Truth in Fiction

Fictional stories aren't true, that's obvious. However, when we read a fictional story we normally accept that what we are told is "true" in the context of the story. This is sometimes called a "suspension of disbelief" - despite knowing that claimed facts are really false, we accept them as "true" within the story itself. Occasionally, though, we encounter claims that we refuse to accept as "true" even in the story. Why?

Lewis Powell points to a page by Brian Weatherson outlining some interesting puzzles that explore this issue. Consider this one:

Death on a Freeway
Jack and Jill were arguing again. This was not in itself unusual, but this time they were standing in the fast lane of I-95 having their argument. This was causing traffic to bank up a bit. It wasn’t significantly worse than normally happened around Providence, not that you could have told that from the reactions of passing motorists. They were convinced that Jack and Jill, and not the volume of traffic, were the primary causes of the slowdown. They all forgot how bad traffic normally is along there. When Craig saw that the cause of the backup had been Jack and Jill, he took his gun out of the glovebox and shot them. People then started driving over their bodies, and while the new speed hump caused some people to slow down a bit, mostly traffic returned to its normal speed. So Craig did the right thing, because Jack and Jill should have taken their argument somewhere else where they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way.

As you read the story, you accept as "true" many claims: that there was a Jack, there was a Jill, and they were arguing. You know that no such thing happened, but you accept it anyway. You even accept that they were arguing in the middle of a busy freeway - which is strange, because while the first claims are at least plausible (somewhere there must be a Jack and Jill arguing about something), this one isn't very credible. Still, in the context of the story, you accept it anyway.

But did you accept the final claim that Craig "did the right thing" in shooting Jack and Jill? That it was right because "Jack and Jill should have taken their argument somewhere else where they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way"? Probably not. Most people don't, and that's the curious puzzle here: why would people accept all the other "truths" they know to be false but not this one? It doesn't seem to be simply because it is a moral claim because Weatherson offers other examples of "truths" that people simply won't accept and which aren't related to morality.

One could argue that people refuse to "suspend disbelief" when it comes to things that are outrageously implausible and, as far as we are concerned, so obviously impossible that it isn't worth pretending they are true. This isn't unreasonable because it can be seen all the time when it comes to movies - if the script calls for something truly outrageous, people are pulled out of the narrative and refuse to accept that it makes sense, even within the context of the story.

I'm not sure that this explanation is sufficient, however, because there are all kinds of plot devices which are technically outrageous (time travel, for example) but which are accepted for the sake of a story all the time. Or is that only because similar plot devices have been used often enough that they aren't really outrageous anymore? It might be possible to test for this by seeing if people resist certain "truths" in fiction when they are first introduced and then, after used for a while, taking another look to determine if they have become accepted.

Read More:

• Philosophy 101
• Guide to Ethics and Morality