{"id":9467,"date":"2012-08-12T14:47:42","date_gmt":"2012-08-12T14:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/08\/12\/wishing-and-hoping\/"},"modified":"2012-08-12T14:47:42","modified_gmt":"2012-08-12T14:47:42","slug":"wishing-and-hoping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/08\/12\/wishing-and-hoping\/","title":{"rendered":"Differences Between Wishing and Hoping"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain<\/span>
That we could sit simply in that room again<\/span>
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat<\/span>
I'd give it all gladly<\/span>
If our lives could be like that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bob Dylan's Dream<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Wishing and hoping are both intentional attitudes: they take an object.  One cannot just wish, or just hope, in the way one can just feel miserable or elated.  If I wish, I wish for something.  The same holds for hoping. How then do the two attitudes differ?  They differ in terms of time, modality, and justification.<\/span><\/p>\n

1.  The object of hope lies in the future, of necessity.  One cannot hope for what was or what is.  In his dream, Dylan wished to be together again with his long lost friends.  But he didn't hope<\/em> to be together with them again.  Coherent: 'I wish I had never been born.'  Incoherent: 'I hope I had never been born.'  Coherent: 'I wish I was with her right now.'  Incoherent: 'I hope I was with her right now.'<\/span><\/p>\n

Although hope is always and of necessity future-directed, wishing is not temporally restricted.  'I wish I were 30 again.' 'I wish I were in Hawaii now.'  'I wish to live to be a hundred.'   I cannot hope to be 30 again or hope to be in Hawaii now.  But I can both wish and hope to live to be a hundred.<\/span><\/p>\n

Can I hope to be young again?  That's ambiguous.  I could hope for a medical breakthrough that would rejuvenate  a person in the sense of making him physiologically young  and I could hope to undergo such a rejuvenation.  But I cannot hope to be calendrically young again.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. One can hope only for what one considers to be possible.  (What one considers to be possible may or may be possible.)  But one can wish for both what one considers to be the possible and what one consider to be  impossible.  I can hope for a stay of execution, but not that I should continue to exist as a live animal after being hanged.  ('Hanged' not 'hung'!)  I can hope to survive my bodily death, but only if I consider it possible that I survive my bodily death. But I can wish for what I know to be impossible such as being young again, being able to run a 2:30 marathon, visiting  Mars next year.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. There is no sense in demanding of one who wishes to be cured of cancer that he supply his grounds or justification for so wishing.  "Are you justified<\/em> in wishing to be cancer-free?"  But if he hopes to beat his cancer, then one can appropriately request the grounds of the hope.<\/span><\/p>\n

If I both wish and hope for something I consider possible that lies in the future, then the difference between wishing and hoping rests on the fact that one can appropriately request grounds for hoping but not grounds for wishing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I'll end with my favorite counterfactual conditional:  'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.'<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wish, I wish, I wish in vainThat we could sit simply in that room againTen thousand dollars at the drop of a hatI'd give it all gladlyIf our lives could be like that. Bob Dylan's Dream Wishing and hoping are both intentional attitudes: they take an object.  One cannot just wish, or just hope, … Continue reading “Differences Between Wishing and Hoping”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,100,235,204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emotions","category-intentionality","category-modal-matters","category-time-and-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}