Can Emotions for Fictional Characters Be Real?

When a character dies in a novel, we may cry even though we know that no such person exists. This produces the so-called paradox of fiction: emotion seems to require belief that its object is real; readers do not believe fictional characters are real; yet readers are genuinely moved. If all three claims stand, the response appears unreasonable.

Colin Radford argued that this familiar reaction contains a kind of irrationality. Kendall Walton instead understood it as a quasi-emotion arising through participation in a game of make-believe. A different family of “thought theories” challenges the first claim directly. Emotion need not always require belief that an event actually occurred; seriously imagining a situation may be enough. We can fear a possible future accident involving someone we love without believing that it has already happened. Existence belief is therefore not necessary for every emotion.

My view is that sadness for a fictional character can be a genuine emotion. Tears, tension and pity do not become pretend merely because their object is constructed in words. We respond to the loss, courage or injustice the work presents. Yet genuine emotion does not make the event real. After closing the book, we do not call the police or arrange the character's funeral, because we know there is no actual event requiring intervention.

This is precisely part of fiction's power. It can give a situation emotional weight without deceiving us into believing that a person exists. Philosophy should distinguish whether an emotion occurs, what it is directed towards, and whether it generates reasons for real-world action, rather than compressing all three into one question.

Paradox of Fiction, The

https://philpapers.org/rec/WALFF