosophy and Fantasy

As the snows of mid-December had all but buried any hope of prolonged activity, the Rat and the Mole had taken to sitting by the fireplace during the short winter days, sometimes quietly smoking or drinking tea but mostly just dozing. Occasionally a trickle of ideas could be discerned flowing from their frozen streams of consciousness—evidently the result of some momentary mental thaw. It was during such brief periods as these that they turned to philosophy, for the discussion of philosophical issues always had a therapeutic use for them, namely, as a sedative.

The Rat:	But I do think that philosophy and fantasy have something in common.
The Mole:	Well, certainly philosophy tends to be fantastic, for many philosophers make bizarre and even preposterous claims—"foolosophers," Erasmus called them. Then again, many fantasies are philosophical, that is, they can be construed as having something important to say about "man and the world" which is not a matter of scientific law or theory. But regardless of which way one were to take your claim, Ratty, it would be misleading for you to suggest that philosophy and fantasy share a particular property in the way different red things may be said to share the same property.
The Rat:	Blinking How in the world did you arrive at those conclusions from what I said?
The Mole:	Nonchalantly By a process of inference.
The Rat:	Hmm . . . Look, Mole, I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not quite sure you realize that what you heard wasn't all of what I meant to say. Let me explain . . . Sometimes philosophers are daring enough to employ a certain type of conceptual technique which is, as a matter of fact, commonly used by writers of fantasy. This kind of conceptual procedure is simply the fabrication of an imaginary world that is logically possible but, as far as we know, not physically possible.
The Mole:	In other words . . .
The Rat:	In other words, a description of the "essential" features of such a hypothetical world would include some statements about certain creatures, entities, events, or states of affairs which, while not logically self-contradictory, would, nevertheless, be contrary to some set of scientific laws, if the statements in the description were taken literally as making assertions.
The Mole:	For instance . . .
The Rat:	Well, for example, suppose we began to describe the essential features of the hobbit-world in J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. No doubt we would disagree over what we would consider to be a "complete" list of the necessary features of that imaginary world. . .
The Mole:	No doubt.
The Rat:	But we probably could agree on some points. In particular, if we were to describe that world to someone who had not read the trilogy, we would have to mention the imaginary age during which that world existed because, unlike some other fantasies, The Lord of the Rings is placed in a definite "historical" setting. We would also have to mention that men lived in that world. Now if we removed ourselves from the spirit of the fantasy for a moment and construed the sentence, 'Some men lived during the Third Age of Middle-earth', as an assertion of some fact, then we could see, first of all, that we could make such an assertion without contradicting ourselves and, secondly, that in making it, we would be saying something contrary to certain laws of paleontology, anthropology, and archaeology. According to such sciences, all members of the species Homo sapiens have lived at some time during the Cenozoic era. But the Third Age of Middle-earth did not occur during the Cenozoic era or, for that matter, during any other era.
The Mole:	I see . . . But you said that some philosophers have used this conceptual technique. How are you going to prove that, Ratty?
The Rat:	Why should I try to prove it? Why should I attempt to give a deductive argument for my thesis in order to convince you that what I say is true?
The Mole:	Oh, I don't know really...