Experiencing something as happening to you

In some video games, it feels like I am doing the in-game character’s actions and in others it feels like I am playing a character that does the actions. The distinction does not map onto the distinction between first-person-view and third-person-view. In a first-person view game, even a virtual reality one (I’ve been playing Asgard Wrath 2 on my Quest 2 headset), it can still feel like a character is doing the action, even if visually I see things from the character’s point of view. On the other hand, one can have a cartoonish third-person-view game where it feels like I am doing the character’s actions—for instance, Wii Sports tennis. (And, of course, there are games which have no in-game character responsible for the actions, such as chess or various puzzle games like Vexed. But my focus is on games where there is something like an in-game character.)

For those who don’t play video games, note that one can watch a first-person-view movie like Lady in the Lake without significantly identifying with the character whose point of view is presented by the camera. And sometimes there is a similar distinction in dreams, between events happening to one and events happening to an in-dream character from whose point of view one looks at things. (And, reversely, in real life some people suffer from a depersonalization where feels like the events of life are happening to a different person.)

Is there anything philosophically interesting that we can say about the felt distinction between seeing something from someone else’s point of view—even in a highly immersive and first-person way as in virtual reality—and seeing it as happening to oneself? I am not sure. I find myself feeling like things are happening to me more in games with a significant component of physical exertion (Wii Sports tennis, VR Thrill of the Fight boxing) and where the player character doesn’t have much character to them, so it is easier to embody them, and less so in games with a significant narrative where the player character has character of their own—even when it is pretty compelling, as in Deus Ex. Maybe both the physical aspect and the character aspect are bound up in a single feature—control. In games with a significant physical component, there is more physical control. And in games where there is a well-developed player character, presumably to a large extent this is because the character’s character is the character’s own and only slightly under one’s control (e.g., maybe one can control fairly coarse-grained features, roughly corresponding to alignment in D&D).

If this is right, then a goodly chunk of the “it’s happening to me” feeling comes not from the quality of the sensory inputs—one can still have that feeling when the inputs are less realistic and lack it when they are more realistic—but from control. This is not very surprising. But if it is true, it might have some philosophical implications outside of games and fiction. It might suggest that self-consciousness is more closely tied to agency than is immediately obvious—that self-consciousness is not just a matter of a sequence of qualia. (Though, I suppose, someone could suggest that the feeling of self-conscious is just yet another quale, albeit one that typically causally depends on agency.)

Two kinds of pseudonymity

Consider two examples of pseudonymity:

• Samuel Clemens writes Life on the Mississippi, signing it “Mark Twain”.

• Konrad Kujau writes The Hitler Diaries, signing them “Adolf Hitler”.

There is a crucial literary difference here: tokens of “Mark Twain” in Life on the Mississippi (say, on the title page) refer to Samuel Clemens, while any tokens of “Adolf Hitler” in The Hitler Diaries would refer to Adolf Hitler. We can correctly say that Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens and wrote Life on the Mississippi, but we cannot say that Adolf Hitler is Konrad Kujau or that Adolf Hitler wrote The Hitler Diaries. On the other hand, when Clemens’ text speaks in the first person about life on the Mississippi, the text tells us about Clemens’ life. But when Kujau’s text speaks in the first person about life in Berlin, the text tells us about Hitler’s life.

In fact, strictly speaking a pen name like “Samuel Clemens” is not pseudonymous in the etymological sense of the word—“falsely naming”—but just an additional name adopted by the author for certain purposes.

Note that the distinction is not due to the fact that Adolf Hitler is a historical person distinct from Konrad Kujau. A fake diary of a fictitious serial killer would be pseudonymous in the same sense that The Hitler Diaries are: the purported author’s name fails to refer to the real author. Of course there is this difference: in the The Hitler Diaries there is a real mass murderer to whom the text refers, while in the diary of the fictitious serial killer, the purported author’s name does not refer. (This, I think, is true even if fictional characters have existence, as a fictitious character is not a fictional character.) But in both cases the author’s name is truly false.

Fundamental bearers of aesthetic properties

I am finding myself frustrated trying to figure out whether the fundamental bearers of aesthetic properties are mental states or things out in the world. When I think about the fact that there does not seem to be any significant difference between the beauty of music that one actually listens to with one’s ears versus “music” that is directly piped to the auditory center of the brain, that makes me think that the fundamental bearers of aesthetic properties are mental states.

But on the other hand, when I think about the beauty of character exhibited by a Mother Teresa, I find it hard to think that it is my mental states—say, my thoughts about Mother Teresa—that bear the fundamental aesthetic properties. If I thought that it was my mental states that are the bearers of aesthetic properties, then I would think that a fictional Mother Teresa is just as beautiful as a real one. But it seems to me that a part of the beauty of the real Mother Teresa is that she is real.

Perhaps the fundamental bearers of aesthetic properties vary. For music and film, perhaps, the fundamental bearers are mental states: the experiences one paradigmatically has when listening and viewing (but which one could also have by direct brain input). For the characters of real people, perhaps, the fundamental bearers are the people themselves or their characters. For the characters of fictional people, perhaps, the fundamental bearers are mentally constituted (in the mind of the author or that of the audience or both).

Maybe the beauty of a real person is a different thing from the beauty of a fictional character. This kind of makes sense. For we might imagine an author who creates a beautiful work of literature portraying a nasty person: the nasty person qua fictional character is beautiful, but would have been ugly in real life, perhaps.

But I hate views on which we have such a pluralism of fundamental bearers of a property.

Lying in fiction?

It seems that fiction can't lie because, well, it's fiction. But suppose you are reading a novel, and it says: "A woman wearing a woolen cloak entered the room." A chapter later, you learn there was no woman, but a wizard created an illusion. Weren't you lied to by the author?

In those cases where the narrator is a character, at most the narrator lied. But what if the narration is by an impersonal omniscient narrator? Certainly, at the least there is temporary deceit about the world of the fiction, and the deceit is created within the context of a literary style where the reader expects truth about the world of the fiction.

But lying requires assertion. Could we say that statements of an impersonal omniscient narrator are assertions about the world of the fiction? That would seem to be going too far.

Fictional characters and the ontological argument

This argument is valid:

1. If God exists in any way, he exists in the supreme way of existing.
2. If God does not exist in the supreme way of existing, God exists as a fictional character.
3. So, God exists in the supreme way of existing.

Emotions towards fictional characters

You're attending a performance of Wit. Vivian is dying of cancer. If you're human, you have compassion for her. You don't want her to die.

We say stuff like that. But is this really how we feel. Emotions have an essential motivational force. But are you motivated to stop Vivian from dying?

Maybe you are motivated, but there is nothing you can do to act on that motivation? Yet there is. You could run on stage, and threaten or bribe the actors to make sure that Vivian lives. Or you could pray that the playwright had put in a happy ending.

Or imagine that you are Margaret Edson's friend, and she's just written the first half of the play and let you read it. Maybe you could plead with her that Vivian live, even though you have a nagging suspicion that art may call for Vivian's death. Surely, if you really cared about Vivian, you would plead, or, if not that, at least you'd feel guilty to be sacrificing her on the altar of art. But there is no call for guilt here.

So, I don't think we really have compassion for Vivian. Rather, there is some kind of a shadow feeling. This shadow feeling has similar phenomenology to the real thing, but its motivational force is different. If I am right about this, this blunts St. Augustine's criticism of drama that it causes inappropriate feelings. For the shadow feelings are quite right.

Fear when watching a horror film, though, may be different... It might be real fear, not just a shadow. But that's because one fears for oneself rather than for a fictional character: one fears being startled by something particularly gruesome, say.

Plot Armor

When Bob is the lead protagonist of a work, his presence is essential to the plot. Accordingly, the rules of the world seem to bend around him. The very fact that he's the main character protects him from death, serious wounds, and generally all lasting harm (until the plot calls for it). Even psychological damage can be held at bay by Bob's suit of Plot Armor. -tvtropes

It's natural to think of Plot Armor as a bad thing, a kind of invulnerability with no in-world explanation.

But I think it's not as bad as it seems at first sight. Suppose the possible world where Bob's story happens were actual. There is a selection effect as to which people we want to hear a long real-life story about. First, their life has to be interesting. One way for a life to be interesting is for the person to face a lot of danger. Second, their life needs to be sufficiently long to tell a long story about. Third, we don't want to hear too many depressing stories, so we don't want a story about someone whose life completely falls apart. All of this makes it likely that even in the real world, stories like Bob's are going to be likely to be told.

In a world with billions of people, we expect some to have multiple unlikely hair's-breadth escapes. And we'd like to hear stories about them. It's unlikely that escapes this narrow happen to Bob, but not so unlikely that they happen to someone.

So it's false to say that Plot Armor has no in-world explanation. If we imagine the story as being told by an in-world narrator (perhaps an implied one), we can give an in-world explanation in terms of selection by the narrator.

Of course, when the unlikeness of the escapes reaches the point that we wouldn't expect anyone to have them even with the population being as large as the story portrays it to be (Science Fiction about a whole populated galaxy will have more latitude here due to a much larger population to work with), this is problematic.

Fictional characters, heaven and the multiverse

One of the minor sadnesses of life is when you finish a work of fiction and then you miss a character from there, wishing for more interaction with that character (some examples in my own case: Gandalf, Twoflower, Lucy Pevensie, Sherlock Holmes, Pan Wolodyjowski, Elizabeth Bennet, JC Denton, Inspector Gently, and the Moomins). It's not so much that you want to meet that character in real life (my first thought was that I wanted to meet the character, but then I realized that I just wouldn't click with all of them). But you want something like eternal fictional life for the character (to be distinguished from fictional eternal life, which at least the characters created by authors who believe in eternal life are presumed to have even if this is not mentioned, just as they are presumed to have spleens even if this is not mentioned).

In heaven all tears are wiped away, and presumably this includes the minor ones. So how is the minor sadness of missing a fictional character met? One possibility is that all that is engaging about any person, real or fictional, is his or her way of participating in God. Thus the beatific vision of God will supply the reality that the character is a shadow of.

But although the beatific vision we hope to receive after death even before the resurrection of the body will give us a bliss fulfilling our deepest desires, there is something fitting to our nature to also receive back our bodies. Likewise, then, there is something fitting to our nature to also receive back contact with fictional characters.

Let's speculate. Does this mean that further episodes in their lives will continue to be fictionally created—either by their author or by oneself—ad infinitum? Maybe: these episodes might be set in an infinite afterlife, or they might would-have-been episodes in parallel universes. But there may be a way in which such extension could betray the finitude and integrity of the author's creation, even when in-story the character has eternal life (as Lucy Pevensie clearly does). Though this is definitely one option. Another option is that even the finite earthly life of any real person has infinite thickness, infinite depth of participation in God. If so, then one might enjoy interaction with the character by coming to a deeper and deeper appreciation of the character. Another option is that we might stick to the canonical works created on earth, but have the ability to re-enjoy these works even more deeply than the first time (say, by reaching back in memory to them).

An even more daring option is that we might be living in a very large multiverse and we might meet the real people of whom the characters were shadows. But I am not sure that this is what we really want--I think in at least some of the cases (JC Denton?) we want more of the fictional interaction, rather than a meeting with a real-life person like the character.

There are interesting parallels between this set of issues and the issue of losing a pet.

I suppose the one thing we can with confidence about questions like is that way in which our tears--minor in this case, major in other cases--will be wiped away will be surprising...

Fictional entities

A student tells me: "Patrick Jones stole my laptop. Could I get an extension?" But the student's laptop has never been stolen, and the student knows it. Clearly the student has to be lying. Or does she? Suppose that we accept a realism about fictional entities, and suppose that shortly before coming to class, the student wrote a very short story in which Patrick Jones steals her laptop after she writes her homework. On realist views of fictional characters on which one can correctly say "Odysseus was resourceful", the student has told me the sober truth. (That she features in the story is clearly not a problem—stories can include real entities.) That seems to be a good reason to reject such views. This argument leaves untouched realist views on "Odysseus is a fictional character" is literally true, but "Odysseus was resourceful" should be taken to be elliptical for something like "Odysseus was resourceful in the Odyssey."

Devotional use of fantasy and science fiction

The kind of fantasy and science fiction that I like describes a possible world as it were from the inside (i.e., the sentences are to be interpreted relative to that world, as if that world were actual, in the sense of two-dimensional semantics—this makes it possible for the stories to have alternate origins for "the human race" and so on). Some of these possible worlds are fairly close to ours (realistic kinds of science fiction) and some are quite far from ours. Besides the kinds of values that every kind of literature can have, such as giving us a richer picture of moral deliberation, imaginative fiction of the sort I like also performs a devotional service—it gives us a richer picture of the power of God. There perhaps are no hobbits, probably there are no vast plasma-based intelligent beings in the sun, perhaps we do not live in a multiverse, almost surely there are no vampire-like unconscious but sophisticatedly cognitive beings, and probably God did not become incarnate as a lion; but all these things might have been so, by the power of God.

That does not mean that the fiction has to be overtly theistic or by a theistic author. Any picture of a genuinely possible world is a picture of a world in which God would exist, since God exists necessarily, in all worlds (and in the case of "God", the two-dimensional intension is constant, so we don't need to distinguish between conceivability and possibility). If the story is not compatible with the existence of God—for instance, if it contains a story of the ultimate origination of the cosmos incompatible with theism, or if it contains innocents suffering for eternity, vel caetera—then the story fails to describe a possible world.

Personally, I am made uncomfortable by imaginative fiction that does not describe a possible world. Besides rare cases of stories that appear to be clearly incompatible with theism, an offender is time travel stories that often violate metaphysical strictures against causal loops and circular explanation. I was also made uncomfortable by a Greg Egan story where mathematics itself is changed by human activity. (I think I am also made a bit uncomfortable by stories that strongly imply that what is happening is in our world—this world we live in—whereas the content of the story is metaphysically incompatible with how things are up to now. For instance, stories that give an alternate account of how "we humans" came into existence. But that is easily taken care of by reinterpreting the story without the rigidity of "our world"—that's what two-dimensional semantics is for.)

Philosophy and literature

Different genres of literature are apt to give insights in different areas of philosophy:

• science fiction: metaphysics and mind
• mystery: epistemology
• fantasy: philosophy of religion
• non-genre fiction: ethics

Of course there are many exceptions.

Evil and utopian fiction

If the following proposition were true, we would have made some progress in answering the deductive problem of evil:

1. The actual world is better for beings of our sort than any world that has no evil in it.

Is (1) true? Here is one possible piece of evidence for it: Utopian fiction does not present compelling evil-free worlds where one would like to live.

Literature

There is a very nice, and not at all ad hoc, theistic explanation of why there exist beings who like telling stories. Creation reflects the creator. The creator is the author of the universe, and so there is good reason for there to be creatures who also engage in authorship. I have no doubt that a just-so evolutionary story can be given about the practice of story-telling. However, I suspect that, nonetheless, the fact that we tell stories is evidence for theism over and against naturalism.