Epistemic status: playing devil's advocate.
I wrote the following a couple of weeks back for a meet-up post, and Gunnar_Zarncke suggested I should turn it into a discussion post:
Fiction is not a lie, but it is a variety of untruth. It absorbs time and energy which could be spent on fact. Although we make a conscious distinction between fictional worlds and reality, we will often use fictional examples when evaluating real-life situations. It has been argued that we should learn to take joy in the world we actually live in. Why should we allow fiction to warp our view of reality?
Perhaps fiction offers a fun, relaxing break. I can understand this claim in two different ways. The first version is that reading fiction gives us a rest from serious thinking, restoring us in some way. So, is this really true? Often when we feel tired of thinking, we're really tired of thinking about some particular thing. We gain new mental energy when we switch to something else. We think this means we're unable to do productive work, and need to take a break; but often, we could continue to be productive on a sufficiently different task, which gave us the same variety as a "break" would. (This is anecdotal. I recall seeing a discussion of this in a lesswrong post, but didn't figure out which one.) Alternatively, if we really are exhausted, reading fiction might not be restoring our energy as much as taking a nap or perhaps meditating. In either case, the pro-fiction argument seems murky. Answering this question is difficult, because it's far from obvious why certain types of thinking seem to take "mental effort" and leave us feeling drained. (It seems it might be a mechanism for sensing high opportunity cost, or it might be due to depleting a physical resource in the brain.)
A second way to interpret this is that consuming fiction is closer to being an end, rather than a means. The joy which fiction creates, or the rich inner experience, may be a good in and of itself. Whether it's useful for restorative purposes or not, it's good that society keeps churning the fiction mill, because it's one of the things which makes lifeworthwhile. Some people will readily agree with this, while others will feel it's very close to advocating wireheading. At a recent LW meetup here in LA, one person argued that if you're going to enjoy living in some universe, it might as well be the real one. I suppose the idea is that we should seek to make the enjoyable aspects of fiction into a reality, rather than exercising shallow escapism. I'm not sure this view can be defended, however. If you've got something like a computational theory of mind, and believe that uploading yourself into a virtual world is OK, how do you draw a firm line between "reality" and "fiction" to say which kinds of experiences are really valuable and in which you're just fooling yourself? Is it a matter of a sufficiently detailed simulation, which includes other conscious beings rather than puppets, and so on?
Maybe...
Robin Hanson discusses the social value of stories: those who read fiction are more empathetic toward others, seemingly fooled by story logic into acting as if good behavior is always rewarded and bad behavior punished. Although clearly valuable, this gives me the uneasy sense that stories are manipulative control directives. I mayenjoy the story, but does that make me comfortable accepting control directives from this particular author? Or should we examine the moral character of the author, before reading?
To make our arguments stick, we've got to compare fiction to relevant alternatives. It seems to me that we can havealmost as much fun reading biographies, memoirs, and (entertainingly written) history as we can reading fiction... and all with the advantage of being real facts about the real world, which seems at least a little useful.
I'm going to make the argument that fiction is as much grounded in this reality as a biography or textbook it is just referencing a different facet of that reality. Fiction is not an honest appeal for the reader to accept an alternate reality as fact. None of the events are considered real by writer or reader and thus do not enter into future decision making. It is instead a reflection of the mind of the writer. Because of this there is real world information to be gleaned from fiction.
Primarily fiction is a teaching tool. Metaphor and analogy allow the writer to express understandings about the world in an abstract form. Rather than teaching the specifics of a real event the writer attempts to reformulate pertinent information into a new narrative . Lessons learned in this abstracted form should be more generally applicable. Because the writer must draw from reality, the fiction is an analog of his reality. Because readers respond best to fiction that meshes with real world experience, writer attempts to make his works essentially realistic. Fiction is a retelling of reality through the lens of a writer's experiencing mind.
Second, Fiction is the product of what the writer wishes to say, or believes readers wish to hear. It is a very honest form of disseminating cultural beliefs. Reading fiction can tell you as much if not more about the attitudes of a culture than examining the real actions of those within it. The morals and lessons do not have to be adopted by the reader to be understood by the reader.
Lastly, if fiction is deemed worthy in the reader's mind it can serve as an experiential expansion. You might argue that reading non-fiction can have the same effect, but I refer back to my first point. Fiction is a more concentrated and abstracted form of experiential expression. Reading well written fiction can allow the mind to simulate many emotional and cognitive scenarios before they are encountered in real life. While basing real actions on fiction may seem ungrounded, it's how the mind works anyway. Even if someone else is not writing the fiction for us, our minds are doing it all the time anyway. We predict the outcome of action by simulating - creating a fiction.
I mostly agree with you, and would also point out that people (some, at least) enjoy poetry. I think one of the functions of poetry is developing the language; adding new 'seen things', as opposed to 'understood things' we get from common speech. 'Rosemary is for remembrance' was never about rosemary, but it has some meaning, and it conveys the sheer tragedy without forcing the reader to stand up for Ophelia. Fiction reminds people of generalized possibilities and reasons for helping others, much more enticing than real life can offer.
My mom is a psycholog... (read more)