Literature and Knowledge

This paper argues: (1) All knowledge from fiction is from imagination (2) All knowledge from imagination is modal knowledge (3) So, all knowledge from fiction is modal knowledge Moreover, some knowledge is from fiction, so (1)-(3) are non-vacuously true.

Literatur ist ein sehr vielschichtiges und lebendiges Phänomen, das beständig im Wandel ist. So wie sie im Laufe der Jahrhunderte und in den verschiedenen Kulturkreisen unter-schiedliche Formen angenommen und anderen Funktionen gedient hat, liegt es in ihrer Natur, immer wieder neue Ausdrucksformen zu entwickeln, die den sich ändernden Be-dürfnissen und Rahmenbedingungen gerecht werden können. Auch die theoretische Aus-einandersetzung mit der Literatur ist Veränderungen unterworfen, die manchmal wellen-förmige Bewegungen anzunehmen scheinen. Neue Fragestellungen geraten in den Mittel-punkt des Interesses, einzelne Aspekte werden (...) besonders beachtet, während andere in Vergessenheit geraten – um eventuell zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt in neuer Form wieder-aufzutauchen. In der Philosophie der Literatur gilt es seit Längerem als weithin anerkannt, dass der Text die entscheidende Größe sei, und dass die Tatsache, dass an der Produktion und Rezeption von literarischen Kunstwerken Menschen beteiligt sind, die mit diesen Werken Ziele verfolgen und Wünsche und Interessen verwirklichen wollen, ignoriert werden kön-ne. Im vorliegenden Beitrag will ich auf die gegenwärtige Diskussion in der Philosophie der Literatur eingehen und für einen Perspektivenwechsel argumentieren: Um dem Phä-nomen Literatur gerecht zu werden, sollten wir versuchen, es ganzheitlich in das Blickfeld zu bekommen. Literatur ist mehr als bloß Text. Sie ist eine soziale Praxis, die einen festen Stellenwert in unserer Gesellschaft hat und stellt ein Medium dar, in dem wir uns mit an-deren austauschen und auf sie abstimmen können. Mein Hauptaugenmerk liegt auf der Debatte um den kognitiven Gehalt der Literatur, weil hier die negativen Auswirkungen der Verkürzung der vorherrschenden Perspektive besonders augenscheinlich sind. (shrink)

The topic of exemplarity has attracted considerable interest in philosophy, legal theory, literary studies and art recently. There is broad consensus that exemplary cases mediate between singular instances and general concepts or norms. The aim of this article is to provide an additional perspective on the logic of exemplarity. First, inspired by Jacques Derrida’s discussion of exemplarity, I shall argue that there is a kind of différance between (singular) examples and (general) exemplars. What an example exemplifies, the exemplarity of the (...) example, eludes any fixed identity and follows a logic of supplement. Second, I shall present the so-called logic of exemplarity. The received paraconsistent view has it that the exemplar of X is an X and, at the same time, is not an X. Inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s discussion of the standard metre, I would like to present an alternative paracomplete view whereby we can say of an exemplar of X neither that it is an X nor that it is not an X. (shrink)

It is widely believed, among philosophers of literature, that imagining contradictions is as easy as telling or reading a story with contradictory content. Italo Calvino’s The Nonexistent Knight, for instance, concerns a knight who performs many brave deeds, but who does not exist. Anything at all, they argue, can be true in a story, including contradictions and other impossibilia. While most will readily concede that we cannot objectually imagine contradictions, they nevertheless insist that we can propositionally imagine them, and regularly (...) do, simply by entertaining a text which prompts us to do so. I argue that this narrative does not bear scrutiny for two main reasons. First, because propositional imagining is beside the point, where truth in fiction is concerned; evaluating truth in fiction engages the cognitive architecture in ways that prohibit the mobilization of merely propositional imagination to that end. And second, because it is not obvious, given the strategies usually suggested, that we ever propositionally imagine contradictions in the first place—in fact, it seems we go out of our way to avoid directly imagining them. (shrink)

The nature and consequences of readers’ affective engagement with literature has, in recent years, captured the attention of experimental psychologists and philosophers alike. Psychological studies have focused principally on the causal mechanisms explaining our affective interactions with fictions, prescinding from questions concerning their rational justifiability. Transportation Theory, for instance, has sought to map out the mechanisms the reader tracks the narrative experientially, mirroring its descriptions through first-personal perceptual imaginings, affective and motor responses and even evaluative beliefs. Analytical philosophers, by contrast, (...) have largely focussed on the problems fiction poses for traditional theories of rationality (as in the ‘Paradox of Fiction), challenging fiction’s wider epistemic value. The result has been a theoretical impasse in which the power of fiction to affectively ‘transport’ a reader is at once often lauded (by psychologists) as a privileged route to interpersonal understanding, and condemned (by philosophers) as an abdication of the authority of reason. This chapter surveys some of the central claims on both sides, tracing the source of the debate to competing conceptions of rationality. (shrink)

Suppositional reasoning can seem spooky. Suppositional reasoners allegedly (e.g.) “extract knowledge from the sheer workings of their own minds” (Rosa), even where the knowledge is synthetic a posteriori. Can literary fiction pull such a rabbit out of its hat? Where P is a work’s fictional ‘premise’, some hold that some works reason declaratively (supposing P, Q), imperatively (supposing P, do Q), or interrogatively (supposing P, Q?), and that this can be a source of knowledge if the reasoning is good. True, (...) I will argue, although only within the context of judicious critical interpretation. Further evident constraints include that the form of the suppositional reasoning needs to be declarative or imperative, and that the fictional ‘premise’ of the work needs to be a metaphysical counterfactual possibility, not merely a temporal counterfactual and not merely an epistemic possibility or probabilistic supposition. (shrink)

Jorge Luis Borges displays an ambivalence in his writings towards the reality of time’s flow. On the one hand, he seems to accept arguments from various thinkers refuting the reality of time. “And yet, and yet…” Borges appears unable to feel completely reconciled to such a view of time. I argue that this is because a view that refutes time denies the observer too along with it. I conclude with demonstrating how Borges, by trying to identify a reconciliation between a (...) refutation of time and acknowledgment of its reality, addressed this problem. (shrink)

어떻게 부자와 유명한에 다른 걸릴에 대한? 먼저 해리 포터 소설은 아이들이 세상에 대한 책임을 지기보다는 환상을 믿도록 장려하는 원시적인 미신입니다. JKR은 자신과 세계에 대한 단서가 거의없지만, 평균 미국인보다 약 200배, 평균 중국인보다 약 800배 더 파괴적입니다. 그녀는 이 쓰레기 소설과 모든 침식을 생산하기 위해 30,000 헥타르의 숲을 파괴한 책임이있습니다 (지구상의 모든 사람을 위해 바다에 적어도6 톤과 12 톤 / 년 토양이 아니며 미국인 100 톤, 그리고 Rowling의 책과 이스와그녀의 3 명의 아이들에 대해 연간 약 5000 톤). 지구는 매년 표토의 적어도 (...) 1 %를 잃고, 그래서 그것은 2100 에 가까워지면, 그것의 음식 성장 능력의 대부분은 사라질 것입니다. 그런 다음 책과 영화, 플라스틱 인형 등을 만들고 배포하기 위해 만든 연료와 폐기물의 엄청난 양이있다. 그녀는 수백만 명의 아이들을 가족 계획을 장려하거나 열대 우림을 사들이기보다는 아이들을 생산함으로써 사회적 책임이 부족하다는 것을 보여주고, 영국, 미국, 세계 및 그녀의 후손의 미래를 파괴하는 제 3 세계 패권의 전통적인 자유주의 어리석음을 장려함으로써 그녀의 사회적 책임이 부족하다는 것을 보여줍니다. 물론, 그녀는 다른 7과 다르지 않습니다. 80 억 단서 - 그냥 시끄고 더 파괴적. 무료 런치 문제 영장 큰 입니다. 폭도들은 다른 사람을 해치지 않고 한 사람을 돕는 것과 같은 것이 없다는 것을 알 수 없습니다. 혼잡한 세상에 새로운 참가자에게 주어지는 권리 나 특권은 다른 사람들의 사람들을 희미하게 만들 수있습니다. 매일 어디서나 일어나는 거대한 생태 재해에도 불구하고, 그들은 지난 세기의 인구 증가의 대부분과이 모든 것을 차지하는 "다양한"의 억제되지 않은 모성에 고정 할 수 없습니다. 그들은 산업 문명의 궁극적 인 붕괴에 자원과 기능 사회의 매일 공격을 추정하는 데 필요한 지능, 교육, 경험과 정신의 조합이 부족합니다. 각 식사, 자동차 또는 버스로 각 여행, 신발의 각 쌍은 지구의 관에 또 다른 손톱입니다. 런던에서 샌프란시스코로 가는 비행기의 한 좌석이 약 3 평방 미터의 해빙을 녹이는 약 1 톤의 탄소를 생산한다는 것은 결코 그녀의 마음을 건드리지 않았을 것이며, 그녀가 수백 개의 항공편을 비행했을 가능성이 큽니까. 부유하고 유명한 사람뿐만 아니라 거의 모든 공적 인물, 거의 모든 교사를 포함하여, 정치적으로 올바른 압력을 받고, 이는 서구 민주주의에서, 지금 사회 민주주의를 의미(신마르크스주의자 - 즉, 희석 공산주의자) 자신의 사회와 자신의 후손의 파괴를 위해 일하는 제 3 세계 우월주의자. 그래서,그 부족 of 교육, 경험, 정보 (그리고 기본적인 상식), 전혀 공개 발언을 금지해야, 완전히 모든 미디어를 지배, 지적이고 문명화 된 민주주의, 다양성과 평등을 선호해야한다는 인상을 만드는, 진실은 이들이 문제가 아닌 솔루션이며, 그들 자신은 문명의 주요 원수입니다. 민주주의 2nd 에드 (2019) 및 다른 사람에 의해 내 자살을 참조하십시오. (shrink)

Que diriez-vous d’une autre prise sur les riches et célèbres? Tout d’abord l’évidence - les romans de Harry Potter sont la superstition primitive qui encourage les enfants à croire en la fantaisie plutôt que d’assumer la responsabilité du monde - la norme bien sûr. JKR est tout aussi désemparé sur elle-même et le monde que la plupart des gens, mais environ200 fois plus destructeur que l’Américain moyen et environ 800 fois plus que le Chinois moyen. Elle a été responsable de (...) la destruction de peut-être 30.000 hectares de forêt pour produire ces romans trash et toute l’érosion qui s’ensuit (pas trivial car il est au moins 6 et peut-être 12 tonnes / an de sol dans l’océan pour tout le monde sur terre ou peut-être 100 tonnes par Américain, et donc environ 5000 tonnes par an pour les livres de Rowling et films et ses 3 enfants). La terre perd au moins 1% de sa terre maximale chaque année, de sorte qu’il approche de 2100, la plupart de sa capacité de culture alimentaire aura disparu. Ensuite, il ya l’énorme quantité de carburant brûlé et les déchets faits pour faire et distribuer les livres et les films, poupées en plastique, etc. Elle montre son manque de responsabilité sociale en produisant des enfants plutôt que d’utiliser ses millions pour encourager la planification familiale ou acheter la forêt tropicale, et en promouvant la stupidité libérale conventionnelle de la suprématie du 3e monde qui détruit la Grande-Bretagne, l’Amérique, le monde et l’avenir de son descendant. Bien sûr, elle n’est pas si différente des 7 autres. 8 milliards désemparés - juste plus bruyant et plus destructeur. C’est le problème de déjeuner gratuit bref grand. La foule ne peut tout simplement pas voir qu’il n’y a pas une telle chose comme aider une personne sans nuire à d’autres. Les droits ou privilèges accordés aux nouveaux arrivants dans un monde surpeuplé ne peuvent que s’affaiblir dans ceux des autres. Malgré les catastrophes écologiques massives qui se produisent partout tous les jours, ils ne peuvent pas les épingler à la maternité effrénée de "la diversité", qui explique la majeure partie de l’augmentation de la population du siècle dernier et tout cela dans celui-ci. Ils manquent d’une combinaison d’intelligence, d’éducation, d’expérience et de santé mentale nécessaires pour extrapoler les assauts quotidiens sur les ressources et le fonctionnement de la société à l’effondrement éventuel de la civilisation industrielle. Chaque repas, chaque voyage en voiture ou en bus, chaque paire de chaussures est un autre clou dans le cercueil de la terre. Il n’a probablement jamais traversé son esprit qu’un siège dans un avion de Londres à San Francisco produit environ une tonne de carbone qui fond environ 3 mètres carrés de glace de mer et comme l’un des surprivileged, elle a probablement volé des centaines de ces vols. Non seulement les riches et les célèbres, mais presque n’importe quelle personnalité publique du tout, y compris pratiquement tous les enseignants, sont poussés à être politiquement corrects, ce qui dans les démocraties occidentales, signifie maintenant social-démocrate (néomarxiste, c’est-à-dire communiste dilué) suprémacistes du tiers monde travaillant pour la destruction de leurs propres sociétés et de leurs propres descendants. Ainsi, ceux dont le manque d’éducation, d’expérience, d’intelligence (et de bon sens de base), qui devrait leur interdire de faire des déclarations publiques du tout, domine totalement tous les médias, créant l’impression que l’intelligent et civilisé doit favoriser la démocratie, la diversité et l’égalité, alors que la vérité est que ce sont les problèmes et non les solutions, et qu’ils sont eux-mêmes les principaux ennemis de la civilisation. Voir mon Suicide by Democracy 4th ed (2020). (shrink)

कैसे के बारे में एक अलग अमीर और प्रसिद्ध पर ले? सबसे पहले स्पष्ट है-हैरी पॉटर उपन्यास आदिम अंधविश्वास है कि बच्चों को कल्पना में विश्वास करने के बजाय दुनिया के लिए जिम्मेदारी लेने के लिए प्रोत्साहित कर रहे हैं - पाठ्यक्रम के आदर्श. JKR बस के रूप में खुद को और ज्यादातर लोगोंके रूप में दुनिया के बारे में अनजान है, लेकिन के बारेमें 200 बार के रूप में विनाशकारी के रूप में औसत अमेरिकी और के बारे में 800 (...) बार औसत चीनी से अधिक के रूप में. वह शायद 30,000 हेक्टेयर जंगल के विनाश के लिए जिम्मेदार है इन कचरा उपन्यास और सभी कटाव आगामी उत्पादन (के रूप में यहकम सेकम 6 और शायद 12 टन / प्रति अमेरिकी, और तो के बारे में 5000 टन /पृथ्वी हर साल अपने topsoil के कम से कम 1% खो देता है, तो के रूप में यह 2100 के पास, अपने भोजन की बढ़ती क्षमता के सबसे चला जाएगा.फिर वहाँ ईंधन जला दिया और कचरे की भारी राशि बनाने के लिए और किताबें और फिल्मों, प्लास्टिक गुड़िया आदि वितरित किया है वह अपने लाखों लोगों का उपयोग करने के बजाय अपने लाखों लोगों का उपयोग करने के लिए परिवार नियोजन को प्रोत्साहित करने या वर्षा वन खरीदने के द्वारा सामाजिक जिम्मेदारी की उसकी कमी से पता चलता है, और 3 दुनिया वर्चस्व है कि ब्रिटेन, अमेरिका को नष्ट कर रहा है की पारंपरिक उदार मूर्खता को बढ़ावा देने के द्वारा, दुनिया और उसके वंशज के भविष्य. बेशक, वह है कि अन्य 7 से अलग नहीं है.8अरब अनजान - बस noisier और अधिक विनाशकारी. यह कोई मुफ्त दोपहर के भोजन की समस्या रिट बड़ी है. भीड़ सिर्फ यह नहीं देख सकता कि दूसरों को नुकसान पहुंचाए बिना एक व्यक्ति की मदद करने जैसी कोई चीज नहीं है। एक भीड़ भरे दुनिया में नए प्रवेशकों को दिए गए अधिकार या विशेषाधिकार केवल दूसरों के उन लोगों को मंद कर सकतेहैं। बड़े पैमाने पर पारिस्थितिक आपदाओं के बावजूद उनके सामने हर जगह हर रोज हो रहा है, वे उन्हें "विभिन्न" है, जो पिछली सदी की जनसंख्या वृद्धि के अधिकांश के लिए खातों की अनियंत्रित मातृत्व के लिए पिन नहीं कर सकते हैं और उस सब में इस एक. वे खुफिया, शिक्षा, अनुभव और विवेक के कुछ संयोजन की कमी के लिए संसाधनों और औद्योगिक सभ्यता के अंतिम पतन के लिए समाज के कामकाज पर दैनिक हमलों extrapolate आवश्यक. प्रत्येक भोजन, कार या बस से प्रत्येक यात्रा, जूते की प्रत्येक जोड़ी पृथ्वी के ताबूत में एक और कील है.यह संभावना उसके मन को पार नहीं किया है कि लंदन से सैन फ्रांसिस्को के लिए एक विमान पर एक सीट कार्बन की एक टन जो समुद्र बर्फ के बारे में 3 वर्ग मीटर पिघला देता है और overprivileged वह शायद ऐसी उड़ानों के सैकड़ों भेजा है में से एक के रूप में उत्पादन. न केवल अमीर और प्रसिद्ध है, लेकिन लगभग सभी शिक्षकों सहित लगभग किसी भी सार्वजनिक व्यक्ति, राजनीतिक रूप से सही है, जो पश्चिमी लोकतंत्र में, अब सामाजिक लोकतांत्रिक(Neomarxist यानी, पतला कम्युनिस्ट) तीसरे का मतलब है दबाव डाला जाता है दुनिया supremacists अपने स्वयं के समाज और अपने स्वयं के वंशजों के विनाश के लिए काम कर रहे. तो, जिनकी कमी ओएफ शिक्षा, अनुभव, खुफिया (और बुनियादी सामान्य ज्ञान), जो उन्हें सब पर किसी भी सार्वजनिक बयान करने से निषेध करना चाहिए, पूरी तरह से सभी मीडिया पर हावी है, धारणा है कि बुद्धिमान और बनाने सभ्य लोकतंत्र, विविधता और समानता के पक्ष में होना चाहिए, जबकि सच्चाई यह है कि ये समस्याएं हैं और समाधान नहीं हैं, और यह कि वे स्वयं सभ्यता के प्रमुख शत्रु हैं।लोकतंत्र 2 द्वारा मेरी आत्महत्या देखेंएन डीएड (2019). (shrink)

The contemporary debate in the philosophy of literature is strongly shaped by the anticognitivist challenge, according to which works of literary fiction (that contain propositions that are neither literally true nor affirmed by the author) cannot impart (relevant) knowledge to the readers or enrich their worldly understanding. Anti-cognitivists appreciate works of literary fiction for their aesthetic values and so risk to reduce them to mere ornaments that are entertaining, but eventually useless. Many philosophers have reacted to this challenge by pointing (...) at ways in which works of literary fiction can be informative even though they lack worldly reference: it has been argued, for example, that works of fictions are thought experiments; that they add not to our theoretical knowledge, but to our know-how or to our phenomenal knowledge; or that that they help readers to understand the perspectives of others. A stubborn defense of literary cognitivism, however, risks to collapse into an instrumental understanding of literature. In my paper I suggest that both sides in the debate focus too narrowly on semantic features of the works in question that is tied to what I will call the “referential picture” of language. A shift perspective is needed: for one, we ought to fully appreciate that the term “literature” does not refer to a homogeneous phenomenon, but rather to a very heterogeneous and multifarious set of works that are read by many different readers for many different reasons in many different ways. Second, we need to understand that these works have in common much more than the semantic peculiarity of lacking worldly reference: they are a unique means of communication between authors and readers – and in particular the role of the latter is often neglected in contemporary debate. These two points should help us to get a more comprehensive understanding of the practice of literature and the vast range of values we can find works of literary fiction – and the interplay between them. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCan we gain knowledge by reading literature? This essay defends an account of reading, developed by Stanley Cavell and Hans-Georg Gadamer, that phenomenologically describes the experience of acquiring self-knowledge by reading literary texts. Two possible criticisms of this account will be considered: first, that reading can provide other kinds of knowledge than self-knowledge; and, second, that the theory involves illegitimately imposing subjective meaning onto a text. It will be argued, in response, that the self-knowledge gained in reading allows one to (...) gain other sorts of knowledge too, and that the reading process described by Gadamer and Cavell avoids excessive subjectivism. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Søren Kierkegaard’s oeuvre can be seen as a theater of ideas. This argument is developed in three steps. First, I will briefly introduce a theoretical framework for addressing the theatrical dimension of Kierkegaard’s works. This framework is based on a distinction between“performative writing strategies” and “categories of performativity.” As a second step, I will focus on Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology, by Constantin Constantius, one of the best examples of Kierkegaard’s innovative way of (...) doing philosophy. This strange and elusive book introduces the difficult and counter-intuitive notion of repetition. Repetition is a category of performativity that aims to activate the subjectivity of the reader. This performative effect is achieved by confronting the reader with an “unresolved”existential problem that is not yet drawn into clarity but is staged in all its confusions and contradictions. Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Constantius relies here on a performative writing strategy that is animated by a dialectic of advance and withdrawal. In the last and third step, I will analyze Constantius’s own reflection on the performative dimension of his text. Constantius has left several clues behind, each of which suggests that he deliberately developed a performative writing strategy. (shrink)

У статті наведено результати дослідження функційного призначення топоніма Москва в українському поетичному дискурсі від давньої доби до сьогодні. Визначено, що найважливіша його функція – ідеологічна, вона є різновекторною та безпосередньо пов’язана з авторською оцінкою. Конотації власної назви Москва детерміновані інтерлінгвальними чинниками та мають великий діапазон – від максимально меліоративних до максимально пейоративних.

The transcendental approach to understanding narrative argument derives from the idea that for any believable fictional narrative, we can ask—what principles or generalizations would have to be true of human nature in order for the narrative to be believable? I address two key issues: whether only realistic or realist fictional narratives are believable, and how could it be established that we have an intuitive, mostly veridical grasp of human nature that grounds believability?

A close reading of Mary Robinson’s late-eighteenth-century poem “London’s Summer Morning,” which captures all the noises and smells of a busy London street, is not enough to convince the reader that it isn’t all a dream. But whose dream? René Descartes and Wallace Stevens suggest that it may not matter.

Can fictional narration yield knowledge in a way that depends crucially on its being fictional? This is the hard question of literary cognitivism. It is unexceptional that knowledge can be gained from fictional literature in ways that are not dependent on its fictionality (e.g., the science in science fiction). Sometimes fictional narratives are taken to exhibit the structure of suppositional argument, sometimes analogical argument. Of course, neither structure is unique to narratives. The thesis of literary cognitivism would be supported if (...) some novels exhibit a cogent and special argument structure restricted to fictional narratives. I contend that this is the case for a kind of transcendental argument. The reason is the inclusion and pattern of occurrence of the predicate ‘believable’ in the schema. Believability with respect to fictional stories is quite a different thing than it is with respect to nonfictional stories or anything else. (shrink)

The semantic issues that Saul Kripke addressed in Naming and Necessity overlap substantially with those that were addressed by Michel Foucault in “What Is an Author?”. The present essay examines their area of overlap, with a view to showing that each of these works affords a perspective on the other, from which facets that are usually obscure can be brought into view. It shows that Foucault needs to take some assumptions from Kripke’s theory of naming in order to secure one (...) of his arguments for treating authorial names as special. It then shows that, once it has been placed on these Kripkean foundations, Foucault’s position avoids the metaphysically peculiar commitments that are sometimes thought to be essential... (shrink)

What can make storytelling “evil” in the sense that the storytelling leads to accepting a view for no good reason, thus allowing ill-reasoned action? I mean the storytelling can be argumentatively evil, not trivially that (e.g.) the overt speeches of characters can include bad arguments. The storytelling can be argumentatively evil in that it purveys false premises, or purveys reasoning that is formally or informally fallacious. My main thesis is that as a rule, the shorter the fictional narrative, the greater (...) the potential for argumentative evil. Here, the notion of length is to be understood such that it is generally a proxy for more abstract features such as how complex and nuanced the piece is. In other argumentative contexts, length generally appears to make no comparable difference. This feature would put fictional narrative arguments in a special class beyond what is determined by obvious features, such as the definitional fact that they in some way(s) collapse two of the four traditional types of discourse: exposition, description, narration, and argument. The nonobvious features that distinguish this class have been a source of puzzlement and inquiry. (shrink)

Recensione di "La grande straniera. A proposito di letteratura", di Michel Foucault.

Why is it that most fictions present one and only one ending, rather than multiple ones? Fictions presenting multiple endings are possible, because a few exist; but they are very rare, and this calls for an explanation. We argue that such an explanation is likely to shed light on our engagement with fictions, for fictions having one and only one ending seem to be ubiquitous. After dismissing the most obvious explanations for this phenomenon, we compare the scarcity of multiple endings (...) in traditional kinds of fiction to their profusion in the case of interactive fictions. This contrast poses a challenge to accounts of our engagement with fictions in terms of games of make-believe. We conclude that solving this puzzle is likely to improve our philosophical understanding of fictions. (shrink)

The issues of this essay concern whether there are ways of experiencing time that are specific to narration and whether such ways can also be applied to the experience of time in reflection. In order to tackle these issues, we shall compare and contrast the experience of time in life with both the temporal experiences of narration and the temporal experiences of reflection. We shall begin, then, with a discussion on what the “experience of time” is, in the attempt of (...) providing a theoretical framework for our inquiry on narrative and reflective temporalities. (shrink)

El Libro de Arena, de J. L. Borges imagina un libro poblado de infinitas páginas. Esta infinidad se manifiesta de varias formas, cada una de las cuales puede ser asimilada con alguna propiedad de los conjuntos numéricos. Exploraremos dicha similitud y veremos emerger el Libro de Arena como un símbolo complejo, pero no autónomo. En efecto, no sólo el libro y sus páginas, sino asimismo los personajes y cada elemento puesto en escena se articulan en el desarrollo del relato y (...) allí pierden su apariencia de objetos para revelarse como funciones en la producción del sentido final. (shrink)

If novels can be arguments, that fact should shape logic or argumentation studies as well as literary studies. Two senses the term ‘narrative argument’ might have are (a) a story that offers an argument, or (b) a distinctive argument form. I consider whether there is a principled way of extracting a novel’s argument in sense (a). Regarding the possibility of (b), Hunt’s view is evaluated that many fables and much fabulist literature inherently, and as wholes, have an analogical argument structure. (...) I argue that a better account is that some novels inherently exhibit a transcendental argument structure. (shrink)

This paper’s main thesis is that in virtue of being believable, a believable novel makes an indirect transcendental argument telling us something about the real world of human psychology, action, and society. Three related objections are addressed. First, the Stroud-type objection would be that from believability, the only conclusion that could be licensed concerns how we must think or conceive of the real world. Second, Currie holds that such notions are probably false: the empirical evidence “is all against this idea…that (...) readers’ emotional responses track the real causal relations between things.” Third, responding with a full range of emotions to a novel surely requires that it be believable. Yet since we know the novel is fiction, we do not believe it. So in what does its believability consist? (shrink)

Analytic philosophers have a tendency to forget that they are human beings, and one of the reasons that P. F. Strawson’s 1962 essay, “Freedom and Resentment”, has been so influential is that it promises to bring discussions of moral responsibility back down to earth. Strawson encouraged us to “keep before our minds...what it is actually like to be involved in ordinary interpersonal relationships”, which is, after all, the context in which questions about responsibility arise in the first place. In this (...) essay I explore what we can learn about ordinary interpersonal relationships from three works of literature – Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. My intention is to try to heed Strawson’s advice without imposing upon the data any particular theoretical agenda, and my hope is that the data collected will prove useful for future theorizing about responsibility. (shrink)

Recensione di J. L. NANCY, T. TUPPINI, Être bourré, o del corpo senza corpo, Mimesis, Milano-Udine2014.

Review of *How Literature Changes the Way We Think*, by Michael Mack (Continuum, 2012).

Paper on Robert Musil's philosophical system.

This paper argues that the problem of how to act in the face of radical contingency is of central importance in Musil’s novel and intimately connected to what Musil calls the sense of possibility. There is a variety of different strategies by which individuals, and the state of Kakania as a whole, deal with contingency, and they all involve a claim to a kind of grounding or necessity; for example, the Parallel Campaign is one big attempt to ground Kakania in (...) what can be perceived as a form of metaphysical necessity. With the figure of Ulrich, Musil radicalizes the problem by showing the consequences of viewing even the relationship one has to one’s own self as contingent – the ultimate outcome of which is self-alienation. (shrink)

Lloyd Jones’s *The Book of Fame*, a novel about the stunningly successful 1905 British tour of the New Zealand rugby team, represents both skilled group action and the difficulty of capturing it in words. The novel’s form is as fluid and deceptive, as adaptable and integrated, as the sweetly shaped play of the team that became known during this tour for the first time as the All Blacks. It treats sport on its own terms as a rich world, a set (...) of bodily skills, and an honest profession in itself. A reading of *The Book of Fame* can contribute to the interdisciplinary study of literature and cognition, exemplifying two-way ‘exchange values’. On the one hand, we gain insights into the nature of skilful group agency, of distinct forms and at distinct timescales, by focussing on the precise forms taken by the All Blacks’ creation of space. Here, we treat The Book of Fame as a brilliant evocation of features of collective thought, movement, and emotion that both everyday and scientific inquiry can easily miss. On the other hand, we also read back into the novel a subtle, fascinated interrogation of the mechanisms by which small groups form, evolve, and act. In this more ambitious mode of analysis, we use independently motivated theoretical concerns to help us see real features of the literary work that might otherwise remain invisible. We focus on the relationship between skilful performance and collective action. These topics fall outside the ambit of much current work by literary theorists using cognitive research, who tend to focus on theory of mind and modularity, metaphor and blending, emotion and empathy, consciousness and concepts, representation and so on. But skilled performance and collective action comprise surprisingly lively research fields across the sciences, from neuropsychology to philosophy of mind and cognitive anthropology. These areas of inquiry may provide even more productive avenues for future work in the interfield of literary and cultural theory and the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

On one standard view, paraphrasing Kierkegaard requires no special literary talent. It demands no particular flair for the poetic. However, Kierkegaard himself rejects this view. He says we cannot paraphrase in a straightforward fashion some of the ideas he expresses in a literary format. To use the words of Johannes Climacus, these ideas defy direct communication. In this paper, I piece together and defend the justification Kierkegaard offers for this position. I trace its origins to concerns raised by Lessing and (...) Mendelssohn about the relationship between form and content in works of art. I maintain that Kierkegaard follows early German Romantic thinkers in applying these aesthetic concerns to philosophical writing. By way of conclusion, I discuss the implications of Kierkegaard’s position for contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

[First paragraph]: Believe it or not, it’s no exaggeration to say that Ender’s Game has been the most transformative book of my life. In fact, when I first read it, at the age of fifteen, it almost single-handedly initiated a crisis of faith in me that ended up lasting for eight long years. The reason that it was able to do so is that it is positively full of important philosophical ideas (a fact attested to by the very existence of (...) this volume and its many essays). It should come as no surprise to fellow science fiction fans—and especially fans of Ender’s Game in particular—that science fiction is full to bursting with philosophical ideas. But the skeptical reader need not fear; in this case, at least, you don’t have to take my word for it. Orson Scott Card’s 1991 edition of Ender’s Game mentions his master’s degree in literature, and that all “the layers of meaning are there to be decoded, if you like to play the game of literary criticism.” So if you think you might have found a hidden layer of meaning in Ender’s Game, it’s a lot less likely that he or she is just crazy, and a lot more likely that there really is some hidden meaning there—and maybe even one that Card himself consciously put there to be found! (shrink)

Autores como Lukács o Adorno, por solo mencionar algunos nombres del siglo XX, han visto en el ensayo uno de los géneros literarios fundamentales para la expresión y exposición de ideas, con el bemol de que el ensayo siempre está en conflicto con otras plataformas de conocimiento, como las del orden establecido por la institución y la academia. Desde una postura compartida, el ensayista y crítico Efrén Giraldo se ha preocupado por la reinvindicación del ensayo literario, como una fuente de (...) figuración de la realidad, en el ámbito intelectual colombiano. (shrink)

In Shame and Necessity, Bernard Williams recounts that colleagues often ask why he analyses literary texts – why can’t he use examples from “real life”? He responds that “it is a perfectly good question, and it has a short answer: what philosophers will lay before themselves and their readers as an alternative to literature will not be life, but bad literature.” This anecdote contains an argument that would be readily embraced by any proponent of “post-structuralism.” Namely, it suggests that no (...) theory can solely be based on reason. Any rational account needs an – acknowledged or repressed – fictional support. We do not rely on pure concepts but rather on conceptual fictions. (shrink)

Works of fiction are often criticized for their historical inaccuracies. But this practice poses a problem: why would we criticize a work of fiction for its historical inaccuracy given that it is a work of fiction? There is an intuition that historical inaccuracies in works of fiction diminish their value as works of fiction; and yet, given that they are works of fiction, there is also an intuition that such works should be free from the constraints of historical truth. The (...) puzzle of historical criticism is that these intuitions are obviously in conflict, and yet we wish to give up neither. In this essay, I address the shortcomings of two seemingly intuitive strategies for solving the puzzle: the puzzle cannot be solved by appealing to historical constraints of a work’s genre, nor can it be explained as an instance of imaginative resistance. Given the failure of these two strategies, I suggest that there is no easy way to account for our conflicting intuitions and that the puzzle is deserving of greater attention. (shrink)

Fiction is often characterized by way of a contrast with truth, as, for example, in the familiar couplet “Truth is always strange/ Stranger than fiction" (Byron 1824). And yet, those who would maintain that “we will always learn more about human life and human personality from novels than from scientific psychology” (Chomsky 1988: 159) hold that some truth is best encountered via fiction. The scrupulous novelist points out that her work depicts no actual person, either living or dead; nonetheless, we (...) use names from fiction in ways that suggest that we take these names to refer. Philosophers who investigate fiction aim to reconcile such apparently incompatible phenomena, and, in general, to account for the myriad ways that we talk, think, and feel about fiction. (shrink)

One and a half months after Victor Hugo died in 1885, Beşir Fuad published a biography of him, in which Fuad defended Emile Zola’s naturalism and realism against Hugo’s romanticism. This resulted in the most important dispute in nineteenth-century Turkish literary history, the hakikiyyûn and hayâliyyûn debate, with the former represented by Beşir Fuad and the latter represented by Menemenlizâde Mehmet Tahir. This article focuses on the form of this debate rather than its content, and this focus reveals how the (...) tension between classical and post-classical Islamic intellectual history had become deeply embedded in Ottoman Turkish literary history by the late 1800s. This particular event demonstrates two points: that dialectical disputation was viewed negatively as a return to the seemingly primitive practices of an antiquated mentality, as opposed to the relatively enlightened apodictic argumentation ; and that trajectories of Ottoman Turkish literary history can be understood within the context of general Islamic intellectual history. (shrink)

The article examines the concept of duty with reference to Ibsen's play "Ghosts." It offers a brief genealogy of duty while linking the concept of duty to a deconstructive approach.

Cognitivism in respect to the arts refers to a constellation of positions that share in common the idea that artworks often bear, in addition to aesthetic value, a significant kind of cognitive value. In this paper I concentrate on three things: (i) the challenge of understanding exactly what one must do if one wishes to defend a cognitivist view of the arts; (ii) common anti-cognitivist arguments; and (iii) promising recent attempts to defend cognitivism.

Cet article vise tout d’abord à manifester la profondeur phénoménologique d’une expérience proustienne, celle des demi-réveils dans l’obscurité, en engageant un dialogue entre l’artiste et le philosophe – Husserl, mais aussi Levinas – autour de la notion de souvenir. Il s’agit de montrer que l’expérience dont il est fait part dans l’œuvre littéraire, inenvisagée par la phénoménologie, vient questionner les descriptions existantes du phénomène de souvenir et exige dès lors de penser le sens de celui-ci à nouveaux frais. Notre propos (...) est le suivant : l’œuvre d’art, en particulier l’œuvre littéraire, doit être un milieu de recherche privilégié pour le phénoménologue. Elle fait renaître les énigmes et, ce faisant, remet la recherche en mouvement, en la forçant à un question­nement plus approfondi. (shrink)

A viable theory of literary humanism must do justice to the idea that literature offers cognitive rewards to the careful reader. There are, however, powerful arguments to the effect that literature is at best only capable of offering idle visions of a world already well known. In this essay I argue that there is a form of cognitive awareness left unmentioned in the traditional vocabulary of knowledge acquisition, a form of awareness literature is particularly capable of offering. Thus even if (...) it is the case that literature has nothing interesting to give us in the way of knowledge, the literary humanist can consistently maintain that literary experience is thoroughly cognitive. (shrink)

This reading of Plato's Ion shows that the philosophic action mimed and engendered by the dialogue thoroughly reverses its (and Plato's) often supposed philosophical point, revealing that poetry is just as defensible as philosophy, and only in the same way. It is by Plato's indirections we find true directions out: the war between philosophy and poetry is a hoax on Plato's part, and a mistake on the part of his literalist readers. The dilemma around which the dialogue moves is false, (...) and would have been recognized as such by Plato's contemporaries. Further, it is intrinsically related to a false, but popular, view of language. So the way out of the false dilemma of the dialogue is the way out of the war between philosophy and poetry, and also makes one see what is false about the view of language which makes such war plausible. (shrink)

A discussion of one of the three books by which McCloskey launched his own economic rhetoric. The main criticism is that McCloskey enlarged view of rhetoric is still not encompassing enough, being limited to rhetoric in the writing of economic literature, while leaving the function of metaphor and other tropes in the more basic processes of conceptualization, theory change, and construction of 'observed' phenomena.

Can novels, plays and poetry tell us something important and true about who we are, about others, and about life generally? The question seems to be of interest not only to writers on literary theory and aesthetics, but to people generally. This paper considers the issues involved.