The Epistemology of Fiction and the Question of Invariant Norms (original) (raw)
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British Journal of Aesthetics, 2022
We critically survey prominent recent scholarship on the question whether fiction can be a source of epistemic value for those who engage with it fully and appropriately. Such epistemic value might take the form of knowledge (for “cognitivists”) or understanding (for “neo-cognitivists”). Both camps may be sorted according to a further distinction between views explaining fiction’s epistemic value in terms of the author’s engaging in a form of telling, or instead via their showing some state of affairs to obtain, a special case of which is the provision of self-knowledge. Fictional works that show rather than tell often employ thought experiments. Some fictional works’ epistemic value is indicated by their enabling of empathy, itself illuminated via the psychological process of experience-taking. Whether a fictional work offers epistemic value by telling or showing, there is no in principle bar to its being able to deliver on what it offers, and consumers of fiction who exercise epistemic vigilance may gain either knowledge or some degree of understanding from their engagement with it.
In this dissertation I develop a theory of the cognitive value of literature. My starting point is the symmetry that I claim exists between cognitive benefits that are attributed to literature by aestheticians and multiple epistemic values recognized by epistemologists. In that sense, I bring together two views: literary cognitivism, according to which literature is a source of knowledge and can be cognitively valuable, and plurality view of epistemic aims and values, according to which there are various epistemologically important states and processes other than knowledge. My claim is that new trends in epistemology – characterized primarily by dethroning of knowledge as the chief epistemic goal – give support to the view according to which literature is cognitively valuable initiated centuries ago by Aristotle. At the core of my account is the claim that works of literary fiction are a special kind of testimony.
Reasoning to what is true in fiction
Argumentation, 1990
The paper discusses the principles by which we reason to what is 'true in fiction'. The focus is David Lewis's article 'Truth in Fiction' (1978) which proposes an analysis in terms of counterfactuals and possible worlds. It is argued that Lewis's account is inadequate in detail and also in principle in that it conflicts radically with basic and familiar tenets of literary criticism. Literary critical reasoning about fiction concerns not the discovery of facts in possible worlds but the recovery of meanings in interpretative frameworks. The model theoretic approach fails to account for common literary or rhetorical devices like unreliable narration, connotation and point of view. And in explaining indeterminacy of content in terms of truth-value gaps it gives too simplistic an account of critical reasoning about character motivation and thematic development. A more adequate account of content-indeterminacy can be provided through a comparison of the interpretation of fiction with the interpretation of human action. A broader motif in the paper is the underlying tension between what is required for the logic of fiction and what is required for the aesthetics of fiction.
Truth, Fiction and Narrative Understanding
International Philosophical Quarterly, 2020
This paper defends the cognitive value of literary fiction by showing how Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative understanding emphasizes the productive and creative elements of fictional discourse and defends its referential capacity insofar as fiction reshapes reality according to some universal aspect. Central to this analysis is Ricoeur’s retrieval of Aristotelian mimesis and mythos and their convergence in the notion of emplotment. This paper also supplements and specifies further Ricoeur’s account by retrieving an Aristotelian concept disregarded by Riceour, namely, synesis (understanding). Although Ricoeur connects narrative understanding to the intelligibility of praxis and in turn phronêsis, as opposed to theoretical knowledge (theōria or epistēmē), he overlooks Aristotle’s discussion of synesis. This paper then clarifies how the fictional truth of narrative understanding remains related to, and yet distinct from, both theoretical discourse (science) and praxis (politics).
2018
Possible and narrative worlds are traditionally the most influential tools for explaining our understanding of fiction. One obvious implication of this is considering fiction as a matter of pretence. The theory I offer claims that it is a mistake to take truth as a substantial notion. This view rejects possible worlds and pretence as decisive features in dealing with fiction. Minimalist theory of fiction offers a solution that gives a way to combine a philosophical theory of meaning and views of literary theory. Narrative worlds approach saves its usefulness since its focus is more in the psychological process of reading. Minimalist theory of fiction is based on the minimal theory of truth and the use theory of meaning. The idea of language games as a practice of constructing contextual meanings is also decisive. A sentence is not true because it corresponds to a fact but because it is used in a right way in certain circumstances. The rejection of the possible worlds approach is thu...
The truths of a fiction extend far beyond those stated in its text. We have good reason, for example, to believe that Sherlock Holmes possesses a Cerebral Cortex, although we are never told so within the stories. To infer these further truths, we must rely upon a host of previously acquired background assumptions. Establishing what exactly these assumptions are, and how they help us extend the truths of a fiction, however, is not a simple matter. Contributing to the debate, Stacie Friend (2017) has recently argued that fictions fundamentally rely upon the actual world for their content, appealing to evidence from the cognitive sciences. According to her Reality Assumption, every proposition which is actually true is also fictionally true, unless otherwise excluded by the fiction. This paper challenges Friend's Reality Assumption, arguing both that the empirical evidence advanced in its favour offers inadequate support, and that the Assumption in its present form inadequately serves its intended function.
Narrative Fiction as a Source of Knowledge (in P. Olmos (ed.) Narration and Argument, 2017)
In this essay I refine and extend a defense of literary cognitivism (the view that works of literary fiction may serve as sources of knowledge (and not merely belief) in a way that depends crucially on their being fictional) that I and others have provided in earlier publications. Crucial to that defense is a development of Aristotle's idea of successful dramas as unfolding with " internal necessity " , in light of which I distinguish those forms of narration that show, rather than merely state, that something is so. Literary fiction also often takes the form of a thought experiment, and I distinguish among three aims of such experiment: to make claims (didactic), to exhort to action (directive) and to stimulate inquiry (interrogative). In developing this approach I defend a view of the author of a literary fiction as being in conversation with her readers, and to that end draw upon a Stalnaker-inspired notion of conversation as driven by an evolving common ground shared among interlocutors.
Can fictional narration yield knowledge in a way that depends crucially on its being fictional? This is the hard question of literary cognitivism. It is unremarkable or even trivial that knowledge can be gained from fictional literature in ways that are not dependent on its fictionality (e.g., the science in science fiction). Sometimes fictional narratives are taken to exhibit the structure of suppositional argument, sometimes analogical argument. Of course, neither structure is unique to narratives. The thesis of literary cognitivism would be supported if some narratives exhibit a cogent and special argument structure restricted to fictional narratives. I contend that this is the case for a kind of transcendental argument. The reason is the inclusion and pattern of occurrence of the predicate in the schema. Believability with respect to fictional stories is quite a different thing than it is with respect to nonfictional stories or anything else.