I madam, in Abstract Philosophy

From: [Deadeye]
To: [Graduate Advisor]
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 00:24:52 -0500
Subject: Course Proposals

Hi [Graduate Advisor],

I was happy to learn that I’m eligible to apply to teach a course for
next year. I was talking to Alyssa, and she mentioned that one option
is for graduate students to design their own courses, not being
limited to the course titles on the list. Is this correct? I’ve been
looking through an anthology by Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes
on the philosophy of literature, and I think that a really interesting
introductory course could be made on the topic of philosophy of
fiction.

I’d be very interested in submitting a proposal for such a course, but
I wanted to check and make sure that that would be ok before spending
the time to make a provisional syllabus.

(I know that [other professor] teaches courses on philosophy in the
novel and in the short story, but the new course I have in mind will
have almost no overlap with her material; as I understand it, she takes
literature as a prompt for discussion of moral issues — I am interested
in exploring the nature of literature and our response to it.)

To give a very brief idea of the sort of thing I’d be interesting in
covering, here is a list of a few possibilities:

* What makes something a piece of fiction? It’s not nearly so simple
as being false. Currie thinks it has to do with a particular sort of
intent from the author. Walton thinks it’s a question of how it’s
used by the reader.

* Ontology of fiction. Two copies of the same novel are instances of
the same fiction. What about two translations? Two editions? A
series of retellings over a long period of time? What if two people
happen by chance to produce word-for-word identical novels? What is
the relation between a physical book and the fiction it represents?
Wollheim thinks that fictions are types, and books are tokens.
Goodman is willing to identify works of literature with sequences of
words in a language.

* Truth in fiction. Lewis discusses a possible worlds-based theory of
truth in fiction. Currie gives an account based on reasonability of
belief attribution to certain characters.

* Emotional responses to fiction. How is it that we have emotional
responses to entities and facts that we don’t believe in? The problem
is especially salient if we’re attracted to a cognitive theory of
emotion. Walton thinks that we merely imagine ourselves having
emotions. Currie thinks that belief-like imaginings are enough to
generate emotions.

* Imaginitive resistance. Typically, authors are authoritative about
what is true in their fictions. But this does not seem always to be
true: an author may not make a morally wrong action morally right
merely by decreeing it to be so. This puzzle was first noticed by
Hume, and possible solutions have been proposed by Walton, Gendler,
Currie, and our formerly-own Weatherson.

I think that this could be a really exciting and worthwhile course,
which could really give introductory students a strong and accessible
introduction to philosophy. If it sounds like the sort of thing that
is worth a real proposal, I will write one up.

Thanks,

[Deadeye]

—
[Deadeye Lastname]
Graduate Student
Philosophy Department
[University] University

“Oh, philosophers may sing!”