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That’s Beyond My Imagination!
Kiyohiro Sen
Abstract
According to one strongly supported view, fiction is a functional kind that communicates imaginings. Combining this definitional thesis with a plausible principle concerning functional kinds leads to the following evaluative thesis: features that contribute to communicating imaginings constitute good-making features as fiction, and features that impede this constitute bad-making features as fiction. However, this thesis is at odds with the actual practice of fiction. Critics can show their admiration for complicated works of fiction by stating, “That’s beyond my imagination!” I argue that in resolving this paradox of hard-to-imagine fiction, we should not deny the observation, but rethink the definitional thesis. Works of fiction that are puzzling, redundant, contradictory, and collapsed can have a unique value that smooth works cannot. They can have value as fiction in that they challenge our imagination or place us in an exotic state of being lost in the imagination.
Key Words
aesthetic experience; fiction; functional kind; imagination; value of art
1. Value as fiction
In this paper, I argue that works of fiction that are hard to imagine can have value as fiction. In this section, I show how one strongly supported view of fiction gives rise to what I call the paradox of hard-to-imagine fiction. If fiction is a functional kind, and its constitutive function is communicating imaginings, then the features that make imagination difficult and unreliable are demerits for fiction. As an observation, however, critics sometimes admire complicated works of fiction precisely because they are hard to imagine. I will defend this observation by laying out the features that impede imagination in section 2, and showing how they can constitute good-making features for fiction in section 3. In order to resolve the paradox, it is necessary to reconsider the constitutive functions of fiction assumed at the outset. I propose in section 4 that fiction should not be understood in terms of communicating imaginings, but rather as a prop for valuable, imaginative experiences.
Theorists have searched for the elements that make works of text “fiction” and distinguish them from nonfiction. According to one strongly supported view, fiction is a functional kind for communicating imaginings.[1] For a work of fiction to be “fiction,” it must contain fictive utterances, that is, texts that have the function of communicating imaginings. And the fact that a text has the function of communicating imaginings is analyzed by the fact that it is a text arranged by the author with the intention of eliciting certain imaginings in the audience. Writing or stating something with the intention of communicating imaginings constitutes the speech act of fiction-making, analogous to how stating something with the intention of communicating beliefs constitutes the speech act of assertion. A work of fiction is the product of this distinctive speech act. Let us call this view the communication model for fiction.
The communication model is intentionalist in nature. Of course, an author cannot produce a work of fiction merely by intending to communicate imaginings or simply create a fiction. A kind of authorial intention is necessary, but not sufficient, for being fiction. Thus, Currie considers (1) semantic intention to prescribe imagined content, (2) reflexive intention to have the semantic intention noticed, and (3) coincidence with reality only by chance to be necessary and sufficient conditions for being fiction.[2] Abell proposes a more indirect model, defining a work of fiction from (1) a fiction institution (or practice), (2) the author’s intention to conform to the institution, and (3) having at least one utterance that serves as the input for the content-determining rules. However complex these definitions may be, the core component of the communication model remains the same. That is, it is the function of communicating imaginings that individuates a work of fiction, and it is a specific intention of the author that constitutes this function. Let us summarize as follows:
Definitional Thesis (Communication Model)
An item is fiction if and only if it has the function of communicating imaginings. Here, whether it has the function is a matter of whether the author had a specific intention.
Not satisfied with just presenting one version of this definitional thesis, Abell argues that we can derive implications about value as fiction from it.[3] This move is natural, given that the definitional thesis characterizes fiction in a functionalist manner. According to Abell, features that are effective in communicating imaginings constitute good-making features as fiction, while features that impede communicating imaginings constitute bad-making features as fiction. Features that help the intended audience to imagine readily and reliably what is to be imagined are effective means of communicating imaginings, while features that make their imagining difficult and unreliable impede communicating imaginings.
Here is simple instrumental reasoning. In general, a definitional thesis of a functional kind supports its evaluative thesis. That is, considering a functional kind K associated with some constitutive function S, any feature F is a good-making feature as K, if it is a feature that contributes to S, and a bad-making feature as K, if it is a feature that impedes S. For example, let us assume that the function of money is to serve as a measure of value and to mediate exchange and storage. Then, being light and easy to carry, sturdy, and having a definite shape for easy counting are good-making features in that they each contribute to the function of money. Conversely, being too heavy, too fragile, or having an irregular shape is a bad-making feature in that it impedes the function of money.
One should not confuse the value as a certain functional kind at issue here with any value an instance may have. Having a weight and size favorable to coin tossing is good in that respect, but it is not a feature that makes a given coin good qua money. Coins can have different values in different respects, of which their value as money is constrained by the constitutive function of the kind of money. Similarly, individual works of fiction can have different values, but their value qua fiction is constrained by the constitutive function of the kind of fiction.[4]
Let us summarize the evaluative thesis thus derived from the definitional thesis of fiction as follows:
Evaluative Thesis (Communication Model)
Features that contribute to the function of communicating imaginings are good-making features qua fiction, and features that impede that function are bad-making features qua fiction.
This is the evaluative thesis explicitly endorsed by Abell and one that any theorist who places communicating imaginings at the center of fiction could endorse. If communicating imaginings is the constitutive function of fiction, then a good work of fiction must perform this function well.
Specifically, what features are effective for communicating imaginings and thus constitute good-making features as fiction? Abell offers a dual account of whether a feature is effective, as she distinguishes between two types of fictive content and how they are communicated respectively. For basic contents understood via the content-determining rules of fiction institutions, features that help the audience to readily and reliably grasp the content-determining rules in question and engage in the prescribed imagining are considered effective. As a specific example, Abell cites an artwork that is about a story set in the Middle Ages and written in contemporary English. A fiction institution is assumed to contain a content-determining rule that takes lines written in contemporary English as input and makes us imagine that characters are speaking in medieval English. Since the story can be smoothly (readily and reliably) communicated via this rule, lines written in contemporary English are effective and are good features as fiction. Conversely, being written in medieval English is ineffective, since it makes it difficult for most audiences to imagine, which is a bad feature as fiction.
On the other hand, concerning higher-level contents that are interpreted through direct inference of the author’s intentions, features that allow the audience to readily and reliably infer intentions and engage in the prescribed imaginings are considered effective. Higher-level contents of an artwork, such as the theme, message, idea, and concept, are identified through inference, exploring whatever evidence of the author’s intention, instead of referring to the content-determining rules of a fiction institution. Here, for example, naming or depicting a character in a way that makes audiences imagine a personality that is contrary to the personality the author intends them to imagine about the character is a bad feature, while giving the character a name or depiction that is consistent with his or her personality is a good feature. Trying to get the audience to imagine a certain father as a sympathetic character, but adding depictions of him frequently beating his children constitutes a bad feature as fiction, since it makes inferences to the author’s intention difficult.
In sum, according to Abell, a good work of fiction as fiction is one that has many features that help the audience in decoding based on the institution and in inferring the author’s intention—in short, is one that is designed for the audience to imagine smoothly. Conversely, a work of fiction that is hard to imagine is considered bad as fiction.
However, the above evaluative thesis, which Abell explicitly endorses and could potentially be endorsed by many theorists, does not seem to align with observations about the evaluative practice of fiction. In some cases, the means that are favorable to the task of communicating imaginings are evaluated negatively, while in others, the means that are unfavorable are evaluated positively.
A work that straightforwardly follows the rules of a fiction institution could be regarded as a merely conventional artwork; a work that leaves obvious evidence of intention for the audience to infer it could be regarded as excessively blatant. It is commonplace to evaluate such features as undesirable, but they are rarely taken up for praise. Moreover, if any feature that assists an imagining is considered a good feature as fiction, the author can make a better work of fiction by writing many guides to imagination in the notes, such as “this passage should be read according to rule X” or “I had a semantic intention Y on this passage.” In practice, however, no one would create or praise such a work of fiction. The awkwardness of evaluations such as “this is a good work of fiction because it is a medieval tale written in contemporary English” or “this is a good work of fiction because it is designed to make clear the author’s intention to make us sympathize with this character” suggests that we have different rules for evaluation concerning the functional kind of fiction.
On the other hand, in fiction practice, a work of fiction can be regarded as good because it has features that impede the audience’s imagination. Unreliable narrators, disturbances of timelines and narrators, extreme digressions, excessive length, and complexity are some of the features that have been much appreciated, at least in twentieth-century literature, but their function is to impede rather than to help a smooth imagination.[5] Those who say that the novels of Thomas Pynchon and José Donoso are “impossible to catch up with ordinary imagination” or “beyond the imagination of ordinary people” are using these statements as a positive evaluation. Not a few literary artworks have left their mark on the history of literature by making the audiences’ epistemological task even more difficult and, in some cases, fundamentally impossible to accomplish. If we had strictly rejected works of fiction that were hard to imagine, there would be no Tristram Shandy or Finnegans Wake in the history of literature. A statement like “That’s beyond my imagination!” can constitute praise.
It is always more fun to talk about why something can be good than to talk about why something is not so good. Therefore, I will deal with the latter, those works of fiction that are good as fiction by virtue of their features that impede the imagination. To summarize, here is the paradox of hard-to-imagine fiction.
The Paradox of Hard-to-Imagine Fiction
(D) An item is fiction if and only if it has the function of communicating imaginings.
(P) When a functional kind is associated with a certain constitutive function, a feature that impedes that function is necessarily a bad-making feature qua that kind.
(O) There are features that impede communicating imaginings but are not bad-making features, but rather are good-making features qua fiction.
There are three options to resolve the paradox. First, there is the option to deny (P). If preventing a constitutive function as a kind does not imply that the feature is a bad-making feature as the kind, then (D) and (O) are compatible. However, this option is not promising insofar as the above analysis concerning the value qua a functional kind is plausible. The fact that fragility is a demerit for money is naturally derived from the assumed constitutive function; it is quite difficult to see how it could be a merit rather than a demerit.[6]
Proponents of the communication model who wish to maintain (D) will prefer the option of denying (O). I will examine this option after developing my own position. I will show why (D) should be rejected. If the following argument is right, then there is reason to doubt the communication model for fiction. Let me begin by clarifying and defending the observation (O). What features impede imagination and how can they constitute good-making features as fiction?
2. Impeders of imagination
Not all cases of positive evaluation using statements like “That’s beyond my imagination!” are of current interest. Some casual evaluative usages should be placed outside the question beforehand. The phrase, “That’s beyond my imagination!” may simply say that an artwork is simply good or that it has merit in some way unrelated to the imagination. It may also mean that the artwork exceeds prior expectations, that it is more desirable and creative than one might have expected. In any case, these evaluative uses have nothing to do with the audience’s imagination. In addition, “That’s beyond my imagination!” can be used as an exaggeration. The evaluator who says, “George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is beyond imagination,” is not necessarily having difficulty imagining ideas such as Newspeak or doublethink. What is being stated there is merely that the artwork is imaginatively rich and informative.
We should also rule out the following cases in light of the debate on so-called imaginative resistance. Sometimes, the audience is placed in a situation where they won’t rather than can’t imagine what a work of fiction prescribes. The propositional imaginings the artwork prescribes may be unacceptable given the evaluative beliefs (morals or commitments) that the audience has. Otherwise, the experiential imaginings that the artwork prescribes may be so distressing that even just imagining them may be intolerable. However, according to one interpretation of imaginative resistance, in such resistance the audience does not want to imagine, but it does not mean they cannot imagine.[7] The relevant propositional and experiential imaginings are available to the audience; it is precisely because they have actually held these imaginings in their minds and experienced moral conflict or phenomenological pain that they are prompted to resist further imagining. Strictly speaking, it is not the audience’s imagination that works like Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom exceeds, but rather their morality or tolerance for pain.
I want to address features that directly impede the mobilization of the imagination. If imagination is considered a cognitive activity, then artworks with such features are cognitively deficient. In the first case, there may be a contradiction between the propositional imaginings that a work of fiction prescribes. Whether a work of fiction can actually have contradictory content or prescribe contradictory imaginings is a controversial issue, but without going too deeply into it, there is little doubt that some works make imagination difficult by containing contradictions or quasi-contradictions. José Donoso’s Obscene Bird of Night is beyond imagination in that there are contradictions in the events narrated and in the profiles of characters, making it impossible to consistently grasp the fictional world. At one moment, Humberto Peñaloza is a young man, an aspiring writer obsessed with ambition, and a secretary to Don Jerónimo. However, at another moment, he is a deaf-mute with 80% of his body removed, who calls himself El Mudito and is the caretaker of Don Jerónimo’s disabled son, Boy. In yet another moment, he is none other than Don Jerónimo, the Boy. Similarly, the father in Donald Barthelme’s Dead Father is alive but dead and the knight in Italo Calvino’s Nonexistent Knight exists but does not exist.
As a second case, the imagination that the artwork prescribes may be extremely informative and far beyond the imaginative resources of the ordinary person. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow contains as many as 400 characters, a great deal of flaunting of engineering, historical, and religious knowledge, including some too-specialized ones, and an enormous number of allusions, puns, and rhymes. Even if there are no contradictions, it is very difficult for the average person to completely grasp the fictional world.
As a third case, artworks can make what would otherwise be consistently and completely imaginable hard to imagine, by placing narrators and timelines in a disruptive manner. It would afford a much smoother imagining if we removed the polyphonic, schizophrenic narration of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo or Gabriel García Márquez’s Autumn of the Patriarch and made it chronologically communicate the events. However, Rulfo and Márquez chose not to do so. It is hard for me to believe those stories would be more valuable as fiction if they were sorted chronologically.
As a fourth case, similar to the case involving contradictions, a text may be structured in such a way as to impede the imaginative formation of imagery. The Soluble Fish is a nonsense text written by automatic writing, which is both syntactically and semantically bankrupt.
The park at this time of day, stretched its blond hands over the magic fountain. A meaningless castle rolled along the surface of the earth. (André Breton, Soluble Fish, 1924, translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane.)
It is truly a text that is impossible to visualize, a text where it is impossible to even imagine the scene visually.
As a fifth case, the text may be structured in such a way as to impede the mirroring of emotions and thoughts. We have strategies for sympathy that we have acquired in our daily lives. However, works of fiction often depict behaviors that seem to deviate from that pattern, thus impeding our imaginative sympathy for a fictional character. In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the two characters are waiting for someone, but why they are waiting is never revealed. The audience looks for a coherent purpose, intention, or plan, but Beckett carefully removes any possibility of sympathy for his characters through broken conversations and plot loops.
By employing these techniques, many good works of fiction impede smooth propositional and experiential imaginings. The authors make works of fiction hard to imagine by chopping and shuffling the content of imagination, removing what is essential, and transplanting what is unnecessary. If readily and reliably communicating imaginings is their primary purpose, then the authors are clearly destroying themselves by adopting these techniques. However, works of fiction beyond our imagination often leave their mark on the history of fiction not as poor, but as technically important. Next, I will complete my defense of the observation (O) by showing how these features that impede imagination constitute value as fiction.
3. Value of hard-to-imagine fiction
The picture that it is the author’s purpose to communicate imaginings by appropriate means and the audience’s purpose to accurately grasp this may be confusing the purpose and goal of the agents in fiction practice. Arriving at a correct judgment is our goal in art practice, but not our purpose.[8] Audiences approaching an artwork aim to arrive at correct judgments about its meaning and value, but they do not participate in appreciation in order to reach them. Likewise, the task of accurately grasping the content prescribed by the author to be imagined does not motivate us to approach a work of fiction. Instead, it is the intellectually and emotionally rewarding process while approaching a correct judgment, that is, the valuable experience of art itself, that provides the reason that motivates the audience to participate in the appreciation of art. Certainly, there is an epistemological aspect to art appreciation in that judgments about the meaning and value of artworks are the goal, but what is more important is the temporally unfolded appreciation itself. We approach a work of fiction in order to engage in a valuable imaginative experience; the realization of communication with the author might be a goal associated with it, but it is not our purpose that motivates us.
If there were a drug that instantly let me know what I am prescribed to imagine about Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, I would not be inclined to drink it because it is more fun to engage in trial-and-error imagination in my own way. On the other hand, if there were a drug that instantly informed me of what I am prescribed to know about Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, I might be more inclined to take it. There is an asymmetry of purpose between believing or knowing something in reality and imagining something via a work of fiction. This asymmetry should not be overlooked when trying to situate fiction practice under a general cognitive practice such as communication. Appreciation of fiction is not a matter of getting to be able to imagine exactly what is to be imagined.
The various features seen in the previous section can constitute good-making features as fiction in that they enable the audience to engage in particularly challenging imaginings. Games that present challenging tasks have a distinctive value that games that present easily manageable tasks do not. Indeed, functionalist definitions of art in general often count as one of the artistic functions, the affordance of intellectually challenging experiences.[9] The complexity of Gravity’s Rainbow provides an opportunity to engage in challenging imaginings and to that extent it is instrumentally a good feature as fiction.
Why is being challenging valuable? Why does a challenging work of fiction merit praise, selection, and promotion? The value of being challenging can be explained from several points of view. First, one might say that there is intrinsic value in challenges. According to one account of gameplay, it is the achievement of difficult tasks that constitutes its intrinsic value. We have a prima facie reason to choose whatever is more difficult to achieve. According to Nanay, aesthetic experiences are not merely passive pleasures, but are acquired as active achievements.[10] Valuable aesthetic experience is not unilaterally afforded by an item but comes from a mental effort to acquire it. I see this active aspect in appreciative responses in general, including non-aesthetic ones. If art appreciation is an achievement, then achieving an appreciation of a more challenging artwork would be of greater significance to the subject.
Of course, the value of being imaginatively challenging can also be analyzed as an instrumental value in that it leads to other values. For example, the cultivation of imagination has instrumental value in achieving a variety of further good, and imaginatively challenging artwork can have instrumental value in aiding such cultivation.[11] If there is merit in having muscles, then there is merit in heavy dumbbells. Challenging something can also have an instrumental value in that it brings about self-understanding. Approaching a difficult artwork, even if the difficulty is overwhelming, can provide an understanding of the range and limits of one’s imagination. There can be an existential and epistemological value in self-understanding. We seek challenging appreciation that allows us to know ourselves better; this is what hard-to-imagine fictions afford.
By analogy, we have reasons to climb steeper mountains, unpack more esoteric philosophy books, play with stronger soccer teams, and listen to free jazz as well as swing jazz. They give us the opportunity to develop our athletic abilities, critical thinking skills, and tastes in ways that we would not get if we chose easier tasks; challenges also allow us to learn about the range and limits of our own competence. Even without those by-products, one might say that challenging has value for its own sake.
The value of being challenging explains, in some measure, why features that impede imagination can constitute good-making features as fiction. However, it does not explain all cases. Some of the features addressed in the previous section were more radical. Artworks can be hopelessly disrupted by features such as when containing contradictions. Such artworks are not merely challenging to imagine, they are impossible. No one normally wants to engage in a mountain with no summit, a philosophical book written incomprehensibly, a never-ending soccer game, or random noise. If there is no goal to reach, it is not even a challenge to begin with. How can we understand the cases where artwork with these features is still admired?
We may have to let go of even the analogy with gameplay of goal-directed striving when it comes to the practice of fiction. Even the experience of getting lost and wandering aimlessly in the imagination can be valuable in this practice. For those of us engaged in Waiting for Godot, it is perhaps never possible to grasp Godot’s true identity or to sympathize with Vladimir and Estragon. There is no task, challenge, or game in the narrow sense, only an essential unimaginability. Still, there is value in the experience of drifting imaginatively. Unreliable narrators, disturbances of timelines and narrators, extreme digressions, excessive length, and complexity are instrumentally good features of fiction, insofar as they afford the experience of getting lost in imagination.
Why is it valuable to get lost in imagination? Why does a work of fiction that leads us astray merit admiration, selection, or promotion? It is difficult to explain clearly, nor does it seem to be something that can or should be explained through an argument. Its value can only be found in individual experiences. Nevertheless, I would like to mention four related points here.
First, unlike the real world, which is largely logically consistent, imaginative encounters with largely disrupted worlds may provide transformative experiences and defamiliarization of everyday life. If the transformation they bring about is existentially desirable, then the experience of getting lost in imagination may have some instrumental value. However, it is not a very plausible scenario that we enter a collapsed, imaginary world because of the legitimate expectation of a desirable transformation. Frequently, we are caught up in fiction and forced to transform without ever forming a proper prediction. Aumann calls it the seduction of art.[12] Artworks do not rationally motivate transformation by informing me exactly what kind of transformative experience they offer, whether it is a good or bad transformation for me. Artworks and aesthetic objects have a seductive power to motivate engagement beyond rational choice.[13]
Second and relatedly, to put it less exaggeratedly, imaginative encounters with largely disrupted worlds satisfy our curiosity. As Lopes argues, aesthetic life is varied in multiple dimensions and is a place that suits our desire to try many different things.[14] Valuing the cognitively confused is a disadvantageous strategy in many practices where one must acquire correct knowledge, infer appropriately, and make choices of action. However, if such seriousness is not required in situations where we engage in works of fiction or generally in art appreciation, then the experience of getting lost in imagination through fiction is rather a compensation for real life, where we cannot afford to form bankrupt beliefs.
Third, generally speaking, meta-evaluations of unpleasant experiences can be reversed between reality and fiction. Sadness and fear are unpleasant emotional experiences; in reality, we are motivated to avoid them. However, we are not similarly motivated when appreciating a tragedy or horror. Instead, we actively participate and may even admire a work of fiction precisely because it evokes sadness or horror. Likewise, confusion in beliefs calls for avoidance and resolution, while confusion in imagination can call for participation and continuance. Why this reversal occurs is a question that has been addressed under the labels of the paradox of tragedy or the paradox of horror; if certain answers to this can be obtained, the paradox of the imaginative stray may also be answered. For example, while belief confusion in reality is a crisis of practical disadvantage, imaginative confusion in fiction involves no such danger and we may be able to enjoy confusion because it guarantees mental safety. There may be a psychological mechanism that converts imaginative confusion into pleasure,[15] and the artwork may have a structure that also affords us enough pleasure to compensate for the confusion. We may marvel at the very structure that confuses us so effectively, or we may feel meta-pleasure in evaluating an artwork as intensely confusing.[16] Pluralism, in which there are multiple mechanisms for reversing the imaginative stray into valuable appreciation, is also a plausible option.
Fourth and relatedly, I believe that the closest experience that has been discussed to getting lost in imagination is the awe that the sublime provides. The experience of the sublime has traditionally been understood in association with incomprehensibility and a sense of helplessness.[17] As Arcangeli and Dokic analyze, the experience of the sublime is a radical limit-experience in which one meta-recognizes one’s own perceptual and imaginative inadequacies from an encounter with something cognitively overwhelming.[18] It brings a negative feeling of uncertainty and self-denial, but this is turned into a positive aesthetic experience through different types of aesthetic accommodation. Of course, a detailed analysis of this aesthetic concept is a task beyond the scope of this paper. Still, one promising view is that the value of getting lost in imagination could be shown by showing that the sublime is a positive aesthetic value.
4. A Waltonian alternative
I have so far defended (O) the observation that there are features that impede communicating imaginings but do not constitute bad-making features as fiction, but rather good-making features. If this observation is certain, and (P) the step of deriving an evaluative thesis from a definitional thesis is sound, then it is (D) the assumed definitional thesis that must be rejected in order to resolve the paradox of hard-to-imagine fiction. The features that impede imagination can constitute good-making features as fiction, since they afford a challenging imagination and a distinctive experience of getting lost in imagination. What we need is an alternative definitional thesis that could accommodate this fact.
Opponents of replacing the definitional thesis might counter that it is not (D) that should be rejected, but (O). According to the objector, I am merely listing the artistic or literary value that a hard-to-imagine work of fiction can have; I have not, after all, succeeded in showing that it has any value as fiction constituted by features impeding imagination. So, it may have value from an artistic or literary point of view, but not from a fictive point of view.
As a short response, I am not just listing the features that constitute the miscellaneous values of works of fiction but focusing only on the features that help afford a valuable imaginative experience. There are many evaluative uses of the statement, “That’s beyond my imagination!” but I have excluded any usage that has nothing to do with imagination. Both challenging imagination and the experience of getting lost in imagination are imaginative experiences with instrumental or intrinsic value, and a value as fiction is a value based on the value of such imagination. At least my opponent and I agree in recognizing an essential relationship between fiction and imagination. It is precisely in terms of imagination that I argue a work of fiction to be a good work of fiction if it affords an interesting and valuable imaginative experience. Given that, what else is there to say that the value of the fiction I mention is not its value as fiction?
In general, “value as representation” is ambiguous between the significance of its content and the efficiency of its means. Significant content is not necessarily efficiently represented, and efficiently represented content is not necessarily significant. When we consider the practice of fiction as a kind of representational practice, the claim that whether or not it is effective for the author’s purpose of communicating imaginings corresponds to whether it is a good-making or bad-making feature as fiction is highly stipulative. The value as fiction is now considered irrelevant to artistic or literary value and is reserved for the stipulated and specific function of communicating imaginings and the efficiency for it. However, when we ask in everyday conversation about the value of a work of fiction as fiction, we are not asking whether or not the author’s communicative intention has been realized by effective means. The far more natural understanding is that we are asking whether the artwork affords an interesting imaginative experience. Concerning “value as fiction,” the primary focus should be on the significance of the content and the value of the experience it affords, rather than on the efficiency of the means.
I believe that the failure of the communication model stems from the fact that it is intentionalist in nature. Observation (O) shows that we do not necessarily regard fiction as an intentional communication by the author or evaluate its efficiency. Works of fiction are evaluated in terms of whether they afford interesting imaginative experiences. In this regard, I do not wish to oppose the consensus that associates fiction with imagination.[19] What we need to let go of is the intentionalist conception of prescribing imaginings by a work of fiction as intentional communicating imaginings by its author.
At least one of the most influential players in the field, Kendall Walton, clearly rejected the communication model.[20] Walton never analyzed the constitutive function of fiction, namely, to serve as a prop in imaginative make-believe, in terms of the speech acts or specific intentions of the producer. Walton rightly recognizes that the more crucial factors are the consumer and the social context. In Walton, prescribing imaginings does not mean intentional communication of imaginings, nor is the fact that an item has the function of prescribing imaginings a matter of whether the author had a specific intention. The function is assigned to items more pluralistically in the interaction of the relevant consumers. Let us call this Waltonian functionalism. If we adopt the Waltonian definitional thesis as follows, the problematic evaluative thesis will not result.
Definitional Thesis (Waltonian Functionalism)
An item is fiction if and only if it has the function of prescribing and making its receivers engage in various imaginings. Here, whether it has the function is not a matter of whether the author had a specific intention, but of how audiences use it in the relevant practice.
The features that hard-to-imagine works of fiction possess impede the constitutive function of fiction in the first definitional thesis, that is, the author’s communication of imaginings. However, they do not impede the constitutive function of fiction in the second definitional thesis, that is, the item’s own function of prescribing and affording a variety of imaginings (the function we ascribe to the item in our social interactions), but rather can be features that contribute in interesting and innovative ways. In the evaluative thesis derived from the second definitional thesis, features such as being contradictory, overly informative, disturbing, and impeding the formation of imagery and sympathy are no longer necessarily bad-making features but acquire the potential to become good-making features as fiction. Thus, the paradox of hard-to-imagine fiction is resolved in a way consistent with actual evaluative practices of fiction, rather than a stipulation.
Some analytic philosophers have tended to see fiction practice in the communication model, where the author imagines a fictional world and communicates this by whatever means are effective to get the audience to imagine it. Such a communication model, however, is inappropriate for understanding our evaluative practice of fiction. The practice of fiction and imagination is driven not only by an order-oriented Apollonian impulse, but also by a chaos-oriented Dionysian impulse so that we seek something beyond our imagination.[21]
Kiyohiro Sen
senkiyohiro@gmail.com
Kiyohiro Sen completed his PhD at the University of Tokyo in March 2024 and is currently a part-time lecturer at Sagami Women’s University, Japan. His doctoral research focuses on the categories of art and their role in art criticism. From September 2024, he will be a Japanese government-funded researcher at the University of British Columbia for two years, working on issues of aesthetic value.
Published on July 20, 2024.
Cite this article: Kiyohiro Sen, “That’s Beyond My Imagination!” Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 22 (2024), accessed date.
Endnotes
[1] For example, Gregory Currie, The Nature of Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); David Davies, Aesthetics and Literature (London: Continuum, 2007); Kathleen Stock, Only Imagine: Fiction, Interpretation and Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Catharine Abell, Fiction: A Philosophical Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
[2] Currie, The Nature of Fiction, 30.
[3] Abell, 45-6.
[4] In this respect, fiction is an instance of what Thomson calls the goodness-fixing kind. See Judith Jarvis Thomson, Normativity (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 2008). An item being a good work of fiction cannot be reduced to its both being a work of fiction and being simply good independently of being a work of fiction. Its value as a work of fiction is constrained by the ideal, norm, and standard of the kind of fiction. For related discussions, see Jonathan Gilmore, “A Functional View of Artistic Evaluation,” Philosophical Studies 155, no. 2 (2011): 289-305; Stacie Friend, “Fiction as a Genre,” in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, vol. 112, 2012, 179-209.
[5] While the focus of this paper will be solely on literary fiction, my argument should be extendable to other forms of fiction, such as cinematic and theatrical fiction.
[6] There is probably room for further discussion of the principle of deriving an evaluative thesis from a definitional thesis of a functional kind, but I will not pursue it further in this paper. I believe this principle is implicitly shared by Abell, who derived the evaluative thesis from the definitional thesis regarding fiction.
[7] Tamar Szabó Gendler, “The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance,” Source: The Journal of Philosophy 97, no. 2 (2000): 55-81; Dustin Stokes, “The Evaluative Character of Imaginative Resistance,” British Journal of Aesthetics 46, no. 4 (2006): 387-405.
[8] On the distinction between purposes and goals, see C. Thi Nguyen, “Autonomy and Aesthetic Engagement,” Mind 129, no. 516 (2019): 1136.
[9] Berys Gaut, “‘Art’ as a Cluster Concept,” in Theories of Art Today, ed. Noël Carroll (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 28.
[10] Bence Nanay, “Unlocking Experience,” in Aesthetic Life and Why It Matters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 11-31.
[11] For more on cultivating imagination, see Amy Kind, “Fiction and the Cultivation of Imagination,” in The Philosophy of Fiction: Imagination and Cognition, ed. Patrik Engisch and Julia Langkau (London: Routledge, 2022), 262-81; Antonia Peacocke, “How Literature Expands Your Imagination,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103, no. 2 (2021): 298-319.
[12] Antony Aumann, “Art and Transformation,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 8, no. 4 (2022): 573.
[13] What is being assumed here is substantive rationality, in the sense of whether a subject acts in accordance with the recognition of good reasons for the act. I am neutral about the possibility that rationality, in another sense, is included in the experience of being lost in imagination.
[14] Dominic McIver Lopes, “Getting into It,” in Aesthetic Life and Why It Matters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 61-86.
[15] David Hume, “Of Tragedy,” in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 127-33. See also Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (London: Routledge, 1990).
[16] Kendall L. Walton, “How Marvelous! Toward A Theory of Aesthetic Value,” in Marvelous Images: On Values and the Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 3-20.
[17] For summaries, see Robert R. Clewis, “Why the Sublime Is Aesthetic Awe,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79, no. 3 (2021): 301-14; Uriah Kriegel, “A Fitting-Attitude Approach to Aesthetic Value?,” British Journal of Aesthetics 63, no. 1 (2023): 57-73.
[18] Margherita Arcangeli and Jerôme Dokic, “At the Limits: What Drives Experiences of the Sublime,” British Journal of Aesthetics 61, no. 2 (2021): 155.
[19] Derek Matravers, Fiction and Narrative (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 21. Matravers, however, argues against this “consensus view.”
[20] Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 88-9.
[21] I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. In particular, they have helped me to better define the issues surrounding the value as fiction and to locate the existing theories of fiction.