Single Review on past events

Do we gain knowledge from fiction? – An interesting question that philosopher Julia Langkau deals with in her research. In her presentation on “Thought Experiments and Knowledge from Fiction” she gave an account of how thought experiments might help us to explain some of the knowledge we gain from fiction.

“We use thought experiments to give counterexamples to a philosophical theory or to motivate a philosophical theory”. Thought experiments are characterized by a non-actual scenario. Based on that scenario, a question is formulated, followed by an intuitive judgment as answer, as well as an interpretation and evaluation. The intuitive judgment serves as evidence.

It is common sense that we can gain knowledge that is interesting and relevant from fiction – such as from the novel „Emma“ by Jane Austen, 1815. “An account of knowledge from fiction should give us interesting and relevant knowledge, and fiction should be a good source of this knowledge”.

But can we learn from fiction the same way we are thought to learn from thought experiments? “Yes, we can”!, says Julia Langkau. Thinking about the narrative or engaging in interpretative work can lead to a judgment about the fiction and can thereby lead to interesting and relevant knowledge. A fictional text thereby provides the scenario of possible thought experiments.

“Imagine we want to teach somebody what a self-centered and immature person might be like. We ask them to read the book “Emma” and whether they agree with us that Emma has these features. They may judge: Emma is self-centered and immature.

We don't learn what it is to be self-centered and immature by learning an abstract definition. We learn to identify a self-centered and immature person by meeting people that are self-centered and immature. Fiction can sometimes give us better and more complicated (counterfactual) examples than life”.

But: In order to learn from fiction, we have to perform a thought experiment. Fiction only provides the material for counterfactual judgments. Not all fiction provides material, and not everybody who reads fiction performs thought experiments. Sometimes, we need literary scholars to help us perform the thought experiment, and sometimes, performing a thought experiment spoils the fiction.