Literature, Truth, and Knowledge

In this article, I present an overview of the key positions and insights within the philosophical debate on the cognitive value of literary fiction. First, I discuss the various ways in which attempts have been made to align literature with the traditional philosophical and scientific concept of truth (propositional truth). Second, I consider a number of alternative concepts of knowledge and truth that have been put forward to understand the conceptual value of literature, such as ethical knowledge and self-knowledge. Then I address the ways in which empirical literary theory engages with these philosophical theories and attempts to support them through psychological experimentation. Fourth, I discuss the idea that literature provides us with a certain form of conceptual knowledge, followed by a discussion of the no-truth theory of literature, the idea that a work’s cognitive value is irrelevant to our valuation of a literary work as a work of art. Finally, I try to show an alternative to the problems that arise with the theories discussed and the lessons that can be learned from those theories, by focusing on Paul Ricoeur's ideas about the workings of fiction.