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Author: Brian Weatherson
Title: Morality, Fiction, and Possibility
Publication Info: Ann Arbor, MI: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library
November 2004
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Source: Morality, Fiction, and Possibility
Brian Weatherson

vol. 4, no. 3, November 2004
Abstract: Authors have a lot of leeway with regard to what they can make true in their story. In general, if the author says that p is true in the fiction we're reading, we believe that p is true in that fiction. And if we're playing along with the fictional game, we imagine that, along with everything else in the story, p is true. But there are exceptions to these general principles. Many authors, most notably Kendall Walton and Tamar Szabó Gendler, have discussed apparent counterexamples when p is "morally deviant". Many other statements that are conceptually impossible also seem to be counterexamples. In this paper I do four things. I survey the range of counterexamples, or at least putative counterexamples, to the principles. Then I look to explanations of the counterexamples. I argue, following Gendler, that the explanation cannot simply be that morally deviant claims are impossible. I argue that the distinctive attitudes we have towards moral propositions cannot explain the counterexamples, since some of the examples don't involve moral concepts. And I put forward a proposed explanation that turns on the role of 'higher-level concepts', concepts that if they are satisfied are satisfied in virtue of more fundamental facts about the world, in fiction, and in imagination.
Keywords:
Kendall Walton
Tamar Szabó Gendler
concepts
fiction
imagination
morality
possibility
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0004.003
PDF: Link to full PDF [352kb ]

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