Sentence by sentence, works of fiction are not beholden to norms of truth. However, many who appreciate literature agree that it has things to teach us, and not just to the extent that it approximates journalism. This essay offers a model of fiction according to which many such works behave as suppositions for the sake of argument, but differ from everyday suppositions according to the norms associated with various literary genres. This model shows how fiction can justify rather than just espouse propositions, thereby explaining a connection with knowledge. In addition, the model explains the extent to which we rightly rely on the firsthand experience of authors, who in spite of producing fiction are treated as sources of testimonial knowledge.

see how far the analogy can be stretched. In the second part, I turn to the claim put forward by literary anticognitivists according to which literature can at best be the source of hypoth eses, not of knowledge. I challenge this claim by showing that hypotheses can have valuable cognitive benefits on their own, thus hoping to restore cognitive benefits readers get from literature.

Acta Analytica, 2021

That we can learn something from literature, as cognitivists claim, seems to be a commonplace. However, when one considers matters more deeply, it turns out to be a problematic claim. In this paper, by focusing on general revelatory facts about the world and the human spirit, I hold that the cognitivist claim can be vindicated if one takes it as follows. We do not learn such facts from literature, if by “literature” one means the truth-conditional contents that one may ascribe to textual sentences in their fictional use, i.e., in the use in which one makes believe that things unfold in a certain way. What we improperly call learning from literature amounts to knowing actually true conversational implicatures concerning the above facts as meant by literary authors. So, in one and the same shot, we learn both a general revelatory fact and the fact that such a fact is meant via a true conversational implicature by an author. The author draws that implicature from the different truth-co...

This paper proposes an original answer to the two paradoxes of emotional response to fiction: the Experimental Solution. The first part highlights how the Experimental Solution demands an explicit understanding of the connection between emotions in the face of fiction and those within daily experience. Using Ronaldo de Sousa’s notion of paradigm scenarios, the Experimental Solution argues that fiction functions as a type of emotional laboratory where emotions are explored and tested, such that with fiction each one of us reworks the subtleties of the structure of paradigm scenarios. The second part of the paper elaborates some of the consequences of taking fiction as emotional laboratories, by showing that the continuum of emotional experience between daily life and literature reveals how emotional learning occurs in emotional response to fiction, such as to provide a privileged space for emotional growth. Finally, the paper presents some of the ways in which the Experimental Solution makes a little step forward though it agrees with many of the insightful conclusions of the make-belief theory pointing out two important modifications that occur with this new solution.

2017

In Frans H. van Eemeren, Bart Garssen, David Godden & Gordon Mitchell (eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation. Amsterdam: Rozenberg / Sic Sat. pp. 1547-1558, 2011

The common view is that no novel IS an argument, though it might be reconstructed as one. This is curious, for we almost always feel the need to reconstruct arguments even when they are uncontroversially given as arguments, as in a philosophical text. We make the points as explicit, orderly, and (often) brief as possible, which is what we do in reconstructing a novel’s argument. The reverse is also true. Given a text that is uncontroversially an explicit, orderly, and brief argument, in order to enhance plausibility, our first instinct is to flesh it out with illustrations and relationships to everyday life. If this process is fictive (e.g., with “thought experiments”) and orderly, it is story-telling. This paper investigates whether there is a principled way of determining a novel’s argument, which should contribute as much to understanding arguments as to understanding novels.

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 paper 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.

In B. J. Garssen, D. Godden, G. Mitchell & A. F. Snoeck Henkemans (eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, pp. 1169-1177. Amsterdam: Sic Sat, 2015

This paper’s main thesis is that in virtue of being believable, a believable novel makes an indirect transcendental argument telling us something about the real world of human psychology, action, and society. Three related objections are addressed. First, the Stroud-type objection would be that from believability, the only conclusion that could be licensed concerns how we must think or conceive of the real world. Second, Currie holds that such notions are probably false: the empirical evidence “is all against this idea…that readers’ emotional responses track the real causal relations between things.” Third, responding with a full range of emotions to a novel surely requires that it be believable. Yet since we know the novel is fiction, we do not believe it. So in what does its believability consist?

Aesthetic Investigation, 2019

Literature is often said to be a source of beliefs, but there is a serious question about the reliability of literature as a source of true beliefs. Only when we understand how works of literature assist audience members in forming beliefs can this question be answered in a satisfactory fashion. Works of art do not make statements. They are not to be assessed as a species of testimony and they do not provide arguments. Rather, works of literature present perspectives on the world, people, and relations between people. When audience members take up a perspective presented by some work of art, they are in a position to recognize features of the world that were hitherto overlooked, ignored or under-appreciated. Recent psychological literature is used to support this conclusion. This essay will focus on three mechanisms identified by psychologists. Psychological studies indicate that works of literature can lead audience members to abandon stereotypes that hinder the formation of justified beliefs. A key mechanism in this project is “experience-taking” or adopting the perspective a fictional character. Experiments show that readers who have engaged in experience-taking are less likely to employ stereotypes that lead to the formation of false beliefs. For example, heterosexual readers who have adopted the perspective of a gay protagonist are less likely to employ stereotypes about homosexuals. (Kaufman and Libby 2012) Other researchers have found that entering into the perspective of a Muslim woman can reduce prejudice. (Johnson 2013; Hakemulder 2000) Works of literature can also change perspectives by influencing audience members’ emotions. The positive influence of emotion on cognition is well established. (Isen 2008) That works of art arouse emotion is uncontroversial. I argue that works of art, by arousing emotions, can assist audience members in acquiring justified beliefs. The accomplished artist will know which emotions convey cognitive advantages when attempting to understand any particular matter. Sometimes focus on particulars will be cognitively advantageous. In such cases, the arousal of negative emotions will be helpful. Sometimes seeing the big picture and thinking flexibly will be cognitively advantageous. In such cases, the arousal of positive emotions can confer cognitive advantage. Finally, works of literature arouse vivid memories of personal experience in readers. (Seilman and Larsen 1989) I argue that this arousal of emotion aids readers in the acquisition of knowledge. Many works of literature in effect invite audience members to entertain hypotheses. When artworks also evoke memories of events with which audience members are personally familiar, the works put audience members in a position to marshal evidence that supports the hypotheses audience members are brought to entertain. The memories evoked by the work provide justification for the hypothesis.