Unparadoxical emotions: on fiction and our responses to it

Abstract

This paper argues that the role emotions from fiction play in structuring experience is incompatible with treating them by default as either irrational or merely ersatz. It has five sections. _ 1 outlines the paradox of fiction and three standard solutions: broad cognitivism, non-cognitivism, and Walton's theory of quasi-emotion. Broad cognitivism and non-cognitivism reject the doxastic thesis - the claim that belief is necessary for emotion - while Walton is taken to deny that emotions from fiction are 'genuine.' _ 2 endorses rejecting the doxastic thesis but argues that the true heart of the paradox is the genuine/non-genuine dichotomy. We propose an alternative interpretation of quasi-emotion that avoids this dichotomy. We further compare emotions from fiction with emotions from abstract art and music, contrasting the latter with quasi-emotions. _ 3 discusses mental simulation, comparing fictions with external simulators that feed into ongoing cognitive-emotional calibration. _ 4 introduces a dual-track model of fiction, in which symbols operate simultaneously through quasi-denotation - fictions denote what they prescribe us to imagine - and exemplification - they illustrate by way of what they quasi-denote. Track one is the fiction's frame, track two its focus; emotional responses are thus dual-track - in a way that bypasses the paradox. _ 5 turns to the more fundamental fiction/reality dichotomy, suggesting that the most interesting feature of fictions is not the nonexistence (or shadowy existence) of their supposed denotata - since the factual also functions as fiction - but their being models of how the world is experienced.