Fiction and imagining: a love story

Reading  and in other ways consuming fiction plays an important role in the lives of many. Central to engagement with fiction, it seems, is the involvement of a reader’s imagination. People talk of being ‘transported’; ‘lost in a story’; of ‘suspending their disbelief’. All of these ways of talking are naturally understood as indicating that imagining is occurring, as one engages.

What, though, is fiction? Indeed, what is the imagination, as manifested in the reader’s response to a fiction? In this series of lectures and in a forthcoming book, I’ll argue that we can gain insight into each of these important questions by addressing them together.

 Philosophers have invoked the imagination in a range of explanations, including of possibility (Yablo 1993; Chalmers 2002); counterfactual reasoning (Williamson 2007); empathy (Goldman 1995); delusion (McGinn 2004); predicting and explaining other minds (Goldman1989; Heal 1998); pictorial appreciation (Walton 1990); and understanding music (Levinson 2005). Not for nothing has the notion of imagination been called ‘extremely flexible’ (Stevenson 2003: 238).  Yet at the same time, the nature of imagination is widely acknowledged by philosophers to be difficult to capture. About the nature of fiction, meanwhile, there is also dispute. Fiction has been variously characterised as essentially related to pretence (Searle 1975); falsehood (Goodman 1982); invention (Deutsch 2000); imagining (Walton 1990; Currie 1990; Lamarque and Olsen 1994; Davies 2007); or none of these (Friend 2011, 2012; Matravers 2014).

Let’s call the sort of theory we’re looking for an ‘explanatory theory ’ rather than one of straightforward conceptual analysis: one that attempts to specify the natures of, respectively, imagining and fiction, in a way that offers explanatory value in some respect. An explanatory theory of x is not aimed simply at recovery of the conditions governing the folk concept of x, but aims to informatively supplement or even in some cases transform our current understanding of x. Ideally a theory of x will at least fit with uncontroversial cases of the folk concept, in order to avoid the impression of talking past the original topic. However, the account may also permissibly include items not ordinarily classified as ‘x’, or exclude others ordinarily so classified. It may permissibly redraw the boundaries of the concept. In contrast, whilst conceptual analysis permits occasional rejection of at least some ordinary intuitions about particular cases, it remains largely deferential to ordinary language usage (Jackson 2000: 35).

Baldly put, the mark of a good explanatory theory of x is that should explain something we care about. More specifically, explanatory value might include: accounting for relations between entities in a way which solves existing puzzles about them; complimenting and providing elucidation of existing theoretical commitments in related areas; or showing the point of some aspect(s) of our current practice. Ideally, the theory should also aim to display traditional theoretical virtues: for instance, to cover a wide range of interesting cases, though not so wide as to obscure important looking distinctions where they emerge; and to be simple and elegant, relative to rivals.  My aim in this book will be to construct two explanatory theories simultaneously: a theory of fiction, and at least a partial theory of a certain kind of imagination too.

Summary of seminars (approximate)

In Seminar 1, I start with some rather minimal claims about the sort of imagining called for by fiction (‘F-imagining’). I use these relatively uncontroversial points to build a theory of fiction, arguing that a fiction is a set of instructions to a reader, instructing her to F-imagine various things. Call this ‘the basic claim’. I defend my view from those, such as Gregory Currie, Peter Lamarque and Stein Olsen, and David Davies, who would agree with the basic claim as one condition of fiction, but who would argue that a theory of fiction also needs additional conditions. I also defend my view against those, such as Stacie Friend and Derek Matravers, who would reject even that basic claim. I finish by considering what to say about less straightforward cases, such as split narrative, ‘ambiguous fictions’, ‘fictions within fictions’, unreliable narration, and those cases where a fictional character appears as such in a fiction.

In Seminar 2, I turn to the notion of fictional content. I’ll argue there is a straightforward relation between what makes an utterance fictive at all, and fictional content. Namely: what is fictionally true in a fiction f  - what its content is – is (roughly speaking) simply equivalent to what its author reflexively intended (instructed) the reader to F-imagine. That is, I’ll endorse what is often referred to as ‘extreme intentionalism’.  I will then show how several common objections offered to an intentionalist theory of fictional truth of this nature fail; so that anyone who is a moderate intentionalist about fictional content, and who thinks that the actual author’s intentions are sometimes relevant to determining fictional content, should accept that they always are.  I continue the defence of extreme intentionalism by attacking two of its significant rivals: on one hand, hypothetical intentionalism and on the other, value-maximising theory (often offered as a variety of critical pluralism). I show how each is an inadequate account of fictional content. Additionally, I show how extreme intentionalism, though a monistic position, is compatible with many of the critical judgements which tempt many into critical pluralism.

In Seminar 3, I complete the discussion of fictional content, by examining how, in particular, ‘implied’ or ‘non-explicit’ fictional content is generated, in a way that apparently moves away from the direct and literal content of the words on the page. I reject the non-intentionalist accounts offered by David Lewis and Gregory Currie, showing how they are significantly odds with the facts about competent literary practice. I also explore and defend a consequence of my extreme intentionalism that might at first seem unattractive: that there is no automatic ‘importation’ of the content of a reader’s beliefs into a fictional scenario she is reading about, and that, consequently, fictions are relatively ‘sparsely populated’.

In Seminar 4, I focus on the possible relation between fiction and the inculcation of justified belief. I start by elaborating and defending the claim that fictions can be sources of testimony and so justified (or unjustified) belief, via the author’s intentionally conveying beliefs to readers. I then implicate the fact that fictive utterances can, effectively, instruct readers to have beliefs, in a new explanation for imaginative resistance: that is, an explanation of those cases where, it is alleged, a reader experiences difficulty in imagining something an author has instructed her to imagine. The right account of this phenomenon, I suggest, should cite the reader’s perception of an authorial intention that she believe something which she cannot believe, and so rejects; plus, in clear-cut cases, an absence of any perception of some further purpose which imagining the offending proposition or passage would fulfill. I defend this view against several rivals. I finish with a consideration of whether one can propositionally imagine what one believes to be conceptually impossible, looking at a range of fictional cases which apparently ask us to do this. I conclude that one can.

In Seminar 5, I return to the nature of the propositional imagination, examining it in the light of the conclusions reached thus far about the nature of fiction and what it calls for, properly understood. In particular I reject two dominant tendencies in treatment of the propositional imagining: on the one hand, to treat it as ‘belief-like’, and on the other, to treat it as radically unconstrained and ‘stipulative’. I argue that though propositional imagining can be either belief-like, or radically unconstrained, depending on the purposes to which it is being put, neither of these characterisations are good as general descriptions. I conclude with a discussion of the nature of supposition, and its relation to propositional imagining, showing that, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, fictions tend to call extensively for supposition on the part of the reader, by default.