tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5673382.post5891683091099670493..comments2024-03-27T08:33:11.834-07:00Comments on There is some truth in that: How rich is truth in fiction?Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05260245860017778409noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5673382.post-38025453222528919292009-07-05T04:41:15.000-07:002009-07-05T04:41:15.000-07:00Hi Jonathan,I am not sure I share the same intuiti...Hi Jonathan,<br><br>I am not sure I share the same intuition as you in your non-fiction case. In particular, I am not seeing why, if you wrote a very deceptively misleading biography of David Lewis, such that anyone who read it would walk away with rampant false beliefs about him, using only true sentences then the biography would still be true, just misleading.<br><br>Here is how I thought of the distinction. With misleading biographies, there are multiple equally-eligible interpretations, some of which result in fictional worlds that does not match the actual world, but some others result in fictional worlds that do match the actual world (save for "silly questions" stuff). In contrast, with outright false biographies, the most eligible interpretation results in a fictional world that does not match the actual world. So if you wrote a biography of David Lewis such that anyone who read it would walk away with rampant false beliefs about him, that seems outright false to me. (Of course, there are more complications from how beliefs come from narratives, even non-fictional ones, but we can ignore that for now.) Do you think this distinction I'm drawing is unfair to people's common understanding?<br><br>So I guess what I am inclined to reject is simply the claim that "A non-fiction’s content is true if its sentences are."Shen-yi Liaohttp://gogrue.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5673382.post-70416401314025875152009-07-05T09:37:16.000-07:002009-07-05T09:37:16.000-07:00Yeah, that's a way to go. I'm just not sur...Yeah, that's a way to go. I'm just not sure it's going to hold up. Is one guilty of libel if one writes the merely misleading?<br><br>What about a newspaper story? Suppose everything in it is true, but (maybe unbeknownst to the journalist who wrote it), something that is strongly suggested by it is false? I think it's a true non-fiction, even though a fictional version of it would be the sort of thing that, according to orthodoxy, would have falsehoods true in the fiction.Jonathannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5673382.post-66306585131835275792009-07-06T05:33:15.000-07:002009-07-06T05:33:15.000-07:00Well, I think it's okay even if the legal defi...Well, I think it's okay even if the legal definition of libel comes apart from what we ordinarily think of the distinction between misleading and outright false.<br><br>Speaking of the newspaper story, I wonder what you think about the following example. Apparently the FOX News Anchor Neil Cavuto often gives outrageous headlines, phrased as a question, like "Isn't it obvious that Barack Obama is the devil?" So suppose he wrote the following news story, containing two lines: "Barack Obama is the president of USA. Isn't it obvious that Barack Obama is the devil?"<br><br>In that case, every assertion in the story is true. But it seems that we would have good reasons to call it not just misleading, but outright false because of the presupposition of the question. I just don't get the intuition that that news story ought to count as true, except in some super-literal sense unfamiliar to ordinary speech. (Similar examples, I am sure, can also be constructed with, say, imperatives.)<br><br>The bigger point is that it seems your argument turns importantly on this intuition, and the intuition doesn't seem obvious. So, given the potentially disastrous consequences, why not preserve the sensible, coherent theory?Shen-yi Liaohttp://gogrue.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5673382.post-78758039469699673012009-07-06T22:33:11.000-07:002009-07-06T22:33:11.000-07:00I guess in my case, the intuitions are quite stron...I guess in my case, the intuitions are quite strong. I don't think the problem with that news story (if indeed it qualifies as such) is falsity.Jonathannoreply@blogger.com