Fiction and empathy

It is often claimed that fiction refines and enlarges our empathic sensitivities to morally charged situations, exposing us to exemplars—imaginary ones—of demanding, complex situations beyond those we are likely to encounter in daily life, expanding the circle of those we care about and our ability to help them. I begin by outlining a concept of empathy useful for our discussions, and offer some reasons for thinking that empathy is not always to be thought of as aiding moral reflection or leading to morally good outcomes. I then review some of the evidence relevant to assessing fiction’s impact on our empathic tendencies, finding a somewhat mixed picture. In light of this I list a variety of ways that fictions may fail to deliver empathic benefits. Finally I look in some detail at the phenomenon of ‘moral self-licencing’, which suggests that at least one of these possible ways really is a barrier to the enlargement of empathy by fiction.

Knowledge from imagination

We start with the idea of the role of imagination in planning and in the formation of conditional beliefs. We then consider ways in which the process of belief-fixation by imagination can be unreliable, taking as my example a legal judgement. I argue that the role of the imagination in learning may be very restricted, and yet have conferred a selective advantage on those who possessed it, paving the way for an adaptive account of the imagination. The role of the imagination in the fixation of conditional belief suggests a role for it in thought experiments. It has been suggested that we should think of fictions such as novels as offering thought experiments, and hence as able to facilitate learning in the way that thought experiments in science and philosophy do. I argue that there are features of fictions-as-thought experiments which should make us pessimistic about their epistemic value.

Fiction, mentalizing, and planning

Fiction has a remarkable degree of focus on the mind: the beliefs, desires, intentions, and feelings of its characters, and especially the ways their minds interact, understanding or misunderstanding one another, sharing feelings of intimacy, divided by conflicting desire, united in a common cause. This chapter focuses on the representation in fiction of the ways mental states interconnect and their consequences for action. Two works of ancient literature are picked out as puzzling in this regard: the Iliad and the Gilgamesh epic. It ends with a response to the idea that, on Darwinian grounds, fiction’s close connection to the imagination makes it likely that it is in some way a good source of knowledge. It is argued that there are a number of plausible accounts consistent with Darwinian ideas which are not supportive of the idea that fiction is a source of knowledge.

An empirical question?

This book asks whether, in what circumstances, and to what degree we learn from fiction. But it may be objected that that is the wrong question. The philosophically interesting question about fiction, it may be said, is not whether people do learn from it but ‘What is there to be learned?’ Answering this question requires analytical and interpretive effort, not the provision of evidence, either of an experimental kind or derived from common experience. This chapter is devoted to the task of undermining the objection. It is argued that an inquiry into the epistemic status of fiction must be in part an empirical one, though it is emphasized that the right kinds of empirical evidence may be very hard to obtain. One objection to this approach is that it suggests a need to radically revise our ways of approaching and appreciating works of fiction. There is some justice in the concern, and it is suggested that revision is best avoided by thinking of ourselves as engaged, not in learning, but in a pretence of learning.

The varieties of knowing

This chapter reviews recent work in epistemology and draws a number of distinctions that will be of use in later chapters: between knowledge and learning, between knowledge and understanding, between knowledge and wisdom. It emphasizes the difference between propositional knowledge and the much narrower category of knowledge fully expressible in language. It emphasizes the importance of pathways to learning that are reliable. Most importantly it distinguishes propositional knowledge, knowledge of how to do things, and knowledge of what experiences are like (acquaintance); all these, I argue, are forms of knowing which may be made available by exposure to fiction. Relations of reducibility between these kinds are considered, as is the relation between knowing-how and abilities.

Wise authors?

This chapter continues the theme of reliability. To the extent that we rely on the deliverances of science, that is not because we have a personal faith in the integrity of the scientists responsible for the results in question but because we have confidence in the practices and institutions of science itself. I suggest that, in this respect, we find a contrast between science and the world of fiction-makers and their audiences. I then raise some questions about the psychology of artistic creativity and its relation to that great theme of literature and quality fictions of all kinds: the mind. Finally, I take a look at the general idea of expertise, asking where we can expect to find it and where an illusion of expertise is more likely. I suggest that the idea of the ‘wise author’, able to see further into the depths of moral psychology than the rest of us, is something we have reason to be suspicious of.

Fiction, truth, and the transmission of belief

This chapter focuses on the ways in which we acquire propositional beliefs, and sometimes knowledge, from fictions. It distinguishes between pathways to belief that depend on sub-rational mechanisms such as heuristics and biases, and pathways that encourage rational reflection on the issues in hand. It suggests a mechanism for generating reasonably reliable factual beliefs from fictions, but emphasizes the difficulty of extending this account to cover the evaluative propositions more often celebrated as the fruits of engagement with literature. It concludes by considering the case for saying that whatever we may learn from fiction has nothing to do with the literary value of the work itself. I argue that this cannot be the correct view.

Affective imagining

Chapter 3’s distinction between the world and representations of the world is here put to further uses, this time to consider how we should classify such states as ‘fearing (or fearing for) fictional characters’. It is argued that these states have appropriateness conditions, just as fears for one’s friends and neighbours have. But the appropriateness conditions are very different and we are right to draw a distinction in kind between emotions directed at things assumed to be real and those ‘quasi-emotions’ directed at the avowedly fictional. Whether we say that these two kinds are both emotion-kinds, or instead that only one of them is strikes me as a less easily settled, less interesting, and possibly verbal question.

Where we are

I began this book by saying that it would be an inquiry into the role of fiction in our lives and in particular into two things we care about a great deal and expend a lot of energy on: imagining and knowing. Fiction, I have argued, has a happier, deeper, and more stable relation to imagination than it does to knowledge. Understanding the concept of fiction (a very stable concept I have argued) depends on appreciating what it is to communicate something with the intention that it be imagined: armed with that and a general sense of the overarching purpose the maker of a text has and the ways that avowedly fictional material can be seen to serve some more important non-fictional purpose (and vice versa) we can often come to reasoned judgements that this work is fiction and that one non-fiction: judgments that don’t deviate much from the judgements of common readers, librarians, and booksellers. Later chapters in ...

Imaginings like desires

We commonly contrast imagining with believing. There is, I claim, another kind of imagining: one that contrasts with desire. I call this i-desire. This chapter makes a case for it based on its role in generating our responses to fiction. The argument depends on a distinction between states with different kinds of correctness or appropriateness conditions. Roughly speaking, beliefs and desires are made appropriate by states of the world, while the various kinds of imagining are made appropriate by states of representations of the world. I consider and reject the idea that we can replace talk of i-desires with talk of desires concerning what is fictional.