Fiction, Knowledge, Ethics

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Fiction, Knowledge, Ethics
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• Noel Carroll, Art, Narrative and Moral
  Understanding.
• start p. 134

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• Question what is the relation between works of
  art (fictional narrative) and morality/ethics?
• Are we right to make moral as opposed to
  aesthetic judgements about artworks?

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• Carroll first disposes of various straw men (up
  to p.134) autonomists, utopians, Marxists,
  post-structuralist, etc. But, he then presents
  his own account of this relation.
• His basic claim is that certain kinds of fiction
  naturally elicit a moral response from us,
  because they engage our moral judgement in
  reading the text.

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• However, he doesnt claim that we learn new
  knowledge from fiction but that we clarify our
  already existing knowledge.
• cf some interpretations of Aristotles
  katharsis.
• In effect, reading fiction is a kind of moral
  exercise/training

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• the successful narrative becomes the occasion
  for exercising knowledge, concepts, and emotions
  that we have already, in one sense,
  learnedNarratives, in other words, provide us
  with opportunities to, among other things,
  exercise our moral powers (141)

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• Hence, what he calls clarificationism does
  not claim that, in the standard case, we acquire
  interesting, new propositional knowledge from
  artworks, but rather that the artworks in
  question can deepen our moral understanding by,
  among other things, encouraging us to apply our
  moral knowledge and emotions to specific cases.
  (142)

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• Here, understanding is different from knowledge
  it is a kind of practical ability to apply
  knowledge a kind of wisdom.
• But, can this apply to emotions?
• Yes, he claims, because emotions involve a
  conceptual component so, we learn as Aristotle
  might say, to apply the right emotion to the
  appropriate object with suitable intensity. (144)

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• In other words, abstract moral principles need to
  be thought about in terms of concrete examples
  narrative fiction helps us to do that.

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• He now returns to another conflicting account
  that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who he reports as
  arguing that theatre cannot achieve moral reform
  of a community because the writer must conform
  to pre-existing standards in order to win over,
  and engage, and audience.(p.140)

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• Carroll, however, argues that the sort of
  clarification and deepening of understanding that
  he describes can lead to moral reform eg by
  broadening our moral sympathies to include, for
  example, people of other races (p.149)

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• Note, however, that for Carroll On the
  clarificationist model, moral assessments of
  narrative artworks can be grounded in the quality
  of our moral engagement with and experience of
  the narrative object. This engagement can be
  positive, where our moral understanding and/or
  emotions are deepened and clarified, or it can be
  negative, where the moral understanding is
  misled, confused, perverted, and so on. (151)

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• Also, NOTE the clarificationist contends that
  the moral assessment here is keyed to the very
  process itself of consuming the narrative artwork
  and not to the supposed behavioural consequences
  of that process. (152)
• this is a tactical decision simply because
  establishing behavioural impacts is so difficult.

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• What will happen if we apply these criteria to,
  for ex, A Clockwork Orange?
• What is its moral effect on the reader/viewer?
• Does it lead to any clarification of our moral
  principles, or emotions?

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• G. Currie, Realism of character and the value of
  fiction.
• Currie wants to establish that we can learn
  something, something useful, from fiction.
• He acknowledges that most people assume
  imagination and knowledge are worlds apart, BUT

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• Imagination might be a source of knowledge in
  imagining things, we might thereby come to know
  (possibly other) things. And if fictions are aids
  to imagination, they may lead indirectly to
  knowledge (p.161).
• To establish this, Currie first argues that there
  is a sense of realism in which realist
  literature can have this learning effect.

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• His version of realism
• It might be that works of literary fiction, are
  capable of calling forth from us imaginative
  responses that are similar to those called forth
  by our encounters with real people. (p.163)

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• Hence If works of literature and of narrative
  fiction generally have the capacity to affect
  us in ways significantly like the ways the world
  can affect us, then the idea that we can learn
  from fiction becomes at least very plausible.
  (163)
• But, how does this learning happen?

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• Specifically, for Currie, fiction can help us to
  plan our lives more effectively more morally.
• Fiction is like a training ground for making
  life-decisions.
• We come to feel what it is like to be those
  characters, make their choices, pursue their
  goals, and reap the rewards and consequences of
  their actions. And, by doing all this in
  imagination rather than simply trying our values
  in the real world we avoid the costs of bad
  choices. (164)

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• Of course it is difficult, if not impossible, to
  formulate what we have learned from any given
  work. But that doesnt mean we dont learn
  something
• Just as my inability to offer you a theory of
  bicycle riding is no objection to the claim that
  I know how to ride a bicycle, so my
  inarticulateness in the face of the question
  What did you learn from Middlemarch? is no
  refutation of the claim that I did, indeed, learn
  something from it. (164)

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• Essentially, Currie is arguing that the practice
  of imaginative projection, which we engage in
  through fiction, equips us both to understand
  other minds more effectively (through empathy,
  etc) AND to plan our lives more effectively
  (through imagining scenarios, outcomes, etc).
• However, he also faces the same question as
  Carroll can works of fiction change our moral
  priorities, etc?

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• Currie says YES fiction can assist moral
  change. Imaginative projection can help us to
  value responses that are not naturally our own,
  by enabling us to experience them in a new and
  revealing way. (172)
• In other words, we can acquire a taste for a
  certain set of values by vicariously experiencing
  them in fiction in the same way, Currie says,
  as we can acquire a taste for certain wines by
  trying them out(173)

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• And, once again, for Currie, the kinds of work
  which can do this are works of realism where
  that means there are significant commonalities
  between experiencing art and experiencing the
  world of people and other (non-art-world)
  objects. (174)

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• What will happen if we apply these criteria to,
  for ex, A Clockwork Orange?
• Is it a work of realism?
• Can we learn something useful from it?