Imagining in response to fiction: unpacking the infrastructure

Abstract

Works of fiction are alleged to differ from works of nonfiction in instructing their audience to imagine their content. Indeed, works of fiction have been defined in terms of this feature: they are works that mandate us to imagine their content. This paper examines this definition of works of fiction, focusing on the nature of the activity that ensues in response to reading or watching fiction. Investigating how imaginings function in other contexts, I show, first, that they presuppose a cognitive infrastructure encompassing at least one additional kind of mental state, whose role is to determine, to some degree, truth in an imaginary world. I then discuss the implications for the definition of fiction, showing that the definition should be refined to accommodate the structure that imagining presupposes: a work counts as fiction just in case it mandates us, not only to imagine, but to engage in a more complex mental activity, an activity that in addition to imagining, involves positing a backdrop for our imaginings.

Keywords:

• works of fiction
• fictional worlds
• imagination
• belief-like imagining
• imaginary truths
• Kendall Walton

Notes on contributor

Alon Chasid is a senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. He works on the cognitive structure of belief-like imaginings, the cognitive penetration of perceptual experience, pictorial experience, and the relations between perception and imagination.

ORCID

Alon Chasid http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4793-1190

Notes

1 This is the main claim made by the “standard” (Friend 2012, 182) or “consensus” (Matravers 2014, 21ff) view of fiction. See, e.g. Currie (1990, 1991); Davies (2007); García-Carpintero (2019, Forthcoming); Lamarque and Olsen (1994); Stock (2011, 2013, 2016); Walton (1990, 2008, 2015). It is also tacitly assumed in discussions about imagination in general; see the works cited in the next note. Friend (2008, 2011, 2012) adduces several counterexamples, but accepts that prescribing imagining is a standard property of fiction (2012, 188). Matravers (2014) suggests abandoning the distinction between fiction and non-fiction in favor of the distinction between what he calls “representations” and “confrontations.”

2 See, e.g. Doggett and Egan (2007, 2012); Gendler (2003); Ichino (2019); Kind (2013, 2016); Langland-Hassan (2012); Liao and Doggett (2014); Liao and Gendler (2018); Nichols and Stich (2003); Nichols (2004, 2006); Currie and Ravenscroft (2002); Schellenberg (2013); Van Leeuwen (2011); Walton (1990, 2008, 2015). Another claim is that imagining also has sensory components; see, e.g. Kind (2001), Peacocke (1985); cf. Schellenberg (2013, 499). My argument is compatible with this claim, but focuses on belief-like, propositional, imaginings.

3 Walton's invocation of “function” ensues from the fact that his analysis of fiction does not require authorial intention, or any intention of the sort associated with speech acts (1990, 86ff). This paper does not discuss whether fictionality necessitates some kind of intention on the part of the author. My focus is the audience response that a work of fiction mandates, namely, the mental activity that is associated with imaginings; my argument is therefore compatible with both sides of the “intention” debate.

4 My account is neutral as to whether or not beliefs are normative or “aim at truth.” The point is that beliefs and imaginings are alike in that their content is putatively assessed for truth in a world, hence they themselves do not determine the relevant truths.

5 In engaging with fiction, we may, obviously, misinterpret what the work mandates us to imagine, and posit an i-truth that it hasn't directed us to posit. Indeed, ascertaining what a work mandates us to posit to be i-true (and, likewise, what it mandates us to imagine) sometimes requires that the work be interpreted in its entirety, rather than passage by passage; see, e.g. Walton (1990, 145–146). Such a (real-world) mistake in interpreting the work's mandate should not be confused with the “incorrectness” ascribed to imagining of i-falsehoods mandated by the work, as in the murder-mystery case.

6 García-Carpintero (2019, section 3) distinguishes between “ancillary imaginings” and “constitutive imagining.” His distinction seems to overlap the distinction between (belief-like) imaginings and positing, although his motivation is different from mine, and applies only to engagements with fiction. See also García-Carpintero (Forthcoming).

7 Philosophers generally maintain that imagining an overt contradiction is impossible (see Kind 2013, 151). A solution to the third problem that accepts that contradictions cannot be imagined is therefore preferable to a solution based on imagining a contradiction. Walton himself argues that imagining two conflicting propositions is possible only if each proposition belongs to a different cluster (2015, 30–31).

8 An anonymous referee pointed out that all fictions, in a sense, are of the real world. For every work of fiction seems to (implicitly) ask us to imagine, regarding the real world, that this and that happened. The point is well taken: works of fiction are, to a great extent, about real-world objects and properties. When Fred, e.g. imagines that he is rich, he imagines of his real-world self, and of the real-world property of being wealthy, that the former has the latter. This claim, however, must be distinguished from my claim that imaginings are “directed at” an i- world. My claim has to do with assessment for truth: imaginings are directed at an i- world in that their content is putatively assessed for truth in an i- world. Were our imaginings directed at the real world, their content would be putatively assessed for truth simpliciter, which is patently false. For were this the case, our imaginings would be responsive to real-world evidence, consistent with our beliefs, etc., and hence would not be imaginings. Though imaginings often refer to real-world objects and properties, we take their content to be putatively assessed for truth in an i-world; with respect to the truth of imaginative content, what matters isn't the real world, but the posited i-world.

9 On the acquisition of new beliefs – and on some views, even new knowledge – through imagination, see, e.g. Davies (2007, ch. 8); Kind and Kung (2016); the issue exceeds the scope of this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant number 939/16).