The Paradox of Fiction

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How is it possible for an individual to get emotional due to characters, events or situations that are non-existent or imaginary? How is it that a fictional character, situation, or story can elicit emotions such as joy, anger, fear, sadness, or tears? The paradox of emotional response to fiction also referred to as the paradox of fiction arises from such questions. Given that, the paradox of fiction is defined as a dilemma in the philosophy that makes enquiries into how individuals express strong emotions to things that do not exist or are not real. It is a debate about the deduction that the emotional reactions elicited by individuals to fictitious characters, situations, or stories are absurd and illogical (Davies, 2009).

The paradox makes use of a group of three premises that appear as factual or convincing on the surface, however, on closer scrutiny becomes contradictory. According to these premises (a), individuals react emotionally to situations, things, or people they know are not real, (b) for an individual to be emotionally touched, they must believe that these situations, things, or people are real, (c) individuals who know characters, things, or occurrence are fictional cannot simultaneously accept them as true or real (Podgorski, 2020). To further explain the aforementioned premises it means that individuals can only express their emotions, be it happiness, pity, fright, tears, envy, anxiety, hate and so on towards things, occurrence, or characters that are present or were present; and therefore, such belief of existence or reality is absent when individuals expressively engage with imaginary contents or characters.

Nonetheless, unreal characters, as well as circumstances, can seem like having the power to evoke or produce deep emotions in people occasionally. The main reason why the three premises are accepted as true by the looks of it until proven otherwise is that they cannot all be correct all at once unless they are taken separately. Therefore, if any two premises, perhaps 2 and 3, are believed to be accurate together, it means the third premise, say 1, must either be untrue or otherwise produce a paradox (Podgorski, 2020).

Different aesthetic or art philosophers have proposed several contradictory solutions to the paradox of fiction which have been categorized into three simple groups, namely the illusion theory, thought theory, and pretend theory. In my view, the two best solutions from the three groups to this problem are as follows: the first is that it is possible for people to be emotional or emotionally charged by things or events that they know to be unreal. The second-best solution is that individuals do not really experience genuine feelings with non-existents characters or objects but instead quasi-feelings that are less intense and that we conceive to be genuine emotions (Davies, 2009).

The first solution is superior to the second because from my point of view we do not react to the fictitious event or character we see or hear but the thought that that fictitious character or event could be true or may have existed or happened in the past or may even exist or happen in future. It is natural and logical for human beings to elicit certain feelings or emotional reactions to thoughts of past, current, or future events. For instance, the thought that a character in a movie or story represents a situation that occurred in the past, or may occur in the future like losing a job, dying of an incurable disease such as cancer and leaving behinds kids who depend on you, getting rich at a young age, winning, or achieving something one has been wishing for; for such a long time or after a long struggle may cause a person to shed tears, be sad, feel pity, happy or envious even with the knowledge that it is fictitious. Therefore this solution answers the problem or question of the paradox fiction.

Moreover, the paradox of fiction can be explained through the triggering of personal experiences. The movie scenes and events which an individual can link to the personal memories evoke the subjective emotional response of a person. For instance, when an individual encounters a scene in a film that relates to their personal experiences their emotions are easily triggered. The emotions enable one to be carried by the fictional events. Psychologists have established that in the chance that stimulus triggers a memory of an individual; the emotional response is least likely to be modulated by surrounding factors. Therefore; they suggest that personal involvement and past experiences are responsible for an emotional reaction towards fiction. The psychologists continue to argue that subjective emotional experience was the primary cause of emotional reaction to psychological arousal. We can thus allude that emotional reactions towards fiction are as a result of personal involvement and action to a large extent as well as other factors which may play a significant role in emotional reaction (Sperduti, 2016).

Furthermore, it is widely known that a genuine emotion only happens when the reaction is towards a real object. Then the question is how we would have genuine emotions to fictional objects, events, and actions. It bits logic that a human being can be attached emotionally to a fictional film. The paradox of fiction can be explained from the daily observations and the human validation that such commitments are inexistent. Fiction for it to happen it has to be created, and these creations are borrowed events but are formulated in such a manner that they drive some information. Fiction is a creation of the society and the daily observations that people make. To a large extent, fiction is intertwined with the daily happenings which suggest, therefore; that it is related to humans. Although fiction is just a reflection of the observations, it is also a borrowed humanity concept (Young, 2010). Thus, it enhances the connections between individual emotional reactions to fiction. This development links humans with fiction and therefore it suggests that emotional reactions are due to the daily observations which the individuals can connect to.

The fiction of paradox has been an issue that has been hotly debated. Fiction is closely connected to emotions and the definition of emotion whether is it real or unreal unravels the topic of fiction. Emotions can be real and unreal depending on the context and the situation. There are two possibilities associated with fiction (a) the emotions can be real if an individual is emotionally connected to the film, (b) the emotions can be situational and out of human weakness which will easily disappear once one returns to his normal senses. The latter is normally determined by cognitive, affectivity, bodily changes, and action tendencies. The former mostly happens when for instance, the film is about a personal experience that one has endured before. Therefore; fiction can be both real and unreal depending on the circumstances that an individual finds themselves in at that point (Tullmann, 2014).

In conclusion, the paradox of fiction is a topic that will be expounded more as years pass. It is evident from the above discussions that both psychology and human emotional studies are yet to establish a common ground. For individuals to react to fiction there are circumstances such as believing in situations and characters, personal experiences that people can relate to, the state of mind of an individual, and human observations influence them to do so. Fiction as well as triggers memories which invoke the subjective emotional responses of individuals.

References

Davies, S. (2009). Responding Emotionally to Fictions. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 67(3), 269–284. DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6245.2009.01358.x

Podgorski, D. (2020, March 26). Why Stories Affect Us (Paradox of Fiction). Retrieved April 11, 2020, from https://thegemsbok.com/art-reviews-and-articles/philosophy-articles-friday-phil-colin-radford-paradox-of-fiction/Sperduti, M., Arcangeli, M., Makowski, D., Wantzen, P., Zalla, T., Lemaire, S., … & Piolino, P. (2016). The paradox of fiction: Emotional response toward fiction and the modulatory role of self-relevance. Acta Psychologica, 165, 53-59.

Tullmann, K., & Buckwalter, W. (2014). Does the paradox of fiction exist?. Erkenntnis, 79(4), 779-796.

Young, G. (2010). Virtually real emotions and the paradox of fiction: Implications for the use of virtual environments in psychological research. Philosophical Psychology, 23(1), 1-21.