The Moral Psychology of Fiction

In thinking about what to do or to be or to have, we sometimes try to decide what it is valuable to do or to be or to have. If we are thoughtful about these decisions, we shall try to think ourselves into a variety of imaginary circumstances, and then to imagine how we and others would flourish in those circumstances, and to glimpse the sorts of experiences we would have, were we to undertake or become or get those things. By imaginatively projecting ourselves into these situations we can undergo moral learning; we can learn something about whether a goal is worth pursuing, for ourselves and for those we care about. Imagination is not a perfect vehicle for such learning. Some things are just plain difficult to imagine, calling on a background of exotic experience many of us don't possess. Worse, it's often hard to know whether you have succeeded in imagining something adequately, and we consequently think we have acquired knowledge through imagining when all we have really acquired is error. Folk tales and psychological theory declare imagination subject to biases which systematically distort outcomes and block the inputting of crucial bits of real world information. When that happens, imagination becomes fantasy; at least that's one way of drawing what is, by anyone's lights, the hazy distinction between imagination and fantasy.

So if we are not careful, and sometimes even when we are, imagination will lead to ignorance or error rather than to moral knowledge. From the point of view of reliability, real experiments rather than thought experiments would be preferable in this area. We would gain more reliable knowledge by simply pursuing a variety of goals and seeing how things turned out as a result. We would also do a great deal of damage to ourselves and to others in the process. Imagination trades reliability for risk; the information it gives us is low grade, but the cost of getting it is minimal.

Perhaps we can increase the quality of that information that imagining gives us by employing external aids, just as levers and pulleys enhance our natural physical capacities. Elsewhere I have argued that fictions are, exactly, guides to the imagination, or, as Kendall Walton has it, props in games of make-believe. They make it easier for us to weave together a pattern of complex imaginings by laying out a narrative; they give us, through the talents of their makers, access to imaginings more complex, inventive and colourful than we could often hope to construct for ourselves; sometimes, by artfully withholding crucial bits of narrative information, they can, like inspired and inspiring sports coaches, bring us to the point where we can make imaginative leaps for ourselves.

All this is, of course, its own justification; we are creatures who, for whatever reason, thrive on mimesis, and fiction in thrives through its efficient delivery of imaginative pleasure. But sometimes what fictions encourage us to imagine can instruct as well as delight; they can guide and encourage the imagination in its attempt to encompass the unfamiliar, keeping vividly before the mind elements of the imagined situation we might otherwise lose or suppress. If things go well with such a project, the result can be moral knowledge: knowledge of how the adoption of a value would affect our flourishing and that of those we care about.