ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Diamond’s suspicions regarding a conception of people as distant because they accept different thought-systems—“play different language-games.” It discusses such distances between Diamond and O’Neill, and between Diamond and Saul Kripke. A language that bars connections beyond techniques of verification would be very different from ours. Discussions in metaphysics and ethics, Diamond thinks, often require imaginative involvement—not only by exposing ourselves to nonsense. Imaginative thinking also helps bridge intellectual-philosophical gaps, invites thinking beyond the comfort of our own views, stretching ourselves, exploring paths to our interlocutor’s mind. Diamond involves herself imaginatively and personally in her discussions, and exposes herself to them. It may make her arguments useless in a sense, but it is also why there is much life in Diamond’s philosophy. Things get trickier in philosophy, however, when the distances are between not thought-systems, but expectations from and conceptions of philosophy.
