The Realistic Fallacy, or: The Conception of Literary Narrative Fiction in Analytic Aesthetics

In this article, I discuss some influential Chinese theories of fiction and concepts of fiction in ancient times, as well as some contemporary trends in Chinese theories of literature, genre and fiction. This involves discussing several aspects, such as concepts of literature, genre and fiction, the role and status of fiction, recent developments in fiction theory, and the impact of cultural values and political climate etc.. I will also discuss certain features of Chinese theories of fiction and concepts of fiction in the context of influential theories and concepts of fiction in Western culture, such as those in Gregory Currie's The Nature of Fiction and Kendall Walton Mimesis and Make-Believe. Are these theories applicable to Chinese fiction? Are they reconcilable with Chinese theories and concepts of fiction? And finally, is it possible to create credible transcultural theories and concepts of fiction?

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:fictionalpresence, 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.

In this essay I refine and extend a defense of literary cognitivism (the view that works of literary narrative fiction may serve as sources of knowledge –and not merely belief– in a way that depends crucially on their being fictional) that I and others have provided in earlier publications. Central to that defense is a refinement of Aristotle’s idea of successful dramas as unfolding with “internal necessity”, in light of which I distinguish those forms of narration that show, rather than merely state, that something is so. Literary narrative fiction also often takes the form of a thought experiment, and I distinguish among three aims of such experiment: to make claims (didactic), to exhort to action (directive) and to stimulate inquiry (interrogative). In developing this approach I defend a view of the author of a literary narrative fiction as being in conversation with her readers, and to that end draw upon a view of conversation as driven by an evolving common ground shared among interlocutors. I close with a discussion of some important pitfalls to which narration in literary fiction is prone, and of how in such cases narration’s epistemic value depends primarily upon on our taking the author’s word for how things are.

IMorten Kyndrup kindly invited me to open this conference by sketching how the problematic question of limits has pervaded the contemporary field of aesthetics, and he suggested I do so by sketching how the issue of limits has shaped my own trajectory from analytic philosophy to pragmatism and continental theory and into the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics.* Reviewing my almost thirty-year career in philosophical aesthetics, I realize that much of it has been a struggle with the limits that define this field, though I did not always see it in those terms. When I was still a student at Oxford specializing in analytic aesthetics, my first three publications were papers protesting the limits of prevail ing monistic doctrines in that field: theories claiming that poetry (and by extension literature in general) is essentially an oral-based performative art without real visual import, and theories arguing that beneath the varying interpretations and evaluations of works of art there was nonetheless one basic logic of interpretation and one basic logic of evaluation (though philosophers differed as to what that basic logic was and whether it was the same for both interpretation and evaluation). When I proposed contrastingly pluralistic accounts of interpretive and evaluative logic, while suggesting that literature could be appreciated in terms of sight as well as sound, I was not consciously aiming at transgressing prevailing limits. I was more interested in being right than in being different or original, and I saw myself as working fully within the limits of analytic aesthetics. 1 When I expanded my horizons to embrace pragmatism in the late 1980s, I became conscious of pushing at the limits of analytic philosophy, though I considered my work to be largely an extension of treating familiar questions and forms of reasoning in analytic aesthetics and philosophy, much in the way that Nelson Goodman, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, and Joseph Margolis were combining pragmatist insights with analytic styles of argument. 2 And in using some continental philosophy for inspirational insight (from Nietzsche and Adorno to Foucault and Bourdieu), I

Analytic philosophy is not what it used to be – and thank goodness. Its practice in the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first centuries is not grounded in a grand metaphysical design or a particular philosophy of language. If there is a core or central character or ›methodology‹ in analytic aesthetics, philosophy of art, and the perspectives they take on emotions, it is better revealed in current practices rather than in analytic philosophy's origins. One salient feature of the practice of analytic aesthetics – a feature it shares, not coincidentally, with much philosophy of mind, especially in the subfield of philosophical psychology – is the respectful role that is afforded to what psychology and related fields of scientific inquiry have to tell us about emotions. And though introspection has long been known to be inadequate as a psychological method, the highly counterintuitive results of numerous psychological studies of emotions undermine the viability of conceptual analysis or ordinary language alone as a philosophical methodology to explain the character of emotions, including those expressed in art and experienced by appreciators of the arts.

Recent feminist analysts of aesthetics and analytic aesthetics in particular seem to have come to the conclusion that the redemption of formulated aesthetic theory from the feminist point of view is a difficult and recondite task.1 If analytic aesthetics now looks problematic, qua fruitful philosophical enterprise, its future appears bleaker still when the intersection of the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy and the larger feminist project, frequently articulated in other than analytic terms, is examined. In this essay I will assume that there is some future for analytic aesthetics, and I will not dispute the basic assumption that any portion of analytic theory is somewhat immiscible with feminist points of view. My concern, rather, will be to try to show what it is specifically in the nature of analytic theory, both aesthetic and otherwise, which renders it of dubious value to the feminist critique (at least on first blush). Although in the past feminist theorists have tried to characterize the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy on the whole in rather striking terms, it is not clear that these terms have been precise enough.2 Further, it is not clear that analytic modes are obviously unusable for feminist theory or for the development of a still nascent feminist aesthetics, although what one wants to say here is that this task is a terribly danger-fraught one.3 My goal here is twofold: first, to articulate what precisely it is about analytic aesthetics (or any portion of analytic theory, for that matter) that makes it a hindrance at least preliminarily to the development of feminist views. In order to do this I will need to examine a relatively uncharted area in the literature, that is the parallel between much of analytic aesthetic theory and analytic epistemology. The second portion of my task will run somewhat contrary to conventional wisdom: having delineated the most masculinist parts of analytic endeavors, I inquire if there is, indeed, any part of rigorously articulated analytic theory that could lend itself to the development of a feminist aesthetic.

Focuses on the debate over whether it is possible to derive significant truths from fictional literature. Analyzes the concepts of fiction and narrative in a way that allows thorough epistemic evaluations of claims that truth can emerge from fictional narratives. Topics discussed include: the analysis of truth in literature; descriptions of fiction; analyzing fiction; fictional characters; truth in fiction; narrative generalizations; language and structure; interpretation and criticism; the limits of fiction; and fictional narratives and the creation of new truths. Suitable for upper-level and graduate students of philosophy and literature.

Despite the intense reception and critical discussion which Wolfgang Iser’s work on the reading process and the esthetics of reception (Rezeptionsästhetik) received throughout the 1970s and 80s in Anglo-American literary criticism, his later ambitious attempt to sketch out a “literary anthropology” with the help of a general theory of fiction was almost completely ignored outside of his immediate German context. This is especially lamentable from the perspective of law and literature approaches to legal and literary fiction since Iser’s argument for the anthropological “grounding” of fictions as acts of motivated and strategic “feigning” (fingieren) develops out of a careful analysis and assessment of Jeremy Bentham’s Theory of Fiction. Iser’s discussion of Bentham does not only present a rare case of acknowledgement of Benthamian notions about fictions from the perspective of continental literary theory, it also illustrates the way in which the discussion of fiction in general may serve to foster a more robust interdisciplinary perspective in regard to legal and literary practices of storytelling and narration. 1 Since Iser’s theory of (literary) fiction has been perceived from rather different angles and with a diverging range of comprehension by Anglo-American and European audiences, respectively, the essay will first attempt to introduce and place Iser’s discussion of fiction and the imaginary within the larger disciplinary context and his overarching interest and investment in a literary anthropology. After a more general presentation of the various elements in his larger work, the paper will briefly look at the “anthropological” prospects which Iser had pursued from early on throughout his critical work, culminating in The Fictive and the Imaginary. The second half of the essay will then take a closer look at Iser’s particular interest in and detailed discussion of Jeremy Bentham’s Theory of Fiction, to reveal how Iser’s own anthropological project could derive a central impulse and trajectory from his intense reading of Bentham. In particular, I am interested in how Iser interprets Bentham’s use of legal fictions to project a general theory of fiction, and how Iser then uses the concept of necessity or “need” to gradually translate and transfer Bentham’s theoretical premises to match and support his own conceptualization of the fictive, the real and the imaginary. Iser’s particular understanding of “doing fiction,” I will conclude, might be of considerable value for the interdisciplinary engagement with legal and literary fictions.

Review

Literary narrative fiction may be particularly effective in enhancing Theory of Mind (ToM), as it requires readers to contemplate author and character intentions in filling the literary ‘gaps’ that have been suggested to characterise this fiction type. The current study investigates direct and cumulative effects of reading literature on ToM using confirmatory Bayesian analyses. Direct effects were assessed by comparing the ToM skills of participants who read texts that were manipulated to differ in the amount of gap filling they required. Cumulative effects were assessed by considering the relationship between lifetime literary fiction exposure and ToM. Results showed no evidence for direct effects of reading literature on ToM. However, lifetime literary fiction exposure was associated with higher ToM, particularly cognitive ToM. Although reading a specific piece of literary fiction may thus not have immediately measurable effects on ToM, lifetime exposure to this fiction type is associated with more advanced ToM.

Possible Worlds of Fiction and History: The Postmodern Stage

Rodden writes, “How do stories persuade us? How do they ‘move’—and move us? The short answer: by analogies.” Rodden’s claim is a natural first view, also held by others. This chapter considers the extent to which this view is true and helpful in understanding how fictional narratives, taken as wholes, may be argumentative, comparing it to the two principal (though not necessarily exclusive) alternatives that have been proposed: understanding fictional narratives as exhibiting the structure of suppositional argument, or the structure of a kind of transcendental argument. Three key aspects of understanding a fictional narrative as an argument from analogy are identified. First, the argument will be relativistic or depend in an essential way upon the circumstances or intentions of the auditor or author. Second, in view of the first aspect, the argument will be loose and subjective, and accordingly less likely to yield knowledge. Third, the argument will not exhibit a distinctive structure applicable only to fictional narratives. I find that the third, and sometimes the first and second, of these same three aspects apply to understanding fictional narratives as suppositional arguments. I present considerations that point to a way of establishing that some extended fictions exhibit the structure of a kind of transcendental argument that is neither relativistic nor subjective, is knowledge-generating, and is uniquely applicable to fictional narratives. This supports literary cognitivism—the thesis that “literary fiction can be a source of knowledge in a way that depends crucially on its being fictional.”

History, a Literary Artifact? The Traveling Concept of Narrative in/on Historiographic Discourse

Fiction: One Method of Meaning-Making
 Due to developments in media technology, the textworlds of today are undergoing a series of rapid changes. The aim of this article is to suggest multimodal theory formation as a theory of meaning-making in schools, and to discuss the consequences regarding the way in which fiction is viewed in education. Meaning-making is considered a process wherein one acquires, but also changes and develops, experiences. In other words, meaning-making is regarded as a form of design. When meaning-making is considered as multimodal, nonhierarchical and ecological, this will necessarily impact our conception of fiction. The article draws on my doctoral thesis in which empirical material showed similarities in pupils’ meaning-making regardless of mode and media. Reading fiction plays a strong role in Swedish curriculum, but this role needs to be discussed and strongly problematized. Drawing on multimodal theory formation and discussions among contemporary literature scholars, the article does not support the conception of fictional literature as exclusive and special. Rather, the arguments used for fictional literature also apply to other modes of meaning-making in other media than the printed verbal text. Swedish steering documents show a lack of conceptual resources for understanding the processes of contemporary meaning-making. The article argues that the challenges presented by contemporary methods of meaning-making should be recognized in schools, and should lead to a questioning of the role of fiction in the Swedish curriculum. When using multimodal theory formation to understand contemporary communication, fiction is revealed as only one way, among others, to make meaning.

Always Be Prepared