Elusive Fictional Truth

Craig Bourne; Emily Caddick Bourne

doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayab034

Elusive Fictional Truth

Craig Bourne, Emily Caddick Bourne

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Abstract

We argue that some fictional truths are fictionally true by default. We also argue that these fictional truths are subject to being undermined. We propose that the context within which we are to evaluate what is fictionally true changes when a possibility which was previously ignorable is brought to attention. We argue that these cases support a model of fictional truth which makes the conversational dynamics of determining truth in fiction structurally akin to the conversational dynamics of knowledge-ascription, as this is understood by David Lewis’s contextualist approach to knowledge. We show how a number of the rules which Lewis proposes for the case of knowledge-ascription can be employed to develop a novel and powerful framework for the case of truth in fiction.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	15-31
Number of pages	17
Journal	British Journal of Aesthetics
Volume	62
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayab034
Publication status	Published - 3 Jan 2022

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10.1093/aesthj/ayab034Licence: CC BY

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© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 202 KBLicence: CC BY

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Elusive Fictional Truth

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