Projecting Fiction

Abstract

One of the central questions raised by our engagement with fiction concerns its nature, i.e. how we should understand the difference between those works that we classify as works of fiction and those that we classify as works of nonfiction. It is widely accepted in the philosophical literature that any adequate account of fiction must maintain a sharp distinction between something's being fiction and something's being treated as fiction, and a common complaint against Kendall Walton's functionalist analysis is precisely that it conflates these two concepts. My initial aim in this chapter is to show that this complaint fails, but my ultimate aim is to canvass a novel account of fiction on which being treated as fiction is given a more central explanatory role and fictionality is understood in broadly expressivist terms: to say that something is a work of fiction is to express one's acceptance of a certain set of policies regarding how it is to be treated and evaluated—and to recommend the adoption of those policies to one's audience.