Fiction as a defeater

Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming)
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Abstract

This paper argues that no instances of acquiring knowledge from works of literary fiction are instances of the way we ordinarily learn from the testimony of others. The paper argues that the fictional status of a work is a defeater for the justification of beliefs formed on the basis of statements within that work, which must itself be defeated for such beliefs based on fiction to amount to knowledge. This marks a fundamental difference with learning from testimony, since regardless of one's views on testimony and testimonial knowledge, the fact that your belief that p was based on someone's testimony that p is not in and of itself a defeater for your justification for believing that p.

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Andreas Stokke
Uppsala University

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References found in this work

The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance.Tamar Szabó Gendler - 2000 - Journal of Philosophy 97 (2):55.
The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse.John R. Searle - 1975 - New Literary History 6 (2):319--32.
Telling as inviting to trust.Edward S. Hinchman - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (3):562–587.
Fictions that Purport to Tell the Truth.Neri Marsili - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (2):509-531.
The Epistemology of Testimony.Elizabeth Fricker & David E. Cooper - 1987 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 61 (1):57 - 106.

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