The Value of Fiction

           Our shared set of prestigious literary works often create a fictional account of history.  Examples generally consist of created interpersonal relations between characters that have no reference to physical reality, and impossible scenarios such as science fiction.  For me, the epitome of what I am referring too is the work of  George R.R. Martin.  Qualified readers of fiction are not deceived when reading these accounts; they are not deceived by the account and are able to find great enjoyment and benefit from their experience.  In addition to the the aesthetic quality, technical expertise, or creative prowess of well written fiction the role of near world experiences sets is vital and gives credence to fiction as a medium.   I am going to do my best to explain what I believe to be the value of fiction.  Once this has been sufficiently explicated I will demonstrate how a reader of fiction gleans value in a universe void of any physical components.  

In his paper “The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse,” John Searle observes that there is a peculiar thing going on when one reads fiction.  He is perturbed by the fact that words that are used to describe things that exist in reality can be equally understood when used in fiction, yet in the case of fiction those words do not have the same support for their meaning as they would in reality.  How could words whose intent is to be used in fiction retain the meaning attributed to them when used to describe reality? This might seem intuitively obvious to you, but addressing the disconnect between value gleaned from real world experiences and the value of fictional experiences, of which I will do my best to demonstrate, is slippery.  Searle is observing that characters in fiction works do not have reference to the physical world.

In order to alleviate this issue one might suppose that entities in fiction should be characterized as a unique type of entity.  If fictional characters are considered abstract artifacts that the author discovers as opposed to entities that the author creates, then their existence would be based on a set of possible fictional characters that are accessed.  According to Amie Thomasson in her paper “Fictional Character as Abstract Artifacts,” artifacts are by nature similar to the type of thing that we refer to in fiction.  She explains, “Artifacts of all kinds…share with fictional character the feature of requiring creation by intelligent beings.”  That is, in order for something to qualify as an artifact and not merely an object the state in which the object exists depends on it’s being the product of an intelligent being.  This feature is shared in fictional characters.  Like a rock becomes the artifact ‘tool’ when shaped by an intelligent being, words become artifactual fictional characters when produced by intelligent beings.   Under this characterization fictional characters that have been extolled in literature would be considered possible abstract objects. 

An abstract theory seems to me to be inaccurate.  The potential fictional characters are beholden only to the extent of the human imagination.  This implies that there are fictional objects that have not been realized yet.  If fictional characters are thought to be abstract object then the entire set would have to have been realized and this is impossible.  The set of possible constructs that could be credited to the human imagination is thought to be infinite or at least very large.  So large that the possible fictional characters that could be realized at this very moment is impossible to quantify as humans have yet to discover the limit of their imagination.

            My intuition leads me to believe that the meaning of the words is not lost when reading fiction and that fictional characters are somewhat like the type that Thomasson described.  I do not believe that fictional characters exist but I do not believe that their lack of reference in the real world inhibits fictional characters from retaining meaning.  Fictional characters are artifactual in that their meaning depends on intelligent beings to create and recreate them in reading.   I believe the meaning is derived from our ability to operate in a relative of reality.  I will call this Experimental Reality. 

We can discuss impossible things.  We can discuss levitation, we can discuss time travel (though that may be possible), we can discuss magic, because we have our understanding of reality as a structure that provides us the reference through which our Experimental Reality can be interpreted.  I agree with Thomasson when she recognizes that if there is no one to consciously experiment with the entity then it has no meaning.  She explains, “If all conscious agents are destroyed, then nothing is left of fictional works or the characters representing them but some ink on a paper.”  However if there are entities that utilize their faculties of imagination and understanding then these fictional characters have a realm for which to operate.  This gives them their meaning.  For example, we have some comfort in our understanding of gravity.  Using this as our basis we can easily imagine if we were not affected by the rules of gravity.  This is an easy case.  Even in more complicated cases we utilize the meaning of the words when used to describe reality to serve as a reference point form which we can understand the same words when used a fictional context.  For example, we have a relatively comfortable understanding of time and how we can recollect occurrences of the past.  We use this to understand what it would mean to collect facts about the future.  An oracle is a fictional character, yet the words we use to describe an oracles actions have not lost their meaning.  We conceptualize the character of an oracle in Experimental Reality and use our understanding of the process of recollecting occurrences in history to serve as a reference for which we can understand what is going on when discussing Oracle behavior.

            When children are brought into this world they are to some extent empty vessels in terms of being able to understand and relate to reality.  We ease them into this process by teaching children “reality concepts” through the use of fiction.  Thomasson explains in her paper the ability of humans to take advantage of their curiosity to be creative and construct fictional characters “on top of the independent physical world by means of our intentional representations.”  Human imagination is not restricted to the physical world.

            We use our senses to gather information about the world and interpret it.  One of the roles of fiction is to create characters that can be understood in an experimental mental zone in which we could test our ideas about the world.  We use the same words, and are able to do so, because we can relate this fictional world to the reality that we understand. 

            Fictional characters do not exist in the physical world.  They are not necessarily representations of anything in the physical world.  Furthermore they do not have reference to anything in the physical world.  That is why the bounds for which we create fictional characters in works of fiction are not constrained by the realities of the physical world but rather the extensions of our imagination.  Fictional characters are constructs of the human mind whose meaning is dependent on intelligent beings.  These fictional characters operate in an Experimental Reality whose reference depends on our understanding of the physical reality.