We don't understand reality but we do understand fiction. Why? The latter is about wish fulfilment. The former is about how to survive and reproduce under conditions of scarcity and intense competition. Thus, European populations could displace indigenous people in America because they had a superior understanding of some material aspects of reality. But those who are currently Americans may be demographically replaced if some other power or set of people gains a superior understanding of certain natural or economic aspects of reality.
Oblivious to this obvious truth, Hannah H Kim writes in Aeon-
what distinguishes fiction from nonfiction?
The Law has a notion of 'legal fiction'- i.e. something deemed to be true even though everybody knows it was made up. Law courts can also adjudicate cases where the claim is made that a fictional work is actually non-fiction and defamatory in certain respects. Equally, a non-fiction work may be sought to be reclassified as fiction in order to suggest that it has little alethic content. Once again, this may be a justiciable matter.
Speaking generally, to assert what you have written is fiction is to disavow factual inferences concerning things or persons who exist or have existed in the real world. However, a court may find that what you claim to be fiction is actually a claim of fact.
Equally an assertion of fact, whether or not it is true, may be categorized as fictional if it arises out of the working of the imagination rather than alethic research. What is fictional is 'made up'. What is non-fiction, whether it is true or false, is alethic in nature.
These are justiciable matters. There is no scope for 'philosophy' here.
What is fiction in the first place? Despite common usage, philosophers agree that we can’t equate ‘fiction’ with ‘false content’.
Fuck common usage. What is the usage of the Courts? That is what determines if something is fiction or, despite any assertion to the contrary by the author, non-fiction. Thus we may think a book by a person acquitted of a crime which says it is a fictional representation of how she actually committed the crime is 'non-fiction'. If a Judge agrees, this may become the basis of a civil action against the author.
Non-fiction is bound to contain some 'false content'. Indeed, Court judgments, too, suffer this infirmity. What may reasonably be asserted is not the same thing as what is irrefragable truth.
On the one hand, the inclusion of falsity isn’t enough to render a work fiction.
Non-fiction is bound to include some falsity. Human beings are fallible. In any case, as more information is acquired, authors of non-fiction are likely to revise or edit their work. On the other hand, a fictional work may correspond exactly to the facts of the case. The author may have, purely by the exercise of imagination and reason unaided by observation, have correctly reconstructed a particular chain of events or predicted exactly what would happen.
Books with false statements – old science textbooks with disproven theories, history books with mistakes, memoirs with contradictory events – don’t change their status from nonfiction to fiction when false content is identified.
Nonsense! We may consider them to be great works of non-fiction which, however, have been superseded in certain respects. Thus Gibbon is great & even, the highly partisan, Macaulay, is great whereas some minor author's work on numismatics or some other such field, which has not been superseded, would not be considered either good or bad but merely workmanlike and accurate enough given its limited scope.
Instead, we judge them to be bad nonfiction. On the other hand, not all fictions include false content since there are fictions that include only actual events, such as Helen Garner’s The Spare Room (2008), a factual account of the author’s experience of nursing a dying friend.
This book is a memoir in the shape of a novel. The 'novelization' of 'true life' accounts may have no fictional component. We say the thing is a novel if it looks like and reads like a novel though we understand it is no such thing. Similarly a scientist may chose to publish a synopsis of his work in the shape of a poem, or a Socratic dialogue, rather than follow the conventions of the 'popular science' genre.
And the fact that historical fiction exists – that a fictional work can be consistent with all known facts, yet still be considered fiction – shows that fiction doesn’t need to include (known) falsity.
We would say 'this is a historical novel'. Novels use techniques developed by writers of fiction. A fiction writer could turn material gathered for a historical novel into a work of historical scholarship replete with quotations from other learned authorities, refutations of other scholars and an elaborate critical apparatus.
What matters for nonfiction is that its content is believed to be true.
No. What matters is if it makes claims about actual people or events. We may not believe a word of it and are welcome to assemble evidence in support of our view.
A creative writing friend of mine told me that writing what one sincerely believes to be true after due diligence in research and introspection is enough to render some content ‘nonfiction’.
Any one can write non-fiction. It just may not be accepted as such. My own highly circumstantial account of how my marriage to Mary Poppins, in the Sixties, broke down- because my work as a secret agent with a license to kill brought me into too close a proximity to Arsulla Undress- was destroyed by my wife who refused to concede that it was an important historical document.
This means that, strictly speaking, nonfiction can be false but remain ‘nonfiction’ as long as we think it’s true.
No. Darwin's 'Origins' is non-fiction even to people who think God created the world on October 23, 4004 BC
Furthermore, to say that ‘nonfiction’ tracks ‘truth’ is
to show you studied and teach worthless shite. Nozick's 'truth tracking' is about beliefs but whether a thing is x or non-x is not a function of belief though, no doubt, one could have beliefs about the matter. What this cretin means is 'beliefs regarding the fictional or non-fictional status of a text may be determined by what is known to be true. Discovering a character or event is wholly imaginary in what otherwise appears a non-fictional account, may cause us to believe it is fictional. However, there may be a stipulation that the character or event has been added for purposes of exposition or as a placeholder for some as yet unknown person or event whose existence we have good reason to suspect. Here, we may say that there is a 'working hypothesis' which relies more on our imaginative and ratiocinative power than incontrovertible evidence.
misleading because we don’t have an unconditional and overarching interest in truth per se
we may do.
that grounds our protectiveness over what gets called ‘nonfiction’.
There is no such 'protectiveness'. It is a different matter that greater latitude may be granted to works which claim to be wholly fictitious or, indeed, fantastic. Thus, Sir Salman Rushdie could claim that 'Satanic Verses' had nothing to do with the Prophet Muhammad. It was actually about some other dude entirely. Sadly, the Ayatollahs were not convinced.
In ‘The Disinterested Search for Truth’ (1988), Jane Heal shows – convincingly, in my opinion – that one’s seeming pursuit of truth can always be better described
by smart peeps, not people who study or teach shit. Nobody 'pursues truth'. They may pursue, in some narrow domain, admissible facts about the case or structural causal models which fit available evidence or have predictive value.
as a project that does not involve mention of truth. That is, ‘truth by itself has no motivating power at all.’
Nonsense! Truth is a word like Beauty or Justice. We have a higher opinion of those who pursue them than we do of people who bark loudly and run after cars or lorries in the hope of biting or eating them.
We don’t say true things just because they’re true. There are always other considerations.
Not if we are required by law, or a code of professional conduct, to disclose everything relevant which is true.
Kim began her essay by referring to a children's book by Linda Coombs about how White settlers disrupted the life of indigenous people. An attempt was made to shift it to the fiction section though it wasn't fiction. It may have been wholly wrong, but it wasn't a nice adventure story which kids might actually want to read.
They targeted a book whose claim to truth practically interfered with their understandings of themselves and the country
They failed. They were welcome to challenge the book on factual grounds or simply suggest that the author was a transgender Lesbian who practiced Wicca, supported ISIS, and denied the Divinity of Christ, not to mention the Super Awesomeness of the Donald.
When I was a newcomer to philosophy
but already too stupid to study anything worthwhile
and enamoured with
getting a Credential in stupid shit.
the kind of questions it asked, I thought I was after the Truth – with a capital ‘T’ – and went to grad school in philosophy because I wanted to know what’s True and what’s Really Real. But a single question from a friend dissolved that illusion: do you care about how many stars there are in the Universe right now?
Astro-physicists do care. Their estimate of the total mass of the stars (which involves estimating the number and type of stars) points to gaps in the Standard Model to do with things like Dark Matter & Negative Time or stuff weirder yet.
I had to admit that I didn’t care, and that alone was enough to show me that perhaps I’m not committed to the True in itself.
Because you committed to studying useless nonsense. Truth is an 'intension'. Its extension is different in different cases. This is the case for any epistemic intension. What this silly bint is indulging in is a cascade of intensional fallacies.
If truth were valuable ‘in itself’,
The truth of any particular thing is the set of its interactions. If that set is empty, that is interesting in itself. If it isn't, then it is a data point of interest to relevant Structural Causal Models. For categorical theories, Yoneda lemma can be thought of as saying that knowing all the interactions of a things is to know everything about it. However, because of entanglement or epistemic impredicativity, this may mean knowing everything about everything.
then any truth, merely by virtue of being true, would be worth knowing
If there was even one thing which was true 'in itself', and we knew what it was we would have a punctum Archemides. We would probably also have a Godelian 'absolute proof'. Indeed, even finding a natural proof would be a great advance.
– but this clearly isn’t the case: for instance, someone who keeps a meticulous daily record of the number of cars parked in the nearest lot with no use for the knowledge would strike us as odd.
You say odd, I say autistic but the truth is a hobby is just a hobby. Perhaps it arises from 'funktionzlust'- i.e. the pleasure in exercising a faculty one is endowed with though no present benefit flows from it.
So, that something is true doesn’t justify our interest or commitment.
We don't know of anything which is necessarily true. If some such beastie were ever found, every branch of science would be affected.
Instead, we care about truths that inform specific enquiries or projects.
No. We have a reason to care but may have a superior reason not to.
What grounds the nonfiction/fiction distinction is
is the distinction between what is imagined and what is observed
not that the former is based on truth or facticity per se,
the Imagination may be based on what is.
but that the former contributes to how we see the world insofar as it organises the kinds of truths that we care enough about to read and write about.
World is very mean. It is incessantly organizing truths such that peeps think I'm stupid because I studied useless shite.
The Montgomery County Commission
wants to please voters
didn’t initiate a systematic audit of all nonfiction books that might include false or misleading information.
More worryingly, it didn't cut off its own dick even though dicks cause RAPE!
Rather, they targeted a book whose claim to truth practically interfered with their understandings of themselves and the country.
Fuck that! They just didn't want their kids to be brainwashed into demanding the de-colonization of 'Turtle Island' and the expulsion of all those of European or African or Asian descent.
Our thoughts about reality and our thoughts about fiction go hand in hand.
They could go hand in hand with anything they like. Mine prefer to dance cheek to cheek.
Of course, sometimes we care about fiction because it lets us entertain a world that is different from ours.
We can entertain it with cocktails and dancing cheek to cheek.
But even when it is fiction’s departure from the real world that makes it worthwhile, the departure is measured against the background of the real world.
Nope. Fiction is measured against other fiction.
In fact, not only the content of fiction – what we’re able or willing to call ‘fiction’ – but also the nature of fiction – what fiction is – depends on how we think about the real world.
No. We may think the real world is the fart of an intergalactic giraffe but this doesn't change how the Library of Congress decides whether a book is fiction or non-fiction.
A comparative study of the way ‘fiction’ as a concept develops across cultures shows that,
cultures differ. But they differ less than those who do 'comparative studies' would have us believe.
whenever a group of people think of reality differently,
they don't really.
the nature and function of fiction is understood differently as well. We can observe this by contrasting analytic philosophy of fiction
which is shit
with classical Chinese conceptions of fiction.
which is the same as ours.
In early 20th-century analytic philosophy, fiction crops up as a test case for general theories for meaning, reference and existence.
All of which were shit.
Theories that explain how names refer, or whether ‘existence’ and ‘being’ are the same, had to contend with fictional characters that seemed, in the words of Amie Thomasson, like ‘odd, freakish entities, quite unlike common or garden objects’.
No such objects existed- at least none which could become the basis of an 'atomic proposition'.
Note, for example, that Alexius Meinong’s separation in 1904 of ‘being’ and ‘existence’ explains how Pegasus is a nonexistent object,
though Parmenides said they weren't. Everything exists but only some things take the predicate 'imaginary' while many others can't take the predicate 'takes the predicate '
and that Gottlob Frege’s distinction in 1892 between ‘sense’ and ‘reference’
was a distinction with a difference. There is a sense in which a word refers to something and everything which makes sense refers to something cognizable. Sadly, that sense was 'naive' and based on unrestricted comprehension. In other words, the thing was childish.
explains why fictional names seem meaningful even though they’re empty of referent; the name ‘Odysseus’ lacks reference (there is no object in the world that the name refers to)
Nonsense! Boris Johnson has a son with that name. That's why there has to be 'disambiguation'. As for whether there was a historical Odysseus, that is a matter for scholars.
but it has sense (a mode of presentation, a way of being understood).
What is the sense of X Æ A-12? It gained one when Musk gave his son that name though, to comply with California law it had to be changed to X Æ A-Xii.
The trend
of talking stupid bollocks
has continued into the 21st century, and nearly all attempts to define ‘fiction’
are a waste of fucking time
involve tools developed from metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind.
but those 'tools' are shit.
For example, Richard Ohmann appeals to speech act theory to define fiction as discourse that pretends to assert;
Uncle Tom's Cabin is fiction and it asserts a great deal. There is no pretence about it.
David Lewis applies the possible world framework to fiction;
Though fiction often deals with incompossible worlds.
Kendall Walton utilises notions of imagination and make-believe to claim fictions are ‘props’ that prescribe certain imaginings;
to whom? Only those who already wanted them.
Gregory Currie and Kathleen Stock appeal to intention and imagination, arguing that fiction is a product of a fiction-maker’s intention for the audience to imagine its content.
But fiction, like mine, is written even by those who know they won't have any fucking audience.
(The exception is Stacie Friend who appeals to the concept of genre to explain what fiction is.
Why not appeal to the concept of a fart to explain what assholes are?
It’s interesting to note that the only account that doesn’t draw from ‘core’ areas of philosophy is the one that also denies fiction having any essential or necessary characteristics.)
Nothing we know off has either. Thus it is not interesting at all to note this stupid shit.
What the methodological trend shows is that the way analytic philosophers have been trying to understand fiction has closely relied on
stupid shit spouted by utterly useless shitheads
the way we understand existence, language, modality and meaning.
These cunts don't understand shit.
We extend theories developed in metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind to try to understand fiction and fictional entities.
you can't use shit to understand shit- save in a shitty sense.
Why are we tempted to investigate the ontological status of fictional characters?
Because that is a better temptation to yield to than eating your own shit. But only marginally.
It’s because we’re convinced that, whatever they are, they are not like us; they don’t exist in the same way we do.
This is also true of an Eiffel Tower constructed entirely out of your own shit.
We want to know whether their names function like our names
they do
because fictional names seem to pick out something that’s not like objects, places and people in the real world.
Realistic fiction is realistic. Objects and places and people in realistic fiction may seem more real than in non-fiction.
Analytic philosophy came to ask the questions it asks because it inherited the ancient Greek idea that some things are less ‘real’ than others.
Nonsense! It inherited the nominalism of Aristotle. Universals aren't real at all.
In Anglo-European philosophy, ‘fiction’ is closely connected to what’s imagined – that is, what isn’t taken to be real –
an imagined thing may be real. Equally the account of a law suit featuring John Doe & Richard Roe requires us to take the parties to the suit to be real.
because the tradition inherited the appearance/reality distinction from Plato.
Who inherited it from the first humans who learnt to talk.
Fiction occupies the ‘appearance’ side of things,
it may concern itself wholly with things which can't appear- e.g. a dialogue between the Spirit of Beauty and the Spirit of Justice.
whereas nonfiction occupies the ‘reality’ side.
Books about UFOs or Ghosts or Poltergeists or shape shifting lizard creatures from Planet X are still non-fiction.
Platonic metaphysics is concerned with unchanging Being, and knowledge pertains only to what’s timelessly true and therefore knowable in a reliable fashion.
For Plato, the 'Forms' or Universals are really real. What exists is but as a pale shadow of the Forms which alone are truly real.
In Book X of Plato’s Republic, artists and storytelling poets are criticised for creating misleading copies of the physical world, which is already an imperfect copy of the Forms.
Socrates did try his hand at poetry. His acolytes don't seem to have thought it worth preserving. Still, the point here is that Plato's books were more imperfect than Socrates's stupid shite from the point of view of 'mimesis'. But they may have been better from the point of view of 'methexis' or 'participation' in the ideal Form of that stupid shite.
In Poetics, Aristotle argues that humans possess a natural inclination to imitate nature.
Aristotle often imitated potted plants. What he didn't understand is that people have a strong mimetic drive to imitate those smarter or more successful than themselves. If guys 'imitating nature' are making good money, that's what everybody tries to do till the fashion changes.
Mimesis, or imitation, is at the heart of the Anglo-European understanding of the representational arts, including fiction
Nonsense! Verisimilitude is what we look for. It isn't the case that the best painting of a dog was made by a guy who spent a lot of time barking and biting and chasing his own tail.
– and, as a result, concepts that help to adjudicate the relationship between the copy and the real
those concepts are known to guys who authenticate art works. They have nothing to do with
(pretence, imagination and make-believe)
which aren't about copying but parodying or having fun with
become the foundational concepts in analytic philosophy of fiction.
Because shit is a good foundation for shit.
In cultures that don’t take on board a strong reality/appearance distinction,
all do. This is why there is no country in the world which accepts that I am Beyonce. My imitating her twerking, evidently, is not enough. I'd need to look beautiful like her and have great talent.
however, ‘fiction’ isn’t understood alongside ‘pretence’ and ‘imagination’ in contrast to ‘the real’.
It is understood in terms of imagination. It may or may not feature pretence.
Just like their ancient Greek counterparts, Chinese metaphysicians sought to understand what the world is like and what explains the way the world is.
Though that Grail is only attained when the Quest for it is abandoned.
But while the ancient Greeks posited an unchanging ultimate reality that transcends mere phenomena,
not Heraclitus.
the ancient Chinese believed that what is ultimate is immanent in the world, and that the Dao (道), the source of all things in the world, is itself constantly changing. This change-forward metaphysics led to a theory of fiction that didn’t contrast fiction against a stable, ‘real’ counterpart.
For Parmenides anything which can be thought or spoken of must be. One can find anything in Greek thought also in Chinese or Indian thought.
Recall how Plato relies on the appearance vs reality distinction to argue that what’s ‘really real’ (the unchanging Forms) are beyond our sense perceptions.
Which is why, though we sense he is talking bollocks, what he is really saying is not accessible to us. But it does participate in the Form of Nonsense.
Humans were meant to use the intellect, and not their senses, since sense data mislead us,
stuff like the Earth appearing flat or the Sun appearing to circle around it.
while philosophising gives us a chance to grasp what’s beyond phenomena. In contrast, Chinese metaphysicians didn’t think ultimate reality is unchanging.
They didn't think anything was ultimate or penultimate
Instead, the dominant view was that reality, including nature, follows consistent patterns (the Dao).
Which is like Indo-Iranian Rta or Greek Logos.
What is ‘empty’ or ‘unreal’ was seen as the generator of all things,
In Hesiod's Theogony it is Chaos. Out of Nothingness or Formlessness or Chaos comes Substance and Form and Order.
and all things were considered equal in significance since they are all manifestations of changing patterns.
Nonsense! Some manifestations are significant- e.g. when a dude draws a sword and tries to chop your head off- while others are not- e.g. when a dude passes you on the street whistling a merry tune. The Chinese weren't stupid. This is because they were denied education in anal-tickle philosophy probably on the grounds of race.
The Chinese word for ‘fiction’ (xiaoshuo, 小說) literally means ‘small talk’ or ‘small sayings’.
Because kids are small and Mummy tells them bed-time stories. But, some such stories are illuminating and may profitably be included in a work dealing with serious matters.
Chinese literary culture had a rigid hierarchy of discourses,
All literary culture had such a hierarchy with Revealed Scripture at the top. This may incorporate ancient poetry and the proclamations of Kings and Law-givers. The Confucian Analects were initially seen as a commentary on the Five Classics before themselves gaining canonical status. Something similar happened elsewhere.
with Confucian classics and official histories at the top of the pyramid, while imaginative narrative texts like xiaoshuo were placed at the bottom.
More particularly if they were written in a demotic style and appealed to children or wore the guise of story-telling for the purpose of entertainment. But this is the case everywhere.
However, it would be misleading to say that xiaoshuo was denigrated because it was imaginative, whereas philosophical texts and histories were elevated because they were ‘real’.
People think the Bible is higher than a Spiderman comic even if they don't believe Moses had super-powers. What differentiates them is that comic books seek to entertain, not instruct.
Since Chinese metaphysics didn’t posit a fixed, transcendent reality, reality was understood to be an ever-changing process, and so the categories themselves couldn’t be based on inherent, necessary or fixed essences
which don't exist. Anal-tickle philosophy pretends otherwise even though, with the appearance of non-Euclidean geometries, the scandal that no 'necessary' truths are identifiable was obvious by about 1870.
but on functions and behavioural tendencies. The difference between discourses labelled ‘xiaoshuo’ and ‘great learning’ (Confucian classics and histories) wasn’t that one is unreal or imagined while the other is real.
This is also true of Plato's oeuvre compared to the Bible or the Quran- at least for some Christian and Muslim theologians.
All discourse was understood as an account of the world, and the difference between ‘small talk’ and ‘great learning’ was the extent to which it was adopted to organise how people lived.
Which is why the US Constitution is considered to be more important than a Spiderman comic.
Xiaoshuo wasn’t understood in contrast to reality,
Yes it was. People didn't really think that a beautiful woman was actually a fox spirit though foxy chicks we will always have with us.
and it wasn’t metaphysically second class.
Because Physics is first class. Metaphysics is for second class, credential craving, pedants.
It was at the bottom of the discourse hierarchy because its function wasn’t as grand as the classics’.
Entertainment mustn't put on airs for fear of losing custom. If you make a good living doing penis puppetry, don't pretend you are the successor of Martin Heidegger even though we all suspect that Heidi only turned to philosophy after failing at penis puppetry.
Discourse that posed trouble for social and political interpretation was considered ‘xiao’ (small)
No. Such discourse was considered worth persecuting. Nobody bothered with the literary equivalent of penis puppetry.
Because the Confucian classics were considered canon, there was little room for textual scholarship in philosophy (beyond commenting).
Nonsense! The Chinese imported Buddhism which was plenty philosophical. We have recovered the 'mondadology' of the Avatamsakasutra, or the 'field theory' of the Vimalakirti, from the Chinese. Indeed, the Chinese purged Buddhism of untouchability- which didn't happen in Korea and Japan- precisely because they were more philosophical.
But history had to be continually produced, so history and historiography became the most revered genre, and eventually the paradigm of all culture discourse.
No. Moh Tzu, Shang Yang & Mencius put political philosophy at the top. Sima Quian had inherited the position of Court Historian but was castrated because he backed the wrong political horse. He was able to complete his father's mission to create a comprehensive history only because he wasn't important enough to kill.
Again, a Western-minded explanation for the xiaoshuo/history distinction would appeal to the former being fake or imagined, and the latter being real.
No. The West, following Aristotle, would say Tragedy is more philosophic than History because the former deals with the possible whereas the latter is constrained to the actual. The Chinese, more particularly because of their poetic genius, when celebrating their great writers, generally preferred the legend to dry biographical details. Thus Li Po drowned diving to rescue the Moon though scholars were aware that he probably died of thoracic suppuration or something equally tedious.
But to do so would be to attribute inappropriate metaphysical commitments to the Chinese framework.
Metaphysical commitments don't fucking exist. Anal-tickle philosophy just made that shite up.
Besides, the xiaoshuo/imaginary, history/actual, pairings aren’t exemplified in the categorised works themselves.
Sure they are. Along with alethic genealogical information, we are given charming, but obviously fantastic, anecdotes e.g. that the very tall and studious Lu Zhi fathered a son on a comely female ghost.
Early forms of fiction included reports of what occurred, and official histories made room for invention and fabrication. Instead, I believe that xiaoshuo’s separation from history and historiography, and the resulting denigration, had to do with xiaoshuo material’s interpretive difficulties rather than the fact that fabrication was involved.
Nobody has metaphysical commitments or interpretive difficulties or suffers post traumatic stress disorder because of incessant epistemic self-abuse- which is all Anal-tickle philosophy actually is.
Xiaoshuo’s weakness wasn’t tied to its being imagined or untrue, but to it being ‘unsuitable’ as a vehicle for meaning.
The weakness of what is entertaining is that if it finds no market it has no meaning. Credential craving or mindlessly bureaucratic turds have to pretend that they are doing something very serious and important.
History was prioritised as a literary genre
because it fed patriotism and implanted a horror of the evil effects of foreign invasion, civil war, corruption at Court etc. What is unique about China is that the literary culture of an aristocratic governing caste gained currency among merchants who found it worthwhile in investing in Confucian scholarship so at least one son from the clan might get an official position by passing the Imperial exams. This meant that China was united not by Religion, as had happened in India, but by a political philosophy of a synoecist type.
not because it talked about true things, but because it provided the stable basis for literary activity,
Religion does that for Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam or Christianity. China's uniqueness is that the spirit of Moh Tzu pervades its political philosophy even against the Confucian grain.
a continual process of meaning-making through writing, reading and interpreting.
Which is also what auditors do for all Companies listed on the Stock Exchange.
And history was interpretable, and therefore a suitable means for signification, because the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ posited that the unfolding of events reflected the ruler’s political legitimacy (or lack thereof).
Actually, that Mandate was linked to periodic droughts and floods which were predictable enough. The State had taken on food distribution and famine relief work across a vast area by the Second Century BC. But corruption and factionalism could cause state capacity to fall. Equally, at times, there were localized Malthusian food availability deficits on too large a scale to be remedied. The advantage of the 'Mandate of Heaven' theory was that if State failure and a circulation of elites was inevitable, then one might as well legitimize the Imperium of whoever emerged from a period of crisis as the winner who takes all. This was more particularly the case when the ancient Aristocracy was able to reproduce itself within the Mandarin class.
But xiaoshuo didn’t have such interpretive weight because much of its early examples were report-like narratives that involved the supernatural (ghosts, abnormalities, miracles, etc). It’s interesting to note that while categorised as xiaoshuo, these ‘records of the strange’ (zhiguai) were considered ‘leftover history’,
No. The term originates in the inner chapters of the Zhuangzi. Taoism was the indigenous, scholarly, syncretic, religion which was uniting local cults and thus serving at a 'grass-roots' level, a similar National purpose to Confucianism. Meanwhile, there was an official historiography as exemplified by Sima Qian.
understood not as fabricated stories but as an offshoot of historical writing that was worth preserving due to their contribution to knowledge but not suitable for inclusion in official history given its weirdness.
No. There was an official historiography which, for prudential reasons, steered clear of religion. After all, Taoists and Buddhists and votaries of the Imperial cultus could clash. A rebellion might be Taoist. The Confucian bureaucracy may turn against the Buddhist monasteries. There were great political perils which the historian would be prudent to stay away from. Better be considered dull than end up being castrated or beheaded because you are seen as politically partisan.
So, my suggestion is that discourse that posed trouble for meaningful social and political interpretation was considered insignificant, therefore ‘xiao’ (small).
This is silly. A fairy tale about a wicked King who raises taxes and thus is cursed by a wizard to turn into a frog has a very meaningful social and political interpretation. But such a tale would not be considered a great literary classic. It is the type of thing kids and the common folk might relish but, because they themselves were frightened of ghosts who spied on them (Moh Tzu said this is what kept the peasants honest) and because they thought that powerful wizards were likely to be employed by the Emperor, their impulse to rebel was effectively crushed.
Scholars were unsure what, if anything, we can take as a larger message from these reports, therefore they were separated from history.
No. Chinese scholars weren't stupid. Moreover, they lived in China. They knew there were Shamans and Toaists and Buddhist and Nestorian monks wandering around who claimed all sorts of super-natural powers. Even if they themselves believed that shite, it was in their class interest to write in a manner which suggested otherwise.
The important consideration wasn’t that they weren’t real; it was just that their points were unclear.
They were abundantly clear. If some people have super-natural powers, it is they you need to placate. Sucking up to the boss or praising the Emperor won't help you. The safer course was to say one thing and do another.
The distinction between xiaoshuo and history wasn’t about inviting imagination but about whether the discourse belonged to a stable, communal interpretive framework.
Toaism and Buddhism and Nestorianism and other indigenous traditions were 'communal interpretive frameworks'. Genghis Khan and his people certainly had one. Under their High God, Tengri, they created a vast Eurasian Empire.
Since there is no unchanging reality that fiction is contrasted to, xiaoshuo doesn’t invite mimesis as an operative concept.
Yet most of it is imitative. Fiction, always and everywhere, is about seeing what sells in the market and producing a similar product. Greater verisimilitude can give an author a competitive edge. Thus Cervantes's Don Quixote sold better than other novels of chivalry. Interestingly, it also propounds the laissez faire doctrine of the Salamanca School.
And since fiction isn’t assumed to be a copy of reality, there is no theoretical apparatus aimed to clearly distinguish what’s real from what’s fictional.
Yes there is. The roman-à-clef or other allegorical work is deciphered by a 'theoretical apparatus' known as 'literary scholarship'. Consider Swift's 'Tale of a Tub'. Almost immediately 'keys' to it were supplied by Edmund Curll- a book-seller- but, the truth is, Swift's readership, then and now, didn't greatly care who or what was being satirised.
To understand the importance of how a culture’s metaphysical commitments affect its view of fiction, imagine how two different communities might come to create a wooden duck.
Guys creating wooden ducks are called wood whittlers. They have no metaphysical commitments. They just like whittling wood. If they make some money by it, well and good.
A community that hunts ducks
because they are metaphysically committed to killing the Donald- who has a duck incarnation.
will use the wooden duck as a decoy that lures real ducks to a particular location.
Actually, an elaborate duck decoy can be constructed. Tame ducks are used to lure wild ones. A dog is used to ensure the wild ducks enter the trap set for them. This way, their flesh is free of shotgun pellets and thus commands a higher price. The metaphysical commitment underlying this is the desire to earn money by selling delicious duck meat for a higher price.
For them, the wooden duck’s ‘point’ is determined in response to its similarities and differences to a real duck: it must be similar enough to trick other ducks into thinking it’s a real duck, but it must be different enough for humans to know not to shoot it.
This is the main reason wooden ducks are not endowed with life by their creators. Also there is the risk that the wooden duck might fuck real ducks with the result that future generations of duck will become unpalatable by reason of having turned to cardboard. I may mention, anal-tickle philosophers make a metaphysical commitment not to fuck ducks lest they get splinters in their dicks or vaginas or assholes. Never say getting a PhD in that shite is a waste of money.
Its nature is understood in relation to a ‘real’ organic duck; a wooden duck is a mere decoy since it contrasts with the living version. The point of asking about the nature of the duck is to ask what one is meant to do with the object.
The point of saying shit like this is to prove you are a fucking shithead. Still, it is a good thing that Kim has been taught to ask about the nature of the Tesla Cybertruck. Once she learns it is a motor vehicle which you are meant to drive, she will cease thinking it a suppository which she must cram up her rectum. This sort of metaphysical commitment on her part will be appreciated by owners of Cybertrucks around the world.
Now, contrast the hunting community with another community that approaches the wooden duck as an aesthetic object.
It is possible to do both. We might say this wooden duck is so well made that it would be a shame to use it in the ordinary way. Let us rather make it an object of display. Consider the master decoy carver, A.E Crowell. Two of his pieced have sold recently for over a million dollars. Interestingly, he himself favoured live decoys but some change in the law forced him into the decoy carving business.
The wooden duck’s ‘point’ is determined in relation to the shape and colour that constitute the duck,
Actually, black is better. I suppose amateur duck hunters will pay for something pretty because their primary purpose is not to turn a profit on duck flesh or feathers.
and different views might form depending on their reactions to the duck: it must be beautiful, or interesting, or compelling in some way to merit attention. Whatever we say about the object’s nature responds mostly to how people understand and react to the duck, and not some independent standard against which the duck might be compared.
Fuck off! Decoy ducks are about making money or getting nice duck flesh to feast on. This is economics not meta-fucking-physics.
So here, too, asking about the wooden duck’s nature presupposes,
the asker is either mentally fucking retarded or studied anal-tickle philosophy at Grad Skool.
or at least develops in tandem with, what we’re meant to do with the object.
Don't shove it up your bum. That's all we ask of you. Make a metaphysical commitment in this regard and we will concede that your expensive education wasn't wholly wasted.
What the wooden ducks show is that the kinds of questions we ask of the same object (or concept) can differ depending on the background practices and commitments that we bring to it.
For example, asking how far up the rectum the thing should be shoved is predicated on background practices and commitments to Queer Theory. Much much more research needs to be done to illumine the manner in which shoving things up your Vagina, or 'prison purse', impacts metaphysical commitments of a Feminist kind.
Each culture’s understanding of fiction arises from their pre-existing commitments about what the world is like.
None are. That's why fiction moves easily across borders whereas historiography or political theory does not. Everybody now knows the story of Mulan. Few have heard of Moh Tzu. The Indian Hitopadesha, or the Arabian 'Thousand and one Nights' had wide currency because everybody likes fables and adventure stories. They were relished by people of all nations who had no truck with Manu-smriti or the Sahih Bukhari.
‘Fiction’ is difficult to define
Why define it? It is a 'Tarskian primitive'. For any practical purpose, there is a buck-stopped, juristic or administrative procedure to determine what is or isn't fiction.
because fiction is not a standalone concept with its own intrinsic properties, but a concept that responds to a given metaphysical system.
Fuck off! Nobody has a 'metaphysical system' though some do have a lot of shit in their brain.
Comparing Anglo-European and Chinese thoughts on fiction show how metaphysical assumptions affect the way we theorise fiction.
It shows the reverse. Once Chinese fiction became available to Europeans, they lapped the thing up. Goethe's remark on Universal Literature was motivated by his reading of a Chinese novel. He realized that the Chinese had plenty of such things. But the Chinese and Mongolians and so forth lapped up Western fiction. Apparently, by about 1896, Sherlock Holmes stories were translated into Chinese almost immediately after they appeared in the Strand magazine. Why? They sold well and soon had indigenous imitators. But then, Ernst Bramah's 'wallet of Kai-lung' came out in 1900.
Metaphysics begins from our observations about the world
No. Metaphysics is what is beyond physics and therefore outside the scope of observation.
and is sustained by the desire to make sense of the world.
Or the desire to talk nonsense.
The metaphysical concepts we devise in turn affect the way we represent the world,
only if that is our intention- i.e. we want to write a metaphysical novel, like Sartre's Nausea.
so it is no surprise that fiction develops in response to the metaphysical frameworks we begin with.
Some fiction may do so but it tends to be shit. Everybody likes Robinson Crusoe. Nobody, not even Sufis, likes Hayy ibn Yaqzan.
There isn’t a single definition of ‘fiction’ that can be applied transculturally
Yes there is. It is that relied upon by a court under the doctrine of the comity of nations. However, this is a justiciable matter.
Fiction is part of a rich and varied cultural practice, so theorising fiction ought to be
done by people who aren't as stupid as shit
sensitive not only to the metaphysical frameworks, but also to the sociohistorical frameworks in which fiction is conceived, produced and consumed.
Readers are already sensitive to such things- if they like the work in question.
But perhaps more importantly, being clear-eyed about the dependent, contextual and even reactive development of fiction allows our philosophising about the nature of fiction to be conducted from a more informed place that is aware of why we ask the questions we ask.
Sadly, even if a shithead is transported to an 'informed place', they will still babble stupid shit.
We can be clearer on what the stakes are in our fiction theorising, and this in part lets us see how fiction can – and has been – put to work in theory and practice.
Why work so hard to see what anybody wot didn't go to Collidge can see well enough?
The Montgomery County Commission’s attention was on works whose content challenged their favourable picture of American history.
A 'citizens committee' ordered a book to be placed in the fiction section of the children's library. The County Commission reversed this because of a national outcry. I suppose, now the Donald is back in power, that reversal may itself be reversed.
Attempting to recategorise a book from ‘nonfiction’ to ‘fiction’ on the basis of its unwelcome content shows that ‘fiction’ had been used as a practical tool for image management.
It shows that it is a completely useless and impractical tool. Kids would prefer to read fiction than non-fiction. Adults are content with internet porn.
Noting the variety of ways in which works of fiction had been put to aesthetic, social, political and moral uses shows that the Texan committee’s use of fiction is more blatant than usual, but not extraordinary.
It shows the reverse. Texan library book banning, however, is effective and has already had a chilling effect on publishers. That is why my YA graphic novel describing the imaginative manner in which Anne Frank used Hitler as an anal dildo while vigorously fisting herself was rejected by the OUP.
Current and historical practices, and the theories that propped them up,
did not and do not exist. There is merely what sells and what fails to sell.
point towards the conclusion that there is no universal concept of fiction.
Also, there is no universal concept of a vagina. Who is to say that men don't have plenty of such orifices? It is unfair to exclude them from female athletic competitions. Also, I should be allowed to enter the Miss Teen Tamil Nadu Beauty pageant.
It might be true that all human cultures tell inventive stories, but that isn’t enough to claim that there is a single definition of ‘fiction’ that can be applied transculturally.
Anyone at all can make any sort of claim. I might say Kim does not have sufficient reasons to make the claim given above but everybody would tell me to shut up. Why argue with a fucking cretin? Be glad she isn't trying to cram Cybertrucks up her fanny.
‘Fiction’ is necessarily a thick term insofar as it presupposes some metaphysical framework that separates fiction from other genres of writing.
It doesn't. It is a Shelling focal solution to a coordination or discoordination game- i.e. the thing is utilitarian, not metaphysical. I suppose, nutters like Kim think that when I ask the bar tender the way to the Gents, I have committed to a metaphysical framework which has inflicted epistemic violence on Women, Transgender people and Socially Excluded and Tribal populations who reject the false binary of gender by sporting multiple penises and vaginas on their person. Hopefully, the Donald, in his second term, will kill off this stupid academic availability cascade.
So, instead of asking how fiction might be defined (ahistorically, logically), we should ask what work we want fiction to do.
Also we should ask ourselves what work we want the door and the window to do. After that, we can discuss the floor and the ceiling.
Our questions about fiction come from identifiable metaphysical starting points.
Which only partly explains why those questions were as stupid as shit. Still, telling the roof you want it to work harder at keeping rain out of the house does have a salutary effect.
If we find ourselves continuing to crave a definition of fiction,
We might be better off becoming a bona fide drug addict. This is because there are highly effective Rehab techniques.
we should also ask what need it will meet: what theory of fiction do we require to solve current problems?
Very true. What theory of fiction does Zelensky need to solve the big problem currently facing the Ukrainian people?
In 21st-century Anglophone media, invoking fiction allows speakers to dismiss claims without incurring social cost.
Very true. Many serial killers have been acquitted by Courts simply because they said the prosecutor was actually a skilled writer of fiction. Indeed, no big company has had to pay punitive damages for pollution because, in order to be exonerated of all charges, they just had to say 'the case against us is fiction. It was penned in its entirety by Jane Austen. She did not have a dick. Ergo, she was as stupid as shit.'
To get ahead of potential defamation lawsuits, movies and TV shows remind their viewers of the fictional status of the work
This is not a sufficient defence in law.
but, outside of those contexts, fiction is often invoked to mean something like ‘hearsay’, ie, a claim that cannot be substantiated and therefore ought to be dismissed.
Fictio in Latin means 'invented statement'. But there are 'legal fictions'. The Court may deem an event to have occurred or they may 'read in' a clause into a contract such that, though the thing is invented, it is nevertheless deemed to be alethic.
If we’re asking about the nature of fiction, then we should do so with an eye towards producing an understanding of fiction that wouldn’t allow bad actors to lie and successfully evade punishment by insisting they were ‘only making fiction’, or dismiss unfavourable claims as ‘fiction’ as if they can be the final arbiter, or as if fiction can be peddled as fact without ramifications.
Courts already do that. Anal-tickle philosophy comes late to the party. I have a theory that Shaw's 'unsocial Socialist'- a work of fiction- implanted in the shitty brain of Bertrand Russell's elder brother the notion that an American divorce held good in the UK. It didn't and so the Second Earl was sent to jail for three months.
One of the most interesting – and promising – features of fiction is that it creates a space between the ‘true’ and the ‘false’, between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’.
Not to mention a space between the fist up Anne Frank's fanny and Hitler, whom she is using as an anal dildo so as to challenge the metaphysical commitments of the Third Reich. Had Kamala won, I bet my children's book on the subject would have been compulsory reading in Public Schools by Executive order.
Good fiction tends to destabilise such dichotomous ways of approaching the world through thoughtful content, innovative form, or self-referentiality.
Nope. What destabilises 'dichotomous' shite (e.g. banging on about fiction as opposed to non-fiction) is the fact that though initially only done by stupid and useless people, the field is soon invaded by crazy nutters who insist that no progress in overturning Patriarchy and Neo-liberalism can be made till private schools are banned and every five year old is required, by the Public School she attends, to give a detailed account of the various techniques used by Anne Frank in pleasuring herself with Hilter as an anal dildo,
Is there some special work we can expect of fiction, such that we can rethink its nature and function towards that end?
Fiction should engage in a wide-ranging colloquy with Kim so as to undermine her metaphysical commitment to shoving Cybertrucks up her fanny. I fully expect my own fiction to have that effect on her. Sadly, there is no feasible method of getting her, or anybody else, to read my novels.
The fiction/nonfiction distinction is one worth keeping,
up your fanny because that gives you an excuse not to stuff Cybertrucks up there
and philosophers of fiction continue to have their work cut out for themselves.
This is not nice work even if you can get tenure for it. It is stupid and useless. Meanwhile, the Chinese ensure their kids study STEM subjects at Uni. That's why they will eat our lunch- unless the Donald can turn things around.
