Fictional truth

A well-known theory about under which circumstances a statement is true in a fiction is the Reality Principle (RP), which originates in the work of David Lewis: “(RP) Where p1…pn are the primary fictional truths of a fiction F, it is true in F that q iff the following holds: were p1…pn the case, q would have been the case” (Walton 1990, 44). RP has been subjected to a number of counterexamples, up to a point where, in the words of Stacie Friend (2017, 33), “it is widely recognized that the Reality Principle […] cannot be a universal inference rule for implied story-truths”. This chapter argues that the strength of these counterexamples is widely overestimated, and that they do not, on closer scrutiny, constitute reasons for rejecting RP.

The Language of Fiction

The Language of Fiction brings together new research on fiction from philosophy and linguistics. Fiction is a topic that has long been studied in philosophy. Yet recently there has been a surge of work on fictional discourse in the intersection between linguistics and philosophy of language. There has been a growing interest in examining long-standing issues concerning fiction from a perspective informed both by philosophy and linguistic theory. The Language of Fiction contains fourteen essays by leading scholars in both fields, as well as a substantial Introduction by the editors. The collection is organized in three parts, each with their own introduction. Part I, “Truth, reference, and imagination”, offers new, interdisciplinary perspectives on some of the central themes from the philosophy of fiction: What is fictional truth? How do fictional names refer? What kind of speech act is involved in telling a fictional story? What is the relation between fiction and imagination? Part II, “Storytelling”, deals with themes originating from the study of narrative: How do we infer a coherent story from a sequence of event descriptions? And how do we interpret the words of impersonal or unreliable narrators? Part III, “Perspective shift”, zooms in on an alleged key characteristic of fictional narratives, viz. the way we get access to the fictional characters’ inner lives, through a variety of literary techniques for representing what they say, think, or see.

Extracting fictional truth from unreliable sources

A fictional text is commonly viewed as constituting an invitation to play a certain game of make-believe, with the individual sentences written by the author providing the propositions we are to imagine and/or accept as true within the fiction. However, we can’t always take the text at face value. What narratologists call ‘unreliable narrators’ may present a confused or misleading picture of the fictional world. Meanwhile, there has been a debate in philosophy about ‘imaginative resistance’ in which we resist imagining (or even accepting as true in the fiction) what’s explicitly stated in the text. But if we can’t take the text’s word for it, how do we determine what’s true in a fiction? The chapter proposes an account of fiction interpretation in a dynamic setting (a version of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) with a mechanism for opening, updating, and closing temporary ‘workspaces’) and combines this framework with belief revision logic.

Fiction and importation

Importation in fictional discourse is the phenomenon by which audiences include information in the story over and above what is explicitly stated by the narrator. This paper argues that importation is distinct from generation, the phenomenon by which truth in fiction may outstrip what is made explicit, and draws a distinction between fictional truth and fictional records. The latter comprises the audience’s picture of what is true according to the narrator. The paper argues that importation into fictional records operates according to principles that also govern ordinary conversation. An account of fictional records as a species of common ground information is proposed. Two sources of importation are described in detail, presupposition accommodation and conversational implicatures. It is shown that presuppositions are both mandatorily imported and mandatorily generated. By contrast, conversational implicatures are neither mandatorily imported nor mandatorily generated. The paper distinguishes conversational implicatures from contextual inferences. Both rely on background assumptions, yet conversational implicatures moreover depend on assumptions concerning Gricean cooperation.

Exploring Fictional Truth

There are ghosts. At least, in "Hamlet" there are. This is an example of a fictional truth, of something true in a fiction. Or so it seems. For, once we broaden our view to all kinds and realms of fiction our ordinary notions are challenged, and intriguing philosophical questions arise. Are there really any fictional truths? How can they be determined? Is everything just interpretation? Can anything be fictional? Could you be part of a fiction? Et cetera. The philosophical literature on fiction typically focusses on the semantics of fictional discourse and the ontology of fictional objects. In contrast, this study explores the nature of fictional truth by analyzing its conceptual structure and by unfolding some of its most important conceptual connections. After reviewing the field and identifying core elements that any theory of fictional truth must accommodate Christian Folde investigates several interrelated issues central to the on-going debates. Building on a clear account of fictional content and a wealth of examples the author offers novel solutions to various problems at the intersection of fictional truth, interpretation, and narration. The book thereby makes contributions to aesthetics, metaphysics and literary theory, among other things, and is thus both of philosophical and interdisciplinary value.

Post-communist Interpretation of History in the Albanian Literature in Kosovo

This article focuses on stylistic choices in the novel Im atë donte Adolfin (My father loved Adolph) by the Albanian author in Kosovo Mehmet Kraja (2005) as a strategy to generate a post-communist perspective of interpreting history. By blending first-person narration as confidentiality and third-person narration as conventionality (Barthes, 1978), the possessive construction ‘my father’ in this literary text serves both as referential label and deictic, generating dual focalization (Phelan, 2005). The heterodiegetic narrator is positioned simultaneously as a neutral eye witnessing narrator and as a signal of subjectivity. Even in cases of intradiegetic role the narrator remains detached interweaving his voice with the voice of the character. The synchronized overt and distant narratorial stances in this novel correspond with the demonstration of historical discourse as both subjective and factual narration. The relationship between fiction and truth has been widely treated in the post-modern intellectual thought, and as Borg (2010) points out in his study on Beckett and Joyce, the radical narrative innovations are “examples of a peculiarly modernist engagement with the nature of factual and fictional truth” (p. 179), suggesting that in modern literary texts “every event exists factually and fictionally at the same time” (p. 187). As a resonance to Borg’s analysis of modernist literature, in Kraja’s novel the knowledge about history consists of both factual and imaginative elements, bringing “the moment of truth in all its potential” (p. 191).

The Implied Fictional Narrator

The role of the narrator in fiction has recently received renewed interest from scholars in philosophical aesthetics and narratology. Many of the contributions criticise how the term is used – both outside of narrative literature as well as within the field of fictional narrative literature. The central part of the attacks has been the ubiquity of fictional narrators, see e. g. Kania (2005), and pan-narrator theories have been dismissed, e. g. by Köppe and Stühring (2011). Yet, the fictional narrator has been a decisive tool within literary narratology for many years, in particular during the heyday of classical literary narratology. For scholars like Genette (1988) and Cohn (1999), the category of the fictional narrator was at the centre of theoretical debates about the demarcation of fiction and non-fiction. Arguably, theorising about the fictional narrator necessitates theorising about fiction in general. From this, it follows that any account on which the fictional narrator is built ideally would be a theory of fiction compatible with all types of fictional narrative media – not just narrative fiction like novels and short stories.In this vein, this paper applies a transmedial approach to the question of fictional narrators in different media based on the transmedial theory of fiction in terms of make-believe by Kendall Walton (1990). Although the article shares roughly the same theoretical point of departure as Köppe and Stühring, that is, an analytical-philosophical theory of fiction as make-believe, it offers a diametrically different solution. Building on the distinction between direct and indirect fictional truths as developed by Kendall Walton in his seminal theory of fiction as make-believe (1990), this paper proposes the fictional presence of a narrator in all fictional narratives. Importantly, ›presence‹ in terms of being part of a work of fiction needs to be understood as exactly that: fictional presence, meaning that the question of what counts as a fictional truth is of great importance. Here, the distinction between direct and indirect fictional truths is crucial since not every fictional narrative – not even every literary fictional narrative – makes it directly fictionally true that it is narrated. To exemplify: not every novel begins with words like »Call me Ishmael«, i. e., stating direct fictional truths about its narrator. Indirect, implied fictional truths can also be part of the generation of the fictional truth of a fictional narrator. Therefore, the paper argues that every fictional narrative makes it (at least indirectly) fictionally true that it is narrated.More specifically, the argument is made that any theory of fictional narrative that accepts fictional narrators in some cases (as e. g. suggested by proponents of the so-called optional narrator theory, such as Currie [2010]), has to accept fictional narrators in all cases of fictional narratives. The only other option is to remove the category of fictional narrators altogether. Since the category of the fictional narrator has proved to be extremely useful in the history of narratology, such removal would be unfortunate, however. Instead, a solution is suggested that emphasizes the active role of recipients in the generation of fictional truths, and in particular in the generation of implied fictional truths.Once the narratological category of the fictional narrator is understood in terms of fictional truth, the methodological consequences can be fully grasped: without the generation of fictional truths in a game of make-believe, there are no fictional narratives – and no fictional narrators. The fictionality of narratives depends entirely on the fact that they are used as props in a game of make-believe. If they are not used in this manner, they are nothing but black dots on paper, the oxidation of silver through light, or any other technical description of artefacts containing representations. Fictional narrators are always based on fictional truths, they are the result of a game of make-believe, and hence the only evidence for a fictional narrator is always merely fictional. If it is impossible to imagine that the fictional work is narrated, then the work is not a narrative.In the first part of the paper, common arguments for and against the fictional narrator are discussed, such as the analytical, realist, transmedial, and the so-called evidence argument; in addition, unreliable narration in fictional film will be an important part in the defence of the ubiquitous fictional narrator in fictional narrative. If the category of unreliable narration relies on the interplay of both author, narration, and reader, the question of unreliable narration within narrative fiction that is not traditionally verbal, such as fiction films, becomes highly problematic. Based on Walton’s theory of make-believe, part two of the paper presents a number of reasons why at least implied fictional narrators are necessary for the definition of fictional narrative in different media and discusses the methodological consequences of this theoretical choice.

FILOSOFIS KEBENARAN FIKSI SEBAGAI PENGEMBANGAN INTELEGENSI BAGI KEHIDUPAN INDIVIDU MANUSIA

The study of intelligence development, as a form of analyzing the intelligence of creativity in revealing objects and trying to find specific, unique things contained in fiction. Changes in the way of thinking intelligence in a fictional truth is a discourse to express a pattern and story line with an understanding. Understanding of intelligence by distinguishing, guessing, then explaining, which is in fiction. The problem of literary works called fiction is a work that tells something that did not really happen. There is a difference of opinion in a work of fiction because it is not in accordance with his views but, intellectually and academically, the truth is less acceptable. The theory used to uncover the phenomenon is based on theory, Utami Munandar that, by way of divergent thinking. Methodology by using critical analysis in an effort to unravel, philosophically discourse of the truth of fiction by using intelligence as a logical reasoning power to find out the harmony in fiction. The results of the study found that, philosophical truth fiction can change individuals able to imagine, understand the situation, experience, and understanding. The ability of individual intelligence will increase after reading fiction based on the ability of intellectual imagination possessed. The conception is based on the development of intelligent divergent ways of thinking that is spread which is also called creative imaginative thinking an ability to provide various answers based on the information provided, with an emphasis on diversity, number and suitability.

Truth, Fiction and Narrative Understanding

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).