Fictions within fictions

This paper examines the logic of fictions within fictions. I argue that consistently nested consistent fictions must have certain formal characteristics. The most important is that they form a tree structure. Depending on one’s theory of fictional objects, additional constraints may apply regarding the appearance of a fictional object in two or more fictional universes. The background motivation for the paper is to use iterated fiction operators as a tool for making sense of iterated modal operators; I conclude by noting briefly where the results about nested fictions can, and where they cannot, be extended to nested possible worlds.     

Compelling Fictions: Spinoza and George Eliot on Imagination and Belief

Spinoza took it to be an important psychological fact that belief cannot be compelled. At the same time, he was well aware of the compelling power that religious and political fictions can have on the formation of our beliefs. I argue that Spinoza allows that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fictions. His complex account of the imagination and fiction, and their disabling or enabling roles in gaining knowledge of Nature, is a site of disagreement among commentators. The novels of George Eliot (who translated Spinoza's works) represent a significant development for those who aim to resolve such disagreement in favour of the epistemic value of the imagination and fiction. Although Eliot agreed with Spinoza that belief cannot be compelled, she nevertheless affirmed the potential of certain kinds of fiction to be not only compelling but also edifying. The parallel reading of Eliot and Spinoza offered here raises the question of whether his philosophy can accommodate a theory of art in which the artist is seen to be capable of attaining and imparting dependable knowledge.     

Infected by evil

In this paper I argue that there is good reason to believe that we can be influenced by fictions in ways that matter morally, and some of the time we will be unaware that we have been so influenced. These arguments fall short of proving a clear causal link between fictions and specific changes in the audience, but they do reveal rather interesting and complex features of the moral psychology of fiction. In particular, they reveal that some Platonic worries about the dangers of art cannot be dismissed lightly.     

Moral Persuasion and the Diversity of Fictions

Narrative representations can change our moral actions and thoughts, for better or for worse. In this article, I develop a theory of fictions' capacity for moral education and moral corruption that is fully sensitive to the diversity of fictions. Specifically, I argue that the way a fiction influences our moral actions and thoughts importantly depends on its genre. This theory promises new insights into practical ethical debates over pornography and media violence.     

The Puzzle of Multiple Endings

Why is it that most fictions present one and only one ending, rather than multiple ones? Fictions presenting multiple endings are possible, because a few exist; but they are very rare, and this calls for an explanation. We argue that such an explanation is likely to shed light on our engagement with fictions, for fictions having one and only one ending seem to be ubiquitous. After dismissing the most obvious explanations for this phenomenon, we compare the scarcity of multiple endings in traditional kinds of fiction to their profusion in the case of interactive fictions. This contrast poses a challenge to accounts of our engagement with fictions in terms of games of make‐believe. We conclude that solving this puzzle is likely to improve our philosophical understanding of fictions.     

The Semantics of Fictional Names

Abstract: In this paper we defend a direct reference theory of names. We maintain that the meaning of a name is its bearer. In the case of vacuous names, there is no bearer and they have no meaning. We develop a unified theory of names such that one theory applies to names whether they occur within or outside fiction. Hence, we apply our theory to sentences containing names within fiction, sentences about fiction or sentences making comparisons across fictions. We then defend our theory against objections and compare our view to the views of Currie, Walton, and others.     

Between fiction and reflection: Foucault and the experience-book

Foucault notoriously suggests that his historical analyses are fictions. Commentators typically interpret this claim in a negative light to mean that Foucault's works are not, strictly speaking, true. In this paper, I present a positive interpretation of Foucault's claim, basing my argument on a hitherto marginalized aspect of his work: the experience-book. An experience-book is defined as a use of fiction in the practice of critique with desubjectifying effects. My argument for this interpretation proceeds in three steps. First, to prepare a preliminary account of Foucault's concept of fiction and its effects, I look at Blanchot's ontological interpretation of the work of literature in The Space of Literature. Blanchot, I suggest, provides a template for understanding Foucault's concept of the experience-book. Second, I identify traces of Blanchot's concept of fiction in Foucault's study of Jules Verne, Behind the Fable. I argue that Foucault's critique of fiction, in this paper, anticipates and prefigures his later use of fiction in the practice of critique. Third, pursuing this intuition, I develop an interpretation of Discipline and Punish understood as a use of fiction and experience-book. This interpretation provides a new, immanent perspective on Foucault's critique, and mitigates the epistemological skepticism of the claim that his works are fictions.     

Fiction Unlimited

We offer an original argument for the existence of universal fictions—that is, fictions within which every possible proposition is (fictionally) true. Specifically, we detail a trio of such fictions, along with an easy‐to‐follow recipe for generating more. After exploring several consequences and dismissing some objections, we conclude that fiction, unlike reality, is unlimited when it comes to truth.     

Fate,Fiction and the Future

Abstract

Some fictions, it seems, represent the future as closed, in the sense that some future-tensed propositions are true in those fictions. Yet it is surprisingly difficult to accommodate this plausible thesis within an account of truth in fiction. A number of putative examples of closed fictional futures are discussed (Macbeth, Oedipus, Time and the Conways, The Time Machine) and the problems encountered in reconciling them with various accounts of truth in fiction (David Lewis', Gregory Currie's, Alex Byrne's) elaborated. Connections are drawn between metaphysical views on time and theories of fiction, and an attempt is made to show how the tenseless theory of time (roughly, the denial that time flows) can illuminate accounts of fictional truth, and in particular the issue of how there can be true beliefs about what will happen in a fiction.     

Eluding Wilson’s “Elusive Narrators”

George Wilson has defended the thesis that even impersonal third-person fictional narratives should be taken to contain fictional narrations and have fictional narrators. This, he argues, is necessary if we are to explain how readers can take themselves, in their imaginative engagement with fictions, to have knowledge of the things they are imagining. I argue that there is at least one class of impersonal third-person fictional narratives—thought experiments—to which Wilson’s model fails to apply, and that this reveals more general problems with his argument. I further argue that there is no good reason to think that Wilson’s account applies more restrictedly to those impersonal third-person fictional narratives that feature in standard works of literary fiction.     

The Real Foundation of Fictional Worlds

I argue that judgments of what is ‘true in a fiction’ presuppose the Reality Assumption: the assumption that everything that is (really) true is fictionally the case, unless excluded by the work. By contrast with the more familiar Reality Principle, the Reality Assumption is not a rule for inferring implied content from what is explicit. Instead, it provides an array of real-world truths that can be used in such inferences. I claim that the Reality Assumption is essential to our ability to understand stories, drawing on a range of empirical evidence that demonstrates our reliance on it in narrative comprehension. However, the Reality Assumption has several unintuitive consequences, not least that what is fictionally the case includes countless facts that neither authors nor readers could (or should) ever consider. I argue that such consequences provide no reason to reject the Reality Assumption. I conclude that we should take fictions, like non-fictions, to be about the real world.     

Optimistic Fiction as a Tool for Ethical Reflection in STEM

Greater emphasis on ethical issues is needed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. The fiction for specific purposes (FSP) approach, using optimistic science fiction texts, offers a way to focus on ethical reflection that capitalizes on role models rather than negative examples. This article discusses the benefits of using FSP in STEM education more broadly, and then explains how using optimistic fictions in particular encourages students to think in ethically constructive ways. Using examples of science fiction texts with hopeful perspectives, example discussion questions are given to model how to help keep students focused on the ethical issues in a text. Sample writing prompts to elicit ethical reflection are also provided as models of how to guide students to contemplate and analyze ethical issues that are important in their field of study. The article concludes that the use of optimistic fictions, framed through the lens of professional ethics guidelines and reinforced through ethical reflection, can help students to have beneficial ethical models.

     

An Error Concerning Noses

We identify a strategy for getting beliefs from fiction via three assumptions: (1) a certain causal generality holds in the fiction and does so because (2) causal generalities in fiction are (with noted exceptions) carried over from what the author takes to be fact; (3) the author is reliable on this topic, so what the author takes to be fact is fact. We do not question (2). While (3) will, in particular cases, be doubtful, the strategy is vulnerable more generally to the worry that what looks like a causal generality may be instead an authorial intervention of a kind from which no causal connection can be inferred; in such cases (1) turns out to be false though it may seem at first sight to be true. In consequence we have extra reason for being careful in forming beliefs based on fictions.     

What We Owe to Our Audience: The Hermeneutical Responsibility of Fiction Creators

As audiences demand better and more diverse representation in the fictions they consume, there is a question of how that demand should be placed on fiction creators. In this article, I answer this question by arguing creators of fiction have a hermeneutical responsibility to include diverse characters in their creations, and to do so without relying on harmful stereotypes. I cast this responsibility as the epistemic virtue of due diligence, offset by epistemic laziness and epistemic paralysis as the corresponding vices of absence and excess, respectively. Practicing either vice can constitute a type of hermeneutical gap described by Katharine Jenkins, in which harmful stereotypes (conceptions) become more accessible to epistemic agents than the more accurate concept. By blocking the agent's access to the accurate conception, such stereotypes create a hermeneutical gap and can contribute to hermeneutical injustices, as described by Miranda Fricker and José Medina.     

So Long as They Grow Out of It: Comics, The Discourse of Developmental Normalcy, and Disability

This essay draws on two emerging fields--the study of comics or graphic fiction, and disability studies--to demonstrate how graphic fictions articulate the embodied, ethical, and sociopolitical experiences of impairment and disability. Examining David B's Epileptic and Paul Karasik and Judy Karasik's The Ride Together, I argue that these graphic novels unsettle conventional notions of normalcy and disability. In so doing, they also challenge our assumed dimensions and possibilities of the comics genre and medium, demonstrating the great potential comics hold for disability studies.     

Exploding stories and the limits of fiction

Philosophical Studies - It is widely agreed that fiction is necessarily incomplete, but some recent work postulates the existence of universal fictions—stories according to which everything...     

Active imagination and the analysis of film

The emotions aroused by the pleasure-generating mechanisms of the cinema are usually benign because they refer to a virtual world. Experiencing affects aroused by fictions can resemble being drawn into a rehearsal for a possible, imagined future that just might (but more likely never will) occur in the individual's life in the real world. Movie-goers, no less than the readers of novels, actively engage with the symbols that film makers inscribe in the screen text. In so doing, they take a measure of control over elements of the fiction. Screened fiction has thus the potential to help the individual grow in self-awareness. Shifting its focus to the work of the film critic, the paper argues that, suitably adapted to the requirements of working with a pre-recorded film or tape, Jung's concept of the active imagination helps us to model, license, limit and endorse the subjective element in textual analysis. Because the method proposed makes it possible formally to recognize that the interpretation of fiction is inevitably integrated with the analyst's personality, interpretation is always a matter of a reader bringing a text into being rather than disinterring a pre-existing object.     

Updating Thought Theory: Emotion and the Non‐Paradox of Fiction

Over the past four decades, the paradox of fiction has sparked considerable debate among philosophers. Unfortunately, the most promising solution to this puzzle, thought theory, currently earns its plausibility by way of intuition rather than evidence. I aim to address this by updating thought theory in light of recent empirical findings on affect. I will draw upon a wide range of scientific research—on the cognitive mechanisms driving emotion, the role of affect in counterfactual mind wandering and prospection, and the evolutionary function of affect—to substantiate the claim that fictions can give rise to both real and rational emotional states.     

Literature and Thought Experiments

Like works of literature, thought experiments present fictional narratives that prompt reflection in their readers. Because of these and other similarities, a number of philosophers have argued for a strong analogy between works of literary fiction and thought experiments, some going so far as to say that works of literary fiction are a species of thought experiment. These arguments are often used in defending a cognitivist position with regard to literature: thought experiments produce knowledge, so works of literary fiction can too. This article concedes that works of literary fiction can be put to use in thought experiments, but not in a way that is helpful to the cognitivist. In particular, it draws three disanalogies in the ways we engage critically with thought experiments and with literary fictions. First, we use thought experiments to make arguments; second, we read thought experiments in strongly allegorical terms; and third, the terms of criticism we apply to thought experiments and to works of literature differ. Although these disanalogies present problems for the cognitivist position, they also give us a sharper picture of the distinctive educative potential of works of literary fiction.