Volume 19, 1983
The Worlds of Art and the World
David Novitz
Pages 47-68
Fiction and the Growth of Knowledge
Philosophers currently speak of the growth of knowledge only in the context of scientific enquiry, and concentrate exclusively on the growth of prepositional knowledge. That this is mistaken can be seen from a consideration of the knowledge acquired from fictional literature. There are many different things that are learned from fiction. Certainly people acquire prepositional beliefs and knowledge about the actual world from fiction, but they also acquire strategic and cognitive skills, emphatic beliefs and knowledge, and values of one sort or another. These are all acquired in interestingly different ways which are detailed in the body of the paper.