Morality, fiction, and possibility
Philosophers' Imprint 4 (3):1-27 (2004)
| Abstract | Authors have a lot of leeway with regard to what they can make true in their story. In general, if the author says that p is true in the fiction we’re reading, we believe that p is true in that fiction. And if we’re playing along with the fictional game, we imagine that, along with everything else in the story, p is true. But there are exceptions to these general principles. Many authors, most notably Kendall Walton and Tamar Szabó Gendler, have discussed apparent counterexamples when p is “morally deviant”. Many other statements that are conceptually impossible also seem to be counterexamples. In this paper I do four things. I survey the range of counterexamples, or at least putative counterexamples, to the principles. Then I look to explanations of the counterexamples. I argue, following Gendler, that the explanation cannot simply be that morally deviant claims are impossible. I argue that the distinctive attitudes we have towards moral propositions cannot explain the counterexamples, since some of the examples don’t involve moral concepts. And I put forward a proposed explanation that turns on the role of ‘higher-level concepts’, concepts that if they are satisfied are satisfied in virtue of more fundamental facts about the world, in fiction, and in imagination. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Aesthetics, Imagination, Resistance, Fictionality, Dissertation | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,875 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesElisabeth Camp (2009). Two Varieties of Literary Imagination: Metaphor, Fiction, and Thought Experiments. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 33 (1):107-130.
Shaun Nichols (2004). Imagining and Believing: The Promise of a Single Code. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2):129-39.
Derek Matravers (2003). Fictional Assent and the (so-Called) `Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance'. In Matthew Kieran & Dominic McIver Lopes (eds.), Imagination, Philosophy, and the Arts. Routledge.
Tamar Szabó Gendler (2000). The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance. Journal of Philosophy 97 (2):55-81.
Tamar Szabo Gendler (2006). Imaginative Resistance Revisited. In Shaun Nichols (ed.), The Architecture of the Imagination. Oxford University Press.
Jonathan M. Weinberg & Aaron Meskin (2006). Puzzling Over the Imagination: Philosophical Problems, Architectural Solutions. In Shaun Nichols (ed.), The Architecture of the Imagination: New Essays on Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction. Oxford.
Kendall Lewis Walton (2006). On the (so-Called) Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance. In Shaun Nichols (ed.), The Architecture of the Imagination. Oxford University Press.
Kendall Lewis Walton (1994). Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality (I). Supplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 68:27-50.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads87 ( #8,530 of 556,837 )Recent downloads (6 months)8 ( #9,636 of 556,837 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
