Literature and science

I think we learn at least as much about ourselves as persons from literature as from science. This is surprising if physicalism is true.

Two beauties

In a number of cases of beauty, beauty is doubled up: there is the beauty in an abstract state of affairs and there is the beauty in that state of affairs being real, or at least real to an approximation. For instance, the mathematics of Relativity Theory is beautiful in itself. But that it is true (or even approximately true) is also beautiful.

This shows an interesting aspect of superiority that painting and sculpture have over the writing of novels. The novelist discovers a beautiful (in a very broad sense of the word, far broader than the “pretty”) abstract state of affairs, and then conveys it to us. But the painter and sculptor additionally doubles the beauty by making something real an instantiation of it, and it is by making that instantiation real that they convey it to us. The playwright is somewhere in between: the beautiful state of affairs is made approximately real by a play.

The above sounds really Platonic. But we can also read it in an Aristotelian way, if we understand the abstract states of affairs as potentialities. The painter, sculptor and novelist all discover a beautiful potentiality. The painter and sculptor brings that potentiality to actuality. The novelist merely points it out to us.

Fundamental bearers of aesthetic properties

I am finding myself frustrated trying to figure out whether the fundamental bearers of aesthetic properties are mental states or things out in the world. When I think about the fact that there does not seem to be any significant difference between the beauty of music that one actually listens to with one’s ears versus “music” that is directly piped to the auditory center of the brain, that makes me think that the fundamental bearers of aesthetic properties are mental states.

But on the other hand, when I think about the beauty of character exhibited by a Mother Teresa, I find it hard to think that it is my mental states—say, my thoughts about Mother Teresa—that bear the fundamental aesthetic properties. If I thought that it was my mental states that are the bearers of aesthetic properties, then I would think that a fictional Mother Teresa is just as beautiful as a real one. But it seems to me that a part of the beauty of the real Mother Teresa is that she is real.

Perhaps the fundamental bearers of aesthetic properties vary. For music and film, perhaps, the fundamental bearers are mental states: the experiences one paradigmatically has when listening and viewing (but which one could also have by direct brain input). For the characters of real people, perhaps, the fundamental bearers are the people themselves or their characters. For the characters of fictional people, perhaps, the fundamental bearers are mentally constituted (in the mind of the author or that of the audience or both).

Maybe the beauty of a real person is a different thing from the beauty of a fictional character. This kind of makes sense. For we might imagine an author who creates a beautiful work of literature portraying a nasty person: the nasty person qua fictional character is beautiful, but would have been ugly in real life, perhaps.

But I hate views on which we have such a pluralism of fundamental bearers of a property.

Non-propositional conveyance

One sometimes hears claims like:

1. There are things that can be conveyed through X (poetry, novels, film, art, music, etc.) that cannot be conveyed propositionally.

But what kind of a thing are those things? Facts? Not quite. For while some of the “things that can be conveyed … that cannot be conveyed propositionally” are in fact real and true, some are not. Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and Fritz Lang’s M are both good candidates for conveying “things … that cannot be conveyed propositionally”. But Triumph in doing so conveys falsehoods about the Nazi Party while M conveys truths about the human condition. But facts just are. So, the “things” are not just facts.

What I said about Triumph and M is very natural. But if we take it literally, the “things” must then be the sorts of things that can be true or false. But the primary bearers of truth are propositions. So when we dig deeper, (1) is undermined. For surely we don’t want to say that Triumph and M convey propositions that cannot be conveyed propositionally.

Perhaps, though, this was too quick. While I did talk of truth and falsehood initially, perhaps I could have talked of obtaining and not obtaining. If I did that, then maybe the “things” would have turned out to be states of affairs (technically, of the abstract Plantinga sort, not of the Armstrong sort). But I think there is good reason to prefer propositions to states of affairs here. First, it is dubious whether there are impossible states of affairs. But not only can X convey things that aren’t so, it can also convey things that couldn’t be so. A novel or film might convey ethical stuff that not only is wrong, but couldn’t be right. Second, what is conveyed is very fine-grained, and it seems unlikely to me that states of affairs are fine-grained enough. The right candidate seems to be not only propositions, but Fregean propositions.

But (1) still seems to be getting at something true. I think (1) is confusing “propositionally” with “by means of literalistic fact-stating affirmative sentences”. Indeed:

2. There are things that can be conveyed through X (poetry, novels, film, art, music, etc.) that cannot be conveyed by means of literalistic fact-stating affirmative sentences.

(Note the importance of the word “conveyed”. If we had “expressed”, that might be false, because for any of the “things”, we could stipulate a zero-place predicate, say “xyzzies”, and then express it with “It xyzzies.” But while that sentence manages to express the proposition, it doesn’t convey it.)

Authorless books

I've been imagining a strange scenario. I come across a text that I know for sure was generated by an entirely random process--say, the proverbial monkeys at the typewriter. I look at it. Mirabile dictu, it's coherent and reads just like a literary masterpiece--let's say it's just like something Tolstoy would have written had he written one more novel at the peak of his creative powers.

I think reading this random text could be a disquieting experience. I could read it shallowly, the way one reads some novels for mere entertainment. And in that context, it would work just as well as shallowly reading a real novel. But of course with a masterpiece, one wants to read it more deeply. In doing so, one draws connections between different parts of the texts ("Oh! So that's what that foreshadowed!" or "Ah, so that's why she did that!"), between the content and the mode of expression ("Look at all these short words describing the rapidity of the march"), between what is overtly the text and other texts, ideas, historical events and persons, etc. Drawing such connections, whether explicitly or just as a barely conscious sensation of something there--is a part of the enjoyment of reading a literary masterpiece, when done in moderation. But in our random text, all connections are merely coincidental. Nothing is there on purpose, not even unconsciously. When we read a literary giant like a Plato or a Tolstoy, when we see a compelling connection, we have good reason to think the author meant it to be there, and that sensing the connection is a part of a good reading of the text. But in the random text, there will be no such thing as a good reading or a misreading. And that would have to be disquieting. There is a sense in which we would be inventing all the connections. Reading would be more like creating than like discovering. I suppose death-of-author people think that's already the case with normal novels. But I don't think so. Real connections differ from chance ones.

At the same time, I think that in practice if I were reading this text which is just like a literary masterpiece, I'd end up suspending my disbelief about the author, and just delight in the connections and subtleties, even if they are merely apparent.

But maybe in a world with God there is no true randomness. So maybe the hypothesis of a book where nothing is intended is impossible?

Emotions towards fictional characters

You're attending a performance of Wit. Vivian is dying of cancer. If you're human, you have compassion for her. You don't want her to die.

We say stuff like that. But is this really how we feel. Emotions have an essential motivational force. But are you motivated to stop Vivian from dying?

Maybe you are motivated, but there is nothing you can do to act on that motivation? Yet there is. You could run on stage, and threaten or bribe the actors to make sure that Vivian lives. Or you could pray that the playwright had put in a happy ending.

Or imagine that you are Margaret Edson's friend, and she's just written the first half of the play and let you read it. Maybe you could plead with her that Vivian live, even though you have a nagging suspicion that art may call for Vivian's death. Surely, if you really cared about Vivian, you would plead, or, if not that, at least you'd feel guilty to be sacrificing her on the altar of art. But there is no call for guilt here.

So, I don't think we really have compassion for Vivian. Rather, there is some kind of a shadow feeling. This shadow feeling has similar phenomenology to the real thing, but its motivational force is different. If I am right about this, this blunts St. Augustine's criticism of drama that it causes inappropriate feelings. For the shadow feelings are quite right.

Fear when watching a horror film, though, may be different... It might be real fear, not just a shadow. But that's because one fears for oneself rather than for a fictional character: one fears being startled by something particularly gruesome, say.

Fictional entities

A student tells me: "Patrick Jones stole my laptop. Could I get an extension?" But the student's laptop has never been stolen, and the student knows it. Clearly the student has to be lying. Or does she? Suppose that we accept a realism about fictional entities, and suppose that shortly before coming to class, the student wrote a very short story in which Patrick Jones steals her laptop after she writes her homework. On realist views of fictional characters on which one can correctly say "Odysseus was resourceful", the student has told me the sober truth. (That she features in the story is clearly not a problem—stories can include real entities.) That seems to be a good reason to reject such views. This argument leaves untouched realist views on "Odysseus is a fictional character" is literally true, but "Odysseus was resourceful" should be taken to be elliptical for something like "Odysseus was resourceful in the Odyssey."

Devotional use of fantasy and science fiction

The kind of fantasy and science fiction that I like describes a possible world as it were from the inside (i.e., the sentences are to be interpreted relative to that world, as if that world were actual, in the sense of two-dimensional semantics—this makes it possible for the stories to have alternate origins for "the human race" and so on). Some of these possible worlds are fairly close to ours (realistic kinds of science fiction) and some are quite far from ours. Besides the kinds of values that every kind of literature can have, such as giving us a richer picture of moral deliberation, imaginative fiction of the sort I like also performs a devotional service—it gives us a richer picture of the power of God. There perhaps are no hobbits, probably there are no vast plasma-based intelligent beings in the sun, perhaps we do not live in a multiverse, almost surely there are no vampire-like unconscious but sophisticatedly cognitive beings, and probably God did not become incarnate as a lion; but all these things might have been so, by the power of God.

That does not mean that the fiction has to be overtly theistic or by a theistic author. Any picture of a genuinely possible world is a picture of a world in which God would exist, since God exists necessarily, in all worlds (and in the case of "God", the two-dimensional intension is constant, so we don't need to distinguish between conceivability and possibility). If the story is not compatible with the existence of God—for instance, if it contains a story of the ultimate origination of the cosmos incompatible with theism, or if it contains innocents suffering for eternity, vel caetera—then the story fails to describe a possible world.

Personally, I am made uncomfortable by imaginative fiction that does not describe a possible world. Besides rare cases of stories that appear to be clearly incompatible with theism, an offender is time travel stories that often violate metaphysical strictures against causal loops and circular explanation. I was also made uncomfortable by a Greg Egan story where mathematics itself is changed by human activity. (I think I am also made a bit uncomfortable by stories that strongly imply that what is happening is in our world—this world we live in—whereas the content of the story is metaphysically incompatible with how things are up to now. For instance, stories that give an alternate account of how "we humans" came into existence. But that is easily taken care of by reinterpreting the story without the rigidity of "our world"—that's what two-dimensional semantics is for.)

Philosophy and literature

Different genres of literature are apt to give insights in different areas of philosophy:

• science fiction: metaphysics and mind
• mystery: epistemology
• fantasy: philosophy of religion
• non-genre fiction: ethics

Of course there are many exceptions.

Literature

There is a very nice, and not at all ad hoc, theistic explanation of why there exist beings who like telling stories. Creation reflects the creator. The creator is the author of the universe, and so there is good reason for there to be creatures who also engage in authorship. I have no doubt that a just-so evolutionary story can be given about the practice of story-telling. However, I suspect that, nonetheless, the fact that we tell stories is evidence for theism over and against naturalism.