Fiction as Thought Experiment

Perspectives on Science 22 (2):221-241 (2014)
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Abstract

Jonathan Bennett (1974) maintains that Huckleberry Finn’s deliberations about whether to return Jim to slavery afford insight into the tension between sympathy and moral judgment; Miranda Fricker (2007) argues that the trial scene in To Kill a Mockingbird affords insight into the nature of testimonial injustice. Neither claims merely that the works prompt an attentive reader to think something new or to change her mind. Rather, they consider the reader cognitively better off for her encounters with the novels. Nor is her cognitive improvement restricted to acquiring new justified true beliefs about the works themselves. What the reader gleans is supposed to enhance her knowledge or understanding of the ..

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Catherine Elgin
Harvard University

Citations of this work

How Thought Experiments Increase Understanding.Michael T. Stuart - 2018 - In Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown, The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge. pp. 526-544.
The aesthetic value of scientific experiments.Milena Ivanova - 2023 - In Milena Ivanova & Alice Murphy, The Aesthetics of Scientific Experiments. New York, NY: Routledge.
The Normativity of Imagination and the Evolution of Thought Experiments.Daniele Molinari - 2025 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 15 (2):581-598.

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References found in this work

Considered Judgment.Catherine Z. Elgin - 1996 - Princeton: New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Languages of Art.Nelson Goodman - 1970 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 3 (1):62-63.
Considered Judgment.Catherine Z. Elgin - 1999 - Princeton: Princeton University Press.
The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn.Jonathan Bennett - 1974 - Philosophy 49 (188):123-134.

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