Bunia 2015

Remigius Bunia
Truth in Fiction
1 Introduction
In the framework of Kendall L. Waltons theory, a newspaper article is, in the
typical case, nonfiction, while a novel is fiction. However, both are made of
words, and both can be understood as prescriptions to imagine. But in fact,
Walton (1990, 58) defines fictionality, and nothing but fictionality, as prescrip-
tion to imagine. Even though a factual proposition might prompt a reader to
imagine something, this is not what he thinks a proposition usually does. When
someone says that planet Earth pivots around the sun, this is not, from his point
of view, to be considered as an invitation to imagine cosmic objects moving
through space. How does he draw the line between fictional prescriptions to
imagine and nonfictional propositions that might provoke some imagination
despite their sheer propositionality?
The answer is that he implicitly assumes two realms of language. On the
one hand, we have a pure propositional mode of expression; on the other hand,
we have a more imaginary mode of expression that prompts us to create mental
simulations of perceptions, images, and ideas. I am going to detail this distinc-
tion between the two realms in great length in the following article. Neither
realm is linked to either fiction or propositions (whether or not we understand
fiction and propositions along Waltons lines of reasoning). This distinction will
nonetheless prove helpful in analyzing both Waltons concept of fiction and
other theories. In fact, it will even contribute to a better understanding of lan-
guage and communication. Thus, my purpose is not to expand the existing
theories of language and fiction, but to introduce some new concepts that might
lead us towards new insights.
In the first realm, we find propositions that clearly relate to reality. Here, we
assume that word-based1 language can convey these propositions. Linguistic
expressions and thoughts are considered equivalent at least this equivalence
is deemed possible and should be strived for (plain style, precise definitions,
etc.). In Descartess famous wording, clear and distinct thoughts can be ex-
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1 I use the adjectives word-based, linguistic, and verbal without any nuance of differentiation
and try to avoid the expression verbal since it can be associated with the grammatical catego-
ry of verbs, which plays an important role in my essay.
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114 | Remigius Bunia
pressed in a precise language. Let me call this type of description between

thinking and speaking the propositional realm.
In the second realm, we encounter different forms of expression: pictures,
sounds, letters on paper, and (if I may mention Waltons famous example) the
stump of a tree. These expressions incite us to imagine perceptions. However,
we are not prompted to interpret these imaginations. They are supposed to be-
have very much like immediate experience: When we scrutinize the sight of a
tree (as to find out what kind of tree it is), we can do so with a painted tree or,
equally, a rich verbal description of a tree. (I will speak of immediate reality or
immediate experience when I refer to a situation characterized by the essential
absence of symbols.)2 We face things that take place in our minds and whose
relationship with reality remains ambiguous. The impression itself is definite
even if, of course, a description can present us with a deliberately equivocal
representation of an impression (as William Turner and Claude Monet do in
many of their paintings). Let me call this territory the aesthetogenic realm (this
neologism3 implying that perceptions are generated).
My distinction applies to the mental processes a particular representation
prompts. One should not be tempted to feel reminded of Nelson Goodmans
(1997 [1976]) notions of density and sample, since the distinction between prop-
ositional and aesthetogenic realms does not deal with the quality of the repre-
sentation. My inquiry rather adopts a cognitivist perspective. Although I try to
challenge most of the analytical tradition and include some of the poststructur-
alist critique, my argument will be naturalistic. As most cognitivist theories of
today, my view is based on little biological evidence. The point of the cognitive
approach is not biologism, but to consider phenomena from an operational
perspective. Thus, I do not ask how things are, but how they are processed; and
this implies that my inquiry is about the way humans process their sensual
experience in order to deal with reality.
With his description of fiction, Walton opened up a new perspective on rep-
resentations that redirects our attention towards mental processes. When he
speaks of games, he has stopped discussing the relationship between reality
and word-based descriptions. Instead, he focuses on the processes of dealing
with certain real entities that prompt us to imagine. In this sense, he adds an
operational ingredient to the static analytic descriptions that prevail in most
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2 Of course, all experience involving symbols is in some way equally immediate, since it can
involve a human being in the same way intellectually or emotionally as symbolic communica-
tion. The point in question here is that any experience that we would call direct is defined by
an absence, not by a presence.
3 As Peirce (1905, 163165) noted, it is better to invent a neologism than to risk confusion.

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Truth in Fiction | 115
theories on fiction. I will focus on these operational aspects within his theory
and link them to some insights from cognitive sciences.
Certainly, the critique that has been repeated some dozens of times aims at
a particular confusion within Waltons model. While he distinguishes between
the newspaper article and the novel, he does not fundamentally differentiate
between a newspaper photograph and an artful photograph. Put differently,
he does not distinguish between a photograph serving to represent the truth
and a photograph serving a significantly different purpose, namely being fic-
tion. Many scholars have tried to re-establish the difference between fiction and
nonfiction photographs without giving up the fundamental insights given by
Waltons model (e. g. Bareis 2008). My objective, however, will be different from
this. While I fully admit a difference between a faithful and a delusional photo-
graph (as Walton too would), I doubt that a representation can be fully proposi-
tional. Additionally, I posit that the distinction between propositional and aes-
thetogenic is gradual. If my theoretical framework turns out to be
advantageous, then we face the question of discerning the difference between
fact and fiction once more on a new and more convenient epistemological
basis.
2 Knowledge, memory, and the human body

I will introduce some expressions that are useful for my argument. The human
body uses its perceptions and its memory to change its memory and to act.
Among the possible perceptions, we have acoustic and optic impressions of
word-based language. Whenever impressions change the memory, I will speak
of information (with reference to the impression) and of learning (with reference
to the changes of memory). Whenever changes of memory occur due to internal
processes without new impressions, I will speak of reasoning. What is stored in
our memory can be called knowledge. My notion of knowledge is very neutral
and essentially equivalent to that of memory; I do not assume that someone
who has a specific knowledge must know of this knowledge and can give any
account of it; she need not believe it, and my knowledge need not be accurate.
Further, I will not differentiate between dispositional (knowing how) and
propositional knowledge (knowing that), since any propositional knowledge is
nothing but an operational knowledge. To know that something is the case only
becomes manifest in operations that rely on this knowledge. I will expand on
this when I discuss the cognitive processes involving knowledge. No knowledge
has an operation-free state. In stating this, I do not discard this philosophically

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popular distinction en passant, but the insufficiency of this distinction is a core

matter for my argument.
Despite this, we can distinguish two fundamental types of knowledge and
information, respectively, namely: viable or illusive. I define viable as practically
relevant. (I take this term from Stephan Packards unpublished work.) Viable
knowledge and information guide us in our daily practical decisions (whether
consciously or not). Illusive knowledge and information, however, are used
only when the situation requires the reference to this piece of knowledge and
not for a practical decision. An illusive piece of information or an illusive piece
of knowledge exist for their own sake; they have no specific purpose in coping
with the world.
Let me give some examples. Of course, illusive information can be emotion-
ally important or entertaining. When a widower remembers his dead wifes
traits, this knowledge is illusive (unless he shares these memories with others);
but it might be vital for his emotional well-being. Lets take the Sherlock Holmes
stories as a second example: I may know that Watson works with Sherlock
Holmes. Usually, this is illusive knowledge. It is useful only in the context of
reading Arthur Conan Doyles stories or discussing these stories with friends
(for purposes of entertainment). However, for a literary critic, knowledge about
Watson and Holmes can be relevant: It is practical knowledge for writing arti-
cles about them. Nevertheless, it remains illusive as this knowledge can only be
activated with an explicit reference to the story. Quite differently, I may find
valuable information about the architecture in Paris in a novel by Victor Hugo.
Then, I gain viable information.
It is important to see that my notion of knowledge is based on its operation-
ality only. It does not yield a concept of factuality. The knowledge is adequate
to reality if it helps us cope with reality, not if the knowledge is correct in any
sense of the word. However, viable knowledge can consist of good descriptions
of reality. Thus, I do not doubt that we can have good and correct ideas of how
the world actually works. Physics, in particular, gives a very precise under-
standing of the elementary qualities and behaviors of matter. This understand-
ing is viable even in a very practical sense since this knowledge allows us to
erect tall buildings, to predict certain future events, and so on.
In my terminology, the terms knowledge and memory label the same phe-
nomenon, seen either from the phenomenological or the biological point of
view. I will thus relate my concept of knowledge to recent neurological insights.
Since the brain is complex, simple dichotomies are of course misleading. None-
theless, at least some basic functional distinctions can be based on analyses of
both lesions and anatomical structures. On the one hand, I will discriminate

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between idiosyncratic and generic knowledge. On the other hand, I will distin-
guish two operational spaces: the image space and the dispositional space.
1. Some will know the idiosyncratic knowledge by the more widespread
name of episodic memory. This knowledge is the ability to recognize singular
events and entities. These have a specific position in time and space, inaliena-
ble features, and the memory is useful only with regard to the particularities of
the respective events and entities. Your parents face, the look of your apart-
ment, your first love: all these specific memories add up to your idiosyncratic
knowledge. I prefer the notion of idiosyncratic instead of episodic, because less
ephemeral memories also belong here: Abraham Lincolns face, the first lines of
Dantes Commedia, and the consequences of the Vienna Congress are idiosyn-
cratic knowledge, but far from any episodic contextualization. Generic know-
ledge, however, pertains to patterns that are encountered in many instances. I
know how trees look like, how coffee ought to be brewed, and how houses are
to be dealt with (take the door, not the window, when you wish to get inside).
2. Let us turn to the difference between two operational spaces, the imagi-
native and the dispositional. The image space constructs copies of the percep-
tional data being received. When a complex being is seeing a tree, the cortex
creates a copy of the particular impression it finds on the retina. So does the
image space with all other senses. But the image space does more than that. It
compares the impression with earlier impressions and thus recognizes the
sources of the impression. In the image space, the current, the recalled, and the
constructed perceptions pop up and are subject to further mental processing.
The dispositional space, however, responds to the current bodily state (includ-
ing its perceptions and thoughts) and engages the body (including its brain) in
some action. Actions in this sense need not be carried out; they can remain in
the state of an impulse. And actions can target the mind itself: One of the most
important actions is the retrieval of generic and idiosyncratic memories, the
recognition of the things and persons being around as such and such.
As long as both spaces perform their tasks without interacting with each
other, their range of effect is limited: The dispositional space assesses the reac-
tions deemed necessary to cope with present discomforts and joys, and the
image space provides the dispositional space with the data. In higher animals,
among them humans, the dispositional space starts acting on the image space,
which in turn keeps informing the dispositional space. This feedback loop al-
lows the dispositional space to draw its conclusions not only from the bodys
monitoring system, but to make the mind monitor the products of its own think-
ing processes.
This is why Antonio Damasio (2012) describes the interlock between the im-
age space and the dispositional space as the interface where consciousness

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comes to mind, as he playfully puts it. When the dispositional space can feed
the image space with contents (from either memory or deliberate construction),
what we perceive inside our mind is no longer restricted to body reports about
its exterior, but also about our interior.
It is important to note that we only sense the products of the image space as
contents of our consciousness. In contrast, the operations within the disposi-
tional space remain inaccessible to consciousness (Damasio 2012). Therefore,
we cannot say how we can recognize specific objects; we just know that a tree
that we are seeing is a tree, but we cannot tell what we are doing in correctly
identifying it. As another consequence, philosophical tradition tends to over-
look the powerful mental performances taking place without our consciousness
knowing; and tradition has thus wrongfully equated consciousness and mind.
We tend to take the highly structured contents of our consciousness for the
products of our exceptional abilities, while in fact both the process of structur-
ing and the re-creation of structured impressions in the image space should fill
us with awe. Francis Bacons and Claude Lvi-Strausss complaints about the
human tendency towards abstraction face a biological explanation here.
My distinction between propositional and aesthetogenic communication di-
rectly refers to the difference between dispositional and imaginative operations.
On the one hand, a propositional communication activates the abilities to rec-
ognize things, persons, and processes; and these abilities are housed in the
dispositional space. This is all that is behind elementary symbolic signs: One
learns to deal with the symbol for an experience in much the same way as with
the immediate experience. Whether I hear people shout fire and the alarm bell
or I see the flames in my room myself, I should run out of the building as fast as
I can. Damasio even presumes that language use is dispositional; this is an
intuitively sound hypothesis, given the fact that I cannot explain how I know
what the word tree means better than how I identify a tree in the streets. I just
do. On the other hand, an aesthetogenic communication asks the recipient to
turn on their image space and to populate it with impressions. I can be asked to
imagine the details of an object that is known to me; but I can also be made
construct an object I have never seen before.4
As defined above, the aesthetogenic and the propositional pole encompass
a continuum. This is to say that the dispositional space and the image space can
contribute varying amounts to the experience evoked by communication. To
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4 This is why Walton is wrong when he assumes that imagination works by moving existing
furniture only. Humans can also construct new furniture through aesthetogenic representa-
tions!

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imagine a unicorn (for the first time in a lifetime), a minute departure from the
propositional pole is sufficient. One just has to plug a generic horn into the head
of a generic white horse, and the imaginative work is done. However, to imagine
the landscapes and the beings described in J. R. R. Tolkiens The Lord of the
Rings requires much more activity. I will speak of imagery (Damasio) when the
operations in the image space create settings that substantially take off the
ground of dispositionally managed experience. Inversely, imagination serves as
the term for filling the image space with remembrances. When I spoke of either
memory or construction delivering content to the image space, I implicitly re-
ferred to this distinction: The dispositional space can make the image space
create experiences that come from the past (imagination) or out of the void (im-
agery).
Of course, humans do not restrict their use of imagery to art, but they em-
ploy it in all kinds of planning (what shall I do after finishing my meal tonight?
will I earn enough money to buy the car next year? what, by the way, can we
humans do to save the planets climate?).5 Imagery is where both rational con-
strual of future events and aesthetic creations take place, where they may meet,
and where they more often than not contaminate and enrich each other.
Again, the distinction between imagination and imagery is not a question of
all or nothing. Only seldom does imagination produce exact reproductions of
the lived experience of the past (this is why humans are mediocre witnesses), on
the one hand. And on the other hand, at least some generic knowledge is neces-
sary for imagery. This becomes manifest when we analyze how aesthetogenic
communication works. Here, we can observe how the mind prefers to be in-
structed about images. In a personal communication, Walton expressed some
doubts about the distinction between aesthetogenic and propositional, thus
shedding much light on the intricate dependency of aesthetogenic communica-
tion on generic knowledge. He asked whether it would be an aesthetogenic way
of describing a sunset if I laid a grid over my visual impression and, row by row,
column by column, told someone the RGB color for every pixel aloud. (This is
how computer software encodes so-called bitmaps: A picture is a list of numbers
representing colors.) Walton considered this a counterexample, because such
an utterance probably would not produce any immediate visual experience
within the recipient. Rather, it would leave the indulgent recipient with a time-
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5 Interestingly, we know from experimental studies that the paratextual warning fiction
activates the brain region that is also active when someone makes plans for the future. The
inverse paratextual warning, fact, rather activates the regions related to instant bodily action
(see Altmann et al. 2012).

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consuming absurd task. This thought experiment hints at the complex nature of
human cognition. Although the retina and the cortex indeed do nothing but
measure colors pixelwise and compose them until they form a mental image,
the acoustic communication of rasterized visual information annoys and ex-
hausts the mind. The explanation for this difficulty is simple. The image space
as defined above can only deal with existing forms, mostly stored as generic
knowledge, and the number of forms must be limited to a rather small number.
These forms can be accessed again though dispositional knowledge
in the visual (shapes, geometrical relationships, contours of known objects,

colors, reflection properties, and so on);
in the acoustic (pitch, intensity, echo, distance, position, and so on);
in the haptic (warmth, smoothness, softness, humidity, itch, burn, irrita-
tion, and so on);
in the olfactory (an extremely long list of individual incomparable impres-
sions such as thyme, tomato, and gasoline);
and in taste (salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami).
A linguistic aesthetogenic description will use these elements and also complex
generic forms (such as persons, things, processes) in order to prompt the image-
ry of a new experience. When I ask you to imagine the odor of cumin, my re-
quest can remain propositional; when I ask you to combine cumin with cherry
mentally, the task is aesthetogenic; and it only works if you can recall the scents
mentally (a capacity seldom trained in our culture) and if you can deduce the
impression from imagining it (a capacity even more rarely trained here, alas). If
this example strikes you as exotic, think of musicians who can imagine the
acoustic impression of particular instruments playing particular notes; many
trained musicians can experience a tune or a whole symphony by reading the
score. In our visual culture, we train our optic capacities, and those who live in
Europe nowadays, are not born blind and have not suffered any severe neuro-
logical impairment can easily imagine the picture of a cherry lying on a violin.
A successful communication will combine only as many elements as can be
processed. It is easy to imagine a green dog, a yellow cow, and a blue mouse
standing in front of the Arc de Triomphe of Paris; but it is difficult to imagine
thousands of such colorful animals in rows and columns. If we were able to
imagine a picture with so many elements, we could construct an experience
from the enumeration of pixels too. Essentially, both techniques ask for the
same capacity.

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3 Perception, language,
and human communication
Since in this theoretical framework, knowledge is a disposition to act, it cannot
be described in static sentences. This is why I have great difficulty in describ-
ing knowledge by means of natural language. I can say: I know that apples
grow on trees. But it remains largely unclear to what extent my ability to pro-
duce such a sentence relates to the agricultural insights conveyed through this
sentence. More specifically, I put forward that it is wrong to equate human cog-
nition and word-based descriptions; there is no evidence whatsoever that all
higher human capacities can be resolved into language.
When we scan the Western philosophical tradition in search of what has
been counted as the cardinal higher abilities, we find, firstly, symbolic reason-
ing, secondly, spatial and, thirdly, quantitative reasoning. By consequence,
tradition has tended to emphasize the importance of conscious efforts, above all
of word-based reasoning. This is why, until today, we face a widespread biased
view on our own cognitive capacities and limitations. However, we now know
that the lower abilities that operate without involving consciousness have
much impact on our actions and reasoning. Not only does the continuous anal-
ysis of perceptual data prove very complex, but more astonishingly, psycholo-
gists now convince us that intuition is a higher ability of assessment, operating
without any notice from consciousness. Intuition serves to make fast and heu-
ristic judgments; and some psychologists for instance Daniel Kahneman
(2011) insist that conscious logical reasoning more often than not contributes
to the fast intuitive decisions even in complex situations that would apparently
benefit from logic (such as inferences from statistical data). Note the famous
finding that lengthy intensive conscious comparisons between economic op-
tions lead to an inferior quality of decision compared to intuitive fast thinking.
Unaware of our astonishing faculties of unconscious reasoning, the classi-
cal philosophical assumption, inherited from antiquity, is that language is spe-
cific for human cognition and that it can express virtually everything the human
mind deals with. This is why the proposition has been given so much credit in
the tradition. And it is true that a proposition can express a state of the human
mind in an extraordinarily compact way. What it contains is knowledge. But if
verbal descriptions turn out to be far away from mental representations, if they
are nothing but an incitation to produce mental simulations of perceptions,
then there is no reason to prioritize them over other forms of communication.
While the tradition assumes that language always encodes a static and stable

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interpretation of past perceptions, I suggest that language in many cases en-

codes a perception requiring a new interpretation.
This claim needs more clarification. One might interpose that human com-
munication can develop forms of expression that evade the need of new inter-
pretations. We have biological terminology, mathematical formulation of physi-
cal laws, juridical abstraction, and so on. Yet even within these fields of high
clarity, there are degrees of interpretability: A mathematical formula allows for
less variance than statutory laws; probably only in mathematics, we can attain
the complete absence of ambiguity. And then again, we obviously have the
diametrical opposite pole, that of poetic language. On this side of the spectrum,
language can turn into a means of expression that triggers interpretation, but
gives few hints at limits. In fiction, verbal description and reality usually di-
verge to a great extent (I will have to return to this point as to give a more pre-
cise phrasing than this). In the following sections, I will reinterpret the initial
notions of propositional and aesthetogenic realms as modes of communication.
The scientific language will be the propositional extreme within this range, and
the poetic language will be its aesthetogenic opposite.
In order to deploy this analysis of communicative modes, I adopt Ronald W.
Langackers (2008) fundamental assumption that the structure of ordinary lan-
guage reflects the regularities of human processing of perceptions. Grammar is
not made to represent reality, but to represent our impressions of reality. In
accordance with Langackers theory, neuropsychology shows that humans
structure their perceptions by handling them as things, persons or verbs (that is,
processes, which include movements); some humans use their skills to identify
things also when recognizing humans (prosopagnosia), therefore relying on
coarse optical information such as glasses or singular haircuts instead of facial
features which the neurotypical would recognize (see Humphreys and Riddoch
2005, 214215; Shiffrar 2005, 239). It is thus natural to posit that knowledge is
about persons, things, and verbs, and that any piece of knowledge can be de-
scribed by presenting the persons, things, and verbs at stake. Langacker then
demonstrates that language remodels the ways we structure our perceptions.
For example, the syntax in a particular language can reflect the way humans
differentiate between figure and ground. Although not all languages rely on a
system with predicates and subjects, most languages do, and all languages
have structures for objects, humans, and processes. These grammatical struc-
tures thus echo the way humans manage their perceptions.6
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6 Aristotles original idea of proposition, expounded in his Hermeneutics, relies on the combi-
nations of noun and verb. According to his theory, this combination can be either true or false.

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Two ways of dealing with perceptions have to be distinguished. They too

are poles on a continuum. One the one hand, perceptions can be savored; on the
other hand, they can be compacted. I call a perception savored if it is being
relished in its details and riches without a comprehensive interpretation of the
impressions. Typical examples are: examining a masterpiece painting or enjoy-
ing a complex meal. A perception, however, that is being subsumed under gen-
eral categories (which one has in mind) will be termed compacted. When a gen-
eral category is at hand, it is usually connected to a specific word or language-
like expression. With respect to the perception of objects, Langacker (2008)
speaks of thingification: Whenever our cognition isolates objects within our
perception, these objects become things in our thinking and in our language.
Compacted experiences are thus most easily resolved into a linguistic descrip-
tion. They are at the very core of what language can easily convey.
It is straightforward to link these notions to the distinction between propo-
sitional and aesthetogenic modes of communication. The more a communica-
tion aims at compacted perceptions, the more it approaches the propositional
end of the spectrum. Accordingly, the more it tries to convey savored percep-
tions, the more it draws near the aesthetogenic pole.
Both communications and memories tend towards the propositional pole
since humans have a strong penchant for compacting their experiences. The
reason for this inclination is obvious: It is much easier to store many compacted
experiences in memory than to remember many details that defy categorization.
As Bacon stated in the seventeenth century, the human minds tend to produce
abstractions (see Bacon 1990 [1620]; Lvi-Strauss 2009 [1962]; Bunia 2011). Simi-
larly, the psychologists Richard E. Nisbett and Eugene Borgida (1975, 939) con-
clude that humans tend to infer the general from the particular and refuse to
take the general into account when dealing with the particular. All in all, the
human mind absolutely prefers abstractions over the complexities of reality.
Communications and memories are thus closer to the propositional pole
than to the aesthetogenic. However, they do not fully reach it. In ordinary lan-
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In the seventeenth century, the idea of proposition became more abstract; the predicate was no
longer the process (expressed by a verb in the grammatical sense of the word) attributed to an
agent, but it became a list of attributes that were attached to an object. This is when the verb to
be became to be viewed as the essential way of coupling the subject and the predicate. But it
thus lost the link to the way humans process information; here, Aristotle had the better intui-
tion. My critique of propositions can be reduced to the statement that all phenomena in reality
cannot be brought into the logical structure of a proposition, nor can human higher cognition
be described by translating the contents of human reasoning into any kind of linguistic ex-
pression.

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guage, even the most precise words and memories rely on some perceptional
associations. This is because cognition needs a perceptional basis to identify an
instance of compacted experience; and these traits of recognition usually ac-
company the memory of the experience. This is why everyday propositions
that aim at precision nevertheless have noticeable tendencies towards vague-
ness, and this is also why everyday propositions without any need of precision
show a great amount of vagueness.
In scientific language, by contrast, precision becomes possible because the
communication evades the traps of both human perception and human ordi-
nary language. This is why quantification plays a certain role. In chemistry, for
instance, we have precise ideas of substances, but we cannot decide which
substance we have by means of our senses alone. Science made it possible to
escape the fallacies of our senses, and this is why scientific communication can
indeed reach the propositional pole. However, the precision attained remains
restricted to the particular field it has been developed for. It is impossible to
describe my feelings in a fight with a friend by presenting a mathematical or a
chemical formula.
In all social interactions and in all everyday contexts, a precise language
not only does not exist, it would be of little use, since all communication bene-
fits from a certain amount of vagueness. Scientific communication may have
established means beyond everyday language that allow scientists to achieve
precision, but these means are restricted to the fields the communication is
about. Of course, we face different intensities of precision within the sciences
with physics doubtlessly achieving the highest degree of linguistic exactitude.
The example of physics, which makes use of mathematics in order to attain
precision, shows that scientific communication can to some extent rely on
modes of communication that transcend language (for instance, when the
whiteboard becomes an indispensable tool to put down an equation that is vir-
tually impossible to express by words). Nevertheless, scientists can talk to each
other about scientific topics, and they do so quite successfully in many cases.
My notion of communication includes both the word-based and the word-
transcending communicative means. Let me resume the argument: Scientific
communication is limited to specific scientific purposes. This seeming restraint
is the necessary counterpart of the benefit. Only if an expression is bound to a
specific use, can it be precise. This is why science was so diffuse until the empir-
ical revolution; and this is why Bacon was so skeptical about theory and lan-
guage in general.
The elasticity of natural language is characteristic of everyday communica-
tion. Strongly propositional thinking implements a severe control of the usage
of all expressions involved. This is what restricts scientific communication to

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such a narrow range of applications. In ordinary language, however, the control

is very loose. It is possible to describe new experiences with old words. Yes, the
propositional realm invites everyone to compact their experience. But the very
feature of being able to express almost everything with great readiness can only
subsist at the price of a tendency to redraw the borders of correct usage. In
ordinary language, the meaning of words quivers and changes, both within
the same speaker during their life and between different speakers of the same
language. It does so because a speaker can and will adjust the usage of their
language to every new situation.7 But it is impossible to comment on these shifts
of usage in a meta-language, since such a meta-language does not exist yet, and
it would spoil the efficiency of natural language.
The propositional pole of expression relies on strict control of usage, which
would waste cognitive resources and diminish the readiness to adapt to new
situations. In fact, ordinary language always and without exception has a ten-
dency to generate a slightly aesthetogenic drive in every utterance. As men-
tioned above, grammar is modeled after the way sensual perception is pro-
cessed. Even if one encounters an apparently propositional mode of expression,
and even if one employs seemingly clear-cut concepts, the combination of
words suggests an arrangement of ideas that conforms to the structures of per-
ception. What is more, the products of compactification, the nouns and the
verbs, aggregate a broad range of possible perceptional experiences; they thus
trigger broad association. (The degree to which this happens can of course be
controlled by the choice of words. Cat is more specific than animal.) An aes-
thetogenic ingredient is essential to all linguistic and nonlinguistic modes of
everyday communication. It warrants the required syntactical and conceptual
suppleness. Nouns and verbs tend to entail imaginations, and this is why a
nonscientific proposition can never be precise.8
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7 In scientific language, such a shift is only possible with an explicit change of definitions.
One cannot just use the expression mass to mean something new without announcing the
semantic modification. Thus, one will not encounter common ground issues in the sciences in
the same way as one incessantly does in the humanities. Of course, someone might be con-
fused by a surprising use of the Einstein summation convention, but this is not an essential
problem of terminology, but a well-known and readily explicable choice of communicative
means.
8 Let me avoid another misunderstanding. I do not doubt that imagination is essential for
scientific reasoning. Quite on the contrary, in all sciences and in mathematics, imagination is
fundamental. However, one needs the precision to condense and to communicate the fruits of
these adventurous imaginations, and here vagueness does not contribute to the promulgation
of new ideas. And again, it is true that in the process of creating totally new ideas, scientific

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Yet, I am still speaking of utterances staying close to the propositional pole.

Certainly not all experiences are compacted as much as possible. Were this
assumption true, it would be unthinkable to encounter an experience that
seems ineffable beyond expression. Some experiences call for a reproduction
that can be savored. Although language tends to convey compacted infor-
mation, it can also make a recipient actually relive an experience. In the latter
case, we usually speak of representation. Monika Fluderniks (1996, 49) idea of a
presentation of experientiality concurs with this notion of representation. Not
only language, but also pictures and music can produce savored experiences. I
will call any unit of communication (a text, for instance) that can be savored
representation. Since abuse is always possible and everything can be savored, it
is more scrupulous to say: A representation consists of utterances and other
pieces of communication that tend towards the aesthetogenic pole of expres-
sion.
The propositional realm of cognition is shaped by the capacity to compact
experiences; the aesthetogenic, however, is characterized by the capacity to
arrange and to detail experiences. The idea of a proposition thus highlights the
cognitive ability to isolate certain objects and certain actions, to structure our
sensual experience by dissecting it into things and verbs. The idea of imagina-
tion, however, stresses the cognitive ability to process the full width of sensual
details that come with an experience.
4 Representations vs. immediate experience

A perception can trigger very different actions, depending on our tastes, our
education, and our cognitive abilities. The perception itself can trigger different
kinds of response. Among these reactions, there may be such that bear conse-
quences on my future behavior and such that I do not need to take into account.
However, the difference between the perception of a representation and the
perception of immediate reality is astonishingly small with regard to possible
responses. I will substantiate this claim in the present section, even if I will not
use the result until the middle of the next section.
A thought experiment will clarify the contention. The sight of an apple fall-
ing onto the ground can make me
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communication uses a lot of aesthetogenic devices in order to help others participate in the
development of new views.

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measure the time interval of the dropping,

think about the nature of gravitation,
think of eating,
ponder upon the vanity of all existence,
form the words the apple is falling down,
ignore and forget the impression altogether, or
use the apple in a game of make-believe.
The last option is the most interesting one. Think of a simple game. Imagine the
apples being bombs that target my friends and me while we are running around
a tree. Whenever an apple drops and hits the ground (or even one of us) in close
distance, the victim has to play dead. Of course, this is quite a silly game. But
when we are done with this game, there is no reason why I cannot study the
phenomenon of gravitation afterwards or even within the game if I have the
time and the leisure, being the first one to be hit by an apple, forced to lay down
and be still.
My claim is that perceptions whether they be verbal or nonverbal can
prompt the same actions. To read an apple is falling down can make me visual-
ize the scene. Again, the perception can make me:
think of eating,
think about the nature of gravitation,
ponder upon the vanity of all existence,
form the words the apple is falling down,
ignore and forget the impression altogether, or
use the sentence in a game of make-believe.
As far as these points are concerned, there is no apparent difference between

seeing an apple and reading about the apple. This similarity is the reason for the
widespread tendency to state a functional equivalence between perceiving im-
mediate reality and perceiving a description of reality. The most important simi-
larity is the fact that the sentence can incite me to start operations of a wide
range.
Yet there are important differences. The most important difference is that I
can study the nature of gravitation only by observing apples (that is, by observ-
ing nonverbal reality), while reading and thinking cannot give me any valuable
hint. Again, this was Descartes and Bacons complaint about the former tradi-
tion. One might interject that today we have great books on gravitation that
ground themselves on observations; and yes, it is not a foolish idea at all to read
them if one feels the sudden urge to learn something about this fundamental

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physical interaction. Yet, until today students in the natural sciences are trained
to verify many pieces of elementary scientific knowledge in their lab courses. It
is important to uphold the Baconian spirit: Thinking and reading tempt the
human mind to abandon physical reality and to turn to the deceptive products
of human abstractions. Only when I intend to learn something about language
and human cognition should I look at words; but if I am interested in nature, I
must scrutinize nature.9
The key to understanding the similarities and differences between represen-
tations and immediate reality is the notion of information. Even Gregory Currie
(1990, 95), who is far from being prone to using positivist expressions with
regard to fiction, calls the process by which visual media create impressions
presenting us with information. In fact, all experience can convey infor-
mation. Information is to quote Gregory Batesons (2000 [1971], 315) ingenu-
ous description an experience that makes a difference with regard to pro-
cessing the world. So the question is what counts as information, and what kind
of information fiction usually presents us with. But in almost all situations in
ones life, one has to tell apart viable pieces of information from illusive ones. In
order to succeed in doing so, one has to use ones existing viable knowledge
acquired during childhood and beyond. In this sense, the analysis of experience
relies on former experience and of course on a long personal history of fail-
ures and successes, punishments and rewards. One also learns where to direct
ones attention: which pieces of a sentence may have multifaceted meaning,
and which events and things around deserve an examination and an interpreta-
tion that surpass the usual degree of contemplation. I will now turn to the ef-
fects fictional and factual information exercise on recipients.
5 Influence exercised by fictional and factual

representations
Can we learn anything from the description of viable information when we ask if
fictional representations can contain knowledge or have any influence on us? In
order to approach an answer, let us admit that some people read newspaper
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9 There are many more important differences. Let me only mention the media in which repre-
sentations appear. Verbal media are in fact a radical case, as they show a strong inclination
towards the propositional pole. Paintings, however, in particular abstract art, tend towards the
aesthetogenic pole. This is why literature is the most eccentric case.

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articles and novels for the exactly same purposes. They relish both, either for
ephemeral entertainment or for gaining knowledge, or for a combination of
both. Both trigger the processing of ideas or simulated perceptions. Both invite
us to analyze these ideas and perceptions and to distil viable information from
them. However, I consider fiction to be more remote from describing reality than
a newspaper article. How can I explain my cautious attitude towards fiction?
Let me despite some discord concerning the details agree with Peter
Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen (1994) in stating that the identification of
fiction depends on a given context and that this identification changes my atti-
tude towards the representation in question. Whenever we realize (from what-
ever signals) that we are dealing with fiction, we no longer treat the fictional
perception as trustworthy. Equally important, we would not take fictional
accounts for mendacious either. They may be false, but if they are, they do not
deceive. This is different with newspaper articles. If they are false, deceit is
probable (the alternative option of explanation being journalistic negligence).
It is clear that both newspaper articles and fictional stories can be illusive.
Doubtlessly, newspaper articles can also be viable. But can fictional stories be
viable in any way? My answer will be yes. And this is precisely the point where
caution is required. To claim that fiction conveys some pieces of useful infor-
mation quite often triggers a response full of disapproval. Such resistance oc-
curs both with those who attribute an empathic value to literature and with
those who analytically keep fiction apart from all other modes of communica-
tion.
First of all, it certainly depends on the context (including genre, recent de-
velopments in the arts, and so on) whether a recipient expects a representation
to be faithful with regard to the things and verbs themselves, or faithful to the
regularities behind them. Education, knowledge, and intelligence can direct the
discrimination between viable and illusive pieces of information within fiction.
We are taught not to believe in what we recognize when the label fiction is
invoked (as the default behavior); at the same time we tend to believe nonethe-
less because disbelief requires effort (see Gerrig 1993 [1988]). Of course, it is
simple not to believe in the existence of Alices Wonderland, since the physical
laws in Wonderland differ so much from real-world physics. But it requires
much effort not to believe that real-world Romans dressed the way we see Ro-
mans do in the movies.
This conflict between trained disbelief and natural confidence can be de-
scribed in a quite simple way. On the one hand, the label fiction makes us very
cautious with regard to entities and events in the foreground, and less so with
the background. The more shaped the piece of information is, the less trustwor-
thy it is. To eliminate the metaphor of shape and to put it in the terminology

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developed above: All compact elements within a representation receive much

doubt. The rule is simple: The more compact an element is (individual human
persons, pieces of furniture), the less a reader will be inclined to rely on its fi-
delity. Fidelity here only means to decide whether any information about the
element is viable. One is trained to shun this assumption.
On the other hand, a reader is not expected to cast much doubt on descrip-
tions that can be savored. Any experience that is evoked aesthetogenically
(which entails that there cannot be any elements) will simply be accepted. This
is why the word fiction has seldom been the name of a category to classify
paintings; although we have always had paintings that depict entities exhibit-
ing more or less similarity to reality, that is, paintings that bear much resem-
blance to other representational techniques in that they possess various possi-
ble degrees of realism. The point is not that we are not trained, or not aware of
possible inaccuracies, since precision in paintings is by necessity aesthetogenic
in nature. The problem is that the aesthetogenic mode of communication asks
us to simulate the experience, to compact it ourselves and for ourselves only for
economys sake, and to interpret it. Paintings do not convey very compact piec-
es of information.
In the case of factual representations (such as news reports) the situation is
the reverse. It is exactly the pieces of information close to the propositional pole
that count as viable. The more aesthetogenic a news report becomes (the more
vivid perceptional details it describes, for instance), the less it is considered a
report. Occasionally, such texts are even considered literary. If one accepts the
notion of literary journalism at all, it surely means that the words and pictures
try to express such experiences that are not readily compacted.
In all cases, techniques that accomplish an aesthetogenic mode of commu-
nication tend to be identified as poetic. It is noteworthy that poetic language
can emerge in very different ways: as an uncommon application of grammar or
lexicon, as exuberant expression, as diligence for detail, as beautiful style, as
original, as perfectly prototypical language, or many more. In all these cases, I
suggest that the language operates within the aesthetogenic realm. This means
that language can also evoke the simulation of an experience that spontaneous-
ly defies being compacted.
Fiction and again in particular literary fiction can therefore convey via-
ble information. Of course, the variety of possible uses is enormous. Let us take
the indelicate but instructive example of pornography. It is instructive because,
contrary to superior forms of fiction, it regularly does not resist being compact-
ed; quite the reverse, the content of pornographic representations can, unless
they aim to promote less-known sexual practices, be perfectly captured in the
propositional realm without any loss of nuance. Yet, pornographic representa-

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tions heavily rely on aesthetogenic techniques; stating simple facts in a proposi-

tional style would not have the desired effect. The viability of pornography
amounts to effecting sexual arousal, regularly used to facilitate masturbation.
The information a pornographic representation provides a consumer with is
thus a difference making a difference with regard to the physical state of the
body. Let me give another example that displays dissimilarities only on the
surface: With regard to basic bodily and mental effects, banal commonplace
fiction stereotype love stories, stereotype thrillers, or stereotype crime stories,
for instance does not differ much from pornography. All these forms of fiction
produce excitement and emotions, even though the specific kind of agitation
depends on the readers dispositions and on the genre. For instance, common-
place fiction allows recipients to use its aesthetogenic qualities to dream them-
selves away to an entertaining or soothing experience that does not rely on any
specific quality of the fictional work. If reluctant to acknowledge the right to
relief of this kind, one might call such a use of fiction escapism. An interior
escape may be quite a different bodily and mental effect than sexual relief, but
from a structural point of view this is only a difference in goals, not in means.10
In all these cases of low-key fiction, the aesthetogenic realm remains pre-
dictable. The patterns these works of fiction are made of do not tend to chal-
lenge a readers intellectual capacities. Advanced fictional works of art, howev-
er, achieve a high degree of aesthetogenic novelty and singularity. In these
cases, it is less likely to detect any kind of viable information hidden within the
fictional work.
The result obtained in the previous section of this article says that the per-
ception of a representation and the perception of immediate reality do not differ
much in the responses they can trigger. (Again, this may vary between individ-
uals and between contexts, and it surely depends on many factors.) This result
is important for the understanding of advanced fiction insofar as rich fiction
produces an experience that asks for an extensive interpretation. This interpre-
tation can aim at very different fields of human experiences; it can be mainly
sensual, or political, or purely self-contained, or anything else. Following the
rich representation through the aesthetogenic realm means that no matter if
the work of fiction intermittently contains compacted propositional segments
it never invites anyone to draw specific (that is, compact) conclusions. However,
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10 From an aesthetic point of view, all these forms of fiction do not deserve any attention, of
course. Although I draw a sharp distinction between high-key and low-key representations, my
approach here is not value-based but structural.

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it can open up a whole range of perspectives often even such that are discord-
ant or dissonant or logically inconsistent among each other.
There is much to learn from rich experiences. They present us with settings
that may match our current frame of (compacting) thought. But they can also
stage a setting that defies our habitual and acquired modes of structuring the
world. In particular, in the field of the social, a rich representation can show us
places and configurations that question and contradict the readers current
beliefs and opinions (which are viable knowledge that dictates their everyday
behavior). A rich representation might even employ techniques that provide
access to a persons point of view and point of experience this is Franz K.
Stanzels (1985 [1979]) personal narrative situation or, in this respect equivalent-
ly, Grard Genettes (2000 [1972]) internal focalization, combined with the expo-
sition of mental states as described by Dorrit Cohn (1978) in Transparent Minds.
In this case, a representation achieves to activate a systematic sympathy with a
represented person that can lead to reconsideration of ones former attitudes
towards persons with a similar disposition to this person. For example, a repre-
sentation can show the situation of the poor, the gay, or the immigrated by de-
parting from a general depiction of their situation and, more movingly, by
concentrating on a single individuals fate and feelings among them.11
None of these experiences could be presented in the propositional realm,
simply because this realm requests, prior to the consumption of an act of com-
munication, the mental presence of the very categories into which one aims to
embed the situation; we can only compact experiences if we already know how
to compact them. In the propositional realm, however, the categories must be
present (in the mind or in the language12) beforehand; this follows from the very
definition of the propositional realm. A proposition such as the poor live in
dreadful circumstances does not have much emotional and intellectual effect
since it fully relies on existing schemes of structuring. This is why factual de-
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11 Representations can present readers with rich details of experiences they have had before.
But there is no necessity to this. First, many representations are banal and not rich at all. Sec-
ond, a particular recipient might be totally unresponsive with regard to representations and
never be moved by any one. Third, a particular reader might be well acquainted with the situa-
tion in question herself and thus not learn anything; in this case, she might even have the
impression that the representation is inaccurate. Rich representations that change some people
are thus not at all a regular case.
12 Whether I speak of mind or language depends on the perspective, not on a difference with
regard to the phenomenon. In my point of view, a semantic phenomenon resides both in minds
and in communicative rules, and one can single out either perspective for analytical purposes
only.

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scriptions that aim at moving people and changing their attitudes towards soci-
ety and the world employ techniques in the aesthetogenic realm. Otherwise,
they would not have much impact on the hearers. In this sense, it is neither
false nor unfair to accuse them of fictionalizing and of rhetorizing facts. Of
course, this accusation comes from those who demand that everyone stay as
near as possible to the propositional pole of communication. I am referring to
the anti-rhetorical tradition starting in the seventeenth century, the Logique de
Port-Royal for instance, with its more recent heirs in analytical philosophy.
The anti-rhetoric critique has also attacked those factual representations
that include poetic features in order to become persuasive. As sketched above,
this article primarily deals with the opposite phenomenon: fictional representa-
tions that produce viable knowledge, that is, representations that are labeled as
not trustworthy by social institutions, but that accomplish to change the way
we think and act anyway. A fictional representation can array complex and
manifold experiences that force us to reshape our schemes simply because we
have none that fit while reading. Of course, this only applies to advanced works
of fictional art, but this is also why these works are considered intellectually
demanding and why they are considered advanced.
This effect is thus not at all broad but rather restricted to a small group of
readers who devote their time to challenging texts and who are willing to inter-
pret the experience. Only then are they forced by the representation to recon-
sider their attitudes. A more cursory consumption of works of fiction will regu-
larly leave only banal traces, such as (totally inaccurate) knowledge about the
clothing customs in Ancient Rome. This is maybe why the famous and popular
theory-of-mind thesis about the function of fiction as put forward by Lisa Zun-
shine (2006) still lacks empirical proof and faces classical critique from philoso-
phers (namely Currie 1998). Of course, both an intellectually unresponsive and
quick consumption of a rich fictional representation and an exhaustive reading
of porn or shallow love-stories will not lead to any improvement in mind-
reading. This is also why low-key representations do not receive any attention
from academic hermeneutics. They can only be analyzed on the grounds of
cultural, anthropological, or sociological assessment. Quite pertinently, they
are considered to exhibit existing patterns of compacting experience. As a con-
sequence, such a reading of porn and trivial love-stories can reveal mental
schemes prevalent in society. My theory helps to argue that such deductions,
widespread in the humanities, are, in methodological terms, perfectly sound.
The knowledge acquired in processing the breadth of aesthetogenically
generated experiences is by necessity viable. This is because the schemes of
structuring immediate perceptional experiences cannot willfully turn off our
ability to see what we are seeing, to hear what we are hearing, to taste what we

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are tasting, and to feel what we are feeling. When one has learnt to identify a
tree in the park, one will be able to recognize it in a painting;13 and inversely,
when one has acquired the knowledge of a blind persons way of life through a
fictional text, one will imagine a real blind persons life along these patterns
when one meets them.
German courts have realized the consequences of this human disposition.
The lawsuits that in the recent past effectively prohibit the distribution of novels
depicting real people in their private life never base their bans on propositional
elements but on the aesthetogenic passages that suggest similarities between
the real person and the fictional figure and, and this second point is crucial,
that actually show their intimate life (Bunia 2005). It does not matter at all if the
propositional content is truthful or altered. In fact, the courts state that it is
equally wrong if the aspects are significantly altered since the alterations do not
prevent any reader to imagine the real persons private life as depicted in the
fictional story.
Since humans tend to infer the general from the particular, fictional repre-
sentations can easily inform about general patterns by showing particular ex-
amples. 14 Perhaps this is what Aristotle means in his Poetics (1451a.361451b.7)
when he states that fiction is more truthful than historiography since it shows
the general. Today, it is possible to put it a bit more precisely: Since humans
tend to deduce general patterns from individual examples, fiction can demon-
strate these patterns and make recipients learn the general facts, even though
the character names in the fictional text do not necessarily refer to real persons.
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13 In some cases, one also has to learn to decode the specifics of the respective medial trans-
position. Unfortunately, this aspect has been overstressed due to Ernst Gombrichs (2002
[1960]) ingenious analysis, which postulates the opposite. As for photography and drawing,
the transposition is so easy that even many animals are capable of performing it. This is used,
for example, to prevent small birds from flying against transparent windows by pasting paper
in the shape of big dangerous birds on the glass.
In a way, one can be told the truth in a sense Currie develops. He draws the distinction be-
tween two meanings of truth: Perhaps A la recherche du temps perdu expresses important
truths about love, time, and memory. In that case there is much truth in Prousts novels, and in
this sense the truth in Prousts fiction is genuine truth. This sense of truth in fiction, which
appears prominently in literary evaluations, is not the subject of this chapter. That [] it is true
in The Turn of the Screw that there are ghosts: These claims exemplify the kind of truth in
fiction that will concern us here (Currie 1990, 53). It is the other kind of truth that I am con-
cerned with at this moment. Au lieu of using the overladen and incendiary word truth, I stick
to the notion of viability, which does not imply that mental states correspond to reality, but
denotes that they pertain to reality.

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I (Bunia 2007, 150162) have, in an earlier work, proposed the notion of re-
ality co-principle to designate the possibility to make such deductions, to infer
viable knowledge from fictional representations. It is a co-principle to the reality
principle as defined by Walton (1990, 145) and others. The latter states that we
construct fictional representations, using the real world as blueprint: Our
knowledge of reality equips our mental simulations with default qualities of all
entities and processes. This is exactly what happens in the propositional realm.
There, we rely on an existing and learnt ability to structure reality. The reality
co-principle, however, expresses the fact that fictional accounts can give us
viable information. It banks on the specific nature of the aesthetogenic realm
where an experience generated by a rich representation can make us reconfig-
ure the way we deal with the world. The co-principle thus says that everything
evoked by a rich representation and vaguely fitting our contemporaneous viable
knowledge can be merged with our viable knowledge deliberately or inadvert-
ently. Put differently, the co-principle states that (again: whether intentionally
or involuntarily) every fictional description may be tested if it can operate as
viable knowledge in other contexts.
It is important to clarify a tricky point. The reality co-principle does not ex-
clude the possibility that someone also tests some plain statement in a work of
fiction for its truthfulness. Of course, if we read in a novel about a specific battle
Napolon fought, we may check if the novel reports historical events accurately.
A fictional representation may of course have elements that tend towards the
propositional pole; and even then, the reality co-principle remains in force. But,
and this is why I extensively expand on the gradual distinction between propo-
sitional and aesthetogenic modes of communication, it is easier to consciously
doubt the accuracy of information stemming from the propositional realm,
while it requires almost impossible efforts to attain the same caution in the aes-
thetogenic realm. In both cases, some effort is needed. Only the propositional
realm provides us with the simple but powerful grammatical technique of nega-
tion. This enables a recipient to question the accuracy of a particular element.
The aesthetogenic realm, however, knows shades, forms, and continuous quali-
ties only. It is difficult to doubt anything specific, since the aesthetogenic realm
does not feature anything one could pinpoint. For instance, it does not make
any sense to negate a specific shade of red in a painting or the expression of an
unusual form of pleasure in a poem. A recipient who is reluctant to accept the
representation can fail or even refuse to go along with the way it works, but
cannot negate a specific aesthegenically created experience. Only propositions
can be rebutted, but experiences one has lived through cannot.
I purport that the reality co-principle is a real-world fact, a fact about hu-
man cognition. It can therefore be tested in empirical research, and it should be.

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I am modestly suggesting some lines along which such research can be under-
taken. Until then I am quite confident that despite a lack of empirical evidence
my analysis corresponds to reality to a much greater extent than the normative
and traditional clear-cut separation of fiction and reality. At least, I see the
(non-scientific) evidence in large-scale cultural developments and in small-
scale personal experience.
Again, this is not to say that the line between fiction and nonfiction is blurry
in practice. Of course, we have a whole range of cultural techniques (Olsons
and Lamarques institutions) that govern both the identification of fiction as
such, and the socially acceptable uses of fiction. What is more, we have a good
grip on some intrinsic features of fiction that strike us even when we find a rep-
resentation devoid of all contexts suggesting fiction. The liminal cases those
which make us waver such as poetic journalism or documentary fiction may
be more instructive; still they are, in direct comparison, statistically negligible.
In practice, the difference between fiction and nonfiction is both vital and un-
ambiguous.
6 Fiction reconsidered
Since my analysis departs from Waltons insights about representations in gen-
eral and not so much about fiction, my results relate to the aesthetogenic realm
of human communication rather than to fiction in particular. The aesthetogenic
realm may indeed be typical of fiction (although the degrees to which works of
fiction approach the aesthetogenic pole vary enormously); yet it is present al-
most everywhere for flexibilitys sake, and to a more manifest degree, it is there
in every factual narrative whether in the news or in nonpublic accounts. Fi-
nally, I am now going to address the distinctiveness of fiction compared with
other forms of communication.
My assertion is simple. Fiction is a practice that grants communication more
liberty than is ceded by other cultural practices. I am thus refuting the conclu-
sions offered by those widespread theoretical attempts that seek to detect
the specific rules that guide the use of fiction. Contrary to these, I suggest that a
work of fiction itself lays out which uses may be possible.
Walton describes fiction as a game that is played with rules imposed by a
specific prop, and he implies that in many respects the rules are neither conclu-
sive nor complete. Not only are we not told what to do with the work of fiction,
but what is worse the rules are defined by the things we are playing with.

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In how far a work of fiction defines the rules is a matter of degree. Certainly,
the more common works of fiction adhere to habitual usages, the more simple
theories of readers responses will be valid. However, the interesting cases are
those works of fiction that demand an individual interpretation. They are not at
all rare; the bookshelves are full of them. Niklas Luhmann goes as far as to stat-
ing that every work of art whether or not fictional sets up its own rules of
usage. He speaks of an artworks self-programming (Luhmann 2000 [1995],
202210). It follows that fiction draws on two resources: the cultural invention
of art with its immense liberty and its self-programming on the one hand, and
the powers of massively aesthetogenic modes of communication on the other.
Unfortunately, both resources do not simply yield a definition of fiction; the
problem is that low-key fictional representations such as porn make only sparse
use of both resources. Even so, my conclusion is that the cultural and cognitive
phenomenon called fiction resides in the plane spanned by the axis of liberty in
communication and the axis of aesthetogenic expression. Inversely, anything
that is localizable in this plane will readily be labeled as fiction.
After all, every work of fiction can be an invitation to fathom the possibili-
ties of its use, to seek viable information, or to enjoy it without any specific
purpose. But fiction never promises anything. You are always warned not to
trust any of the information you receive, to always be prepared that any fiction-
al representation can mislead you in many ways even without you knowing.
And yet, stay hopeful that you will find some most valuable piece of knowledge
in a work of fiction.
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Remigius Bunia

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pressed in a precise language. Let me call this type of description between

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2 Knowledge, memory, and the human body

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popular distinction en passant, but the insufficiency of this distinction is a core

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in the visual (shapes, geometrical relationships, contours of known objects,

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interpretation of past perceptions, I suggest that language in many cases en-

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Two ways of dealing with perceptions have to be distinguished. They too

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such a narrow range of applications. In ordinary language, however, the control

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Yet, I am still speaking of utterances staying close to the propositional pole.

4 Representations vs. immediate experience

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measure the time interval of the dropping,

As far as these points are concerned, there is no apparent difference between

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5 Influence exercised by fictional and factual

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developed above: All compact elements within a representation receive much

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tions heavily rely on aesthetogenic techniques; stating simple facts in a proposi-

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