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Abstract. The set of problems typically grouped under the designation "paradox of fiction" raises questions about our emotional responses to nonexistent entities and events. Colin Radford challenges the rationality of these responses. Kendall Walton proposes that our affective reactions are quasi emotions rather than emotions simpliciter. Other philosophers distance our responses to fiction from our attitudes toward the world. Many such intuitions seem to be based on a cognitivist approach to emotion that has stringent requirements for epistemic and metaphysical respectability. Contra Walton, Radford, and others, we claim that fictions can activate beliefs about the world, and can activate obligations.
BEATRICE. JANE TENNISON. Elizabeth Bennett. Arya Stark. Katniss Everdeen. None of them is real. All of them appear not only to engage our interest but also to move us. Some of them might even be thought to affect us further-to inspire us to do things, or at least to regard things in a different light. The set of problems typically grouped under the designation "paradox of fiction" raises questions about an apparent contradiction, about our responding emotionally to entities and events in the existence of which we do not believe. The kind of ontological incorrectness to which the paradox draws attention can be directly and indirectly related to a number of interesting explanations and corollary claims about our responses to the fictitious. Kendall Walton contends that our affective reactions to fictional objects are quasi emotions. Gregory Currie maintains that literature is cognitive pornography. Each contention creates a divide between art and life.
We intend to reduce that distance in both contexts. We will challenge claims that seem to issue from contentions like Currie's and Walton's and show that many concerns about epistemically and metaphysically problematic intentional objects can be allayed. It is possible to demonstrate that the majority of affective reactions provoked by fiction are both real and rational emotions. Granted, the nonexistence of their objects appears to complicate otherwise intuitive accounts of our reactions. However, closer analysis reveals important relations that are quite capable of generating genuine emotions and even (we argue further) obligations.1
Let us briefly survey the most familiar approaches taken in discussions of our emotional response to fiction. Colin Radford has challenged the rationality of our responses.2 Walton has proposed...