I assume what I sometimes get from fiction is similar to what you get from music you love. Maybe you wouldn't call that learning something new either, and I think I'd agree. — T Clark

Good points. I've had many enjoyable and transformative experiences reading fiction (I'm fond of 19th century novels) and these books are aesthetic experiences and, sure, they often seem to hold some wisdom about human nature and our emotional lives, but...

Do you "learn anything new" from your life experiences in general? Sure, but it's not usually knowledge that can be expressed in propositions. — T Clark

Indeed. I am conscious that my awareness is constantly being shaped by things I am exposed to (music, life, books) but I don't know what this amounts to. Not sure that it relates to truth in any form I recognize.

I am conscious that my awareness is constantly being shaped by things I am exposed to (music, life, books) but I don't know what this amounts to. Not sure that it relates to truth in any form I recognize. — Tom Storm

I think I agree with that. For me that means that an emphasis on truth distracts us from the aspects of life and awareness that really matter. I've said similar things before here on the forum.

I think I agree with that. For me that means that an emphasis on truth distracts us from the aspects of life and awareness that really matter. — T Clark

Indeed. But I'm spooked now... we may be entering the contested world of the ineffable again from a different angle. :razz:

Actually, I'm not making claims, I'm posing questions based on how I recall my experiences. You'll note I didn't say fiction does not teach us anything, I said I can't think of anything fiction has taught me. — Tom Storm

I thought you were suggesting that I extrapolate from your experience what you felt to be the limitation of fictional writings.

Not sure I was making an objection. I was asking a question. I am wondering what kinds of truth fiction holds. I am still unclear. — Tom Storm

As in my To Kill a Mockingbird example, it holds the truth of the destructiveness of racism. Does it not? We speak in hypotheticals all the time in order to make a point, none of which are actually true. Such is the substance of all thought experiments.

Take Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

Would it be necessary that there actually have been that experiment to have actually occurred for that to offer you any meaning or understanding?

Great lengths? Good heavens, I thought we were just having a conversation about one small aspect of how fiction works on the back of 'philosophy being fiction.' — Tom Storm

I didn't mean "great lengths" in some pejorative sense as if you were just droning on and on stubbornly refusing to budge. What I meant was that the claim that fiction holds no truth cannot be sustained without (it seems to me) rearranging what counts as knowledge and what provides a better understanding of the world.

It strikes me as a hyper-empiricist epistemological system where only through either direct observation or through a closely regulated non-fictional literalism (where only basic facts are shared) can knowledge be gained. The suggestion that there is this bright line between fiction and non-fiction really doesn't hold true, because the line between fiction and non-fiction grows more blurred the more interpretive or explanatory it becomes.

For example, I might describe how Rosa Parks refused the back of the bus, but to understand why it matters might require some greater contextualizing, which would open the possibility for presenting the plight in a fictional context to better understand the implications.

I still don't know how to differentiate fiction from philosophy — god must be atheist

I think there's something to Iris Murdoch's "dogged insistence" as a defining feature of philosophy with respect to fiction, as highlighted by @180 Proof and @Banno

Returning to the same questions again and again is a pretty good distinguisher. Not that novels cannot return to a question (I often view Brave New World and The Island as companion novels), but there's no dogged insistence of getting just the right answer as much as a reflection upon themes.

And even if philosophy uses fiction, I'd say that philosophy is more straightforward than novels tend to be. We want philosophy to speak as plainly as possible, given the difficulty, but we don't necessarily want that from a novel.

The place within a culture that a script sits also distinguishes it from novels, I think. Novels can be philosophical, and mimic philosophy, and the distinguisher isn't clear-cut, but part of what makes the difference just is how we treat the scripts. We read the novel for our pleasure, and we read philosophy for...

Well, many things. But even if pleasure be the measure, I'd say that the pleasure of philosophy is different from the pleasure of reading a story to get lost in the art of the story.

But a distinguisher is simply the place the script sits within a culture. If it's read for wisdom, then it's at least philosophy-adjacent. I think the other thing that makes philosophy, philosophy, is also the appeal to reason. And a novel which would try to appeal to my reason would be a very strange read, indeed.

But with the caveat that "the appeal to reason" is multifarious, at least by my estimation.

It strikes me as a hyper-empiricist epistemological system where only through either direct observation or through a closely regulated non-fictional literalism (where only basic facts are shared) can knowledge be gained. The suggestion that there is this bright line between fiction and non-fiction really doesn't hold true, because the line between fiction and non-fiction grows more blurred the more interpretive or explanatory it becomes. — Hanover

This may well be the case. Just looking for a good account of fiction as a repository of 'truth'. Throughout this I've been mulling over that Camus' quote about fiction being the lie through which we tell the truth.

As in my To Kill a Mockingbird example, it holds the truth of the destructiveness of racism. Does it not? We speak in hypotheticals all the time in order to make a point, none of which are actually true. Such is the substance of all thought experiments. — Hanover

Yes, that fits reasonably well. I'll go with this for now. Thanks.

I think there's something to Iris Murdoch's "dogged insistence" — Moliere

:wink:

I might regret those words, since wants me to explain truth to him yet again. :roll:

One hopes that one returns to the same question in a different way...

I might regret those words, since ↪Janus
wants me to explain truth to him yet again. :roll:

. — Banno

I wasn't asking you to explain truth, but rather to explain, per the physicalist view that we are affected by, and know, an external (in the sense of external to our bodies) world of meaningless micro-physical events, how it is that those phenomenologically imperceptible impingements on the body-brain give rise to a semantic representation of "a world" that is understood in logical propositional terms.

I'm not suggesting that the mind-body problem is a real problem except when the basic presuppositions are physicalist. Of course I don't expect you to attempt to answer the question in good faith, but rather to evade it by pretending that you don't understand it, that it is "confused" or that it is not interesting enough to bother.

One hopes that one returns to the same question in a different way.

.

Right, you being such a great exemplar of that! I can't think of a more predictable and yet, ironically, prolific and with so little to actually say, poster on this forum :rofl:

...explain, per the physicalist view that we are affected by, and know, an external (in the sense of external to our bodies) world of meaningless micro-physical events, how it is that those phenomenologically imperceptible impingements on the body-brain give rise to a semantic representation of "a world" that is understood in logical propositional terms. — Janus

Oh, is that all? :roll:



Edit: All, my apologies - this should not have been allowed to spill across to this thread.

@Constance may correct me, but that is precisely what I understood her original question to you, that you have spent so many words evading, to be. :roll:

This may well be the case. Just looking for a good account of fiction as a repository of 'truth'. Throughout this I've been mulling over that Camus' quote about fiction being the lie through which we tell the truth. — Tom Storm

I had actually considered Camus when I was considering examples of truth through fiction. He in particular presented his philosophy through fiction. I would think if you read his works and just took them as interesting (yet odd) tales of events unfolding, you'd have missed the better part of what he was trying to say.

:up: