Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The best-known arguments for the reality of emotions to fictional characters are (on their own) unable to show that appreciators of fiction have genuine emotional attitudes to fictional characters. At best, they point to the need to distinguish fictional emotions as states from fictional emotions as (relational) attitudes. I argue for this position by using an argumentative strategy that parallels one found in Brentano’s reist account of intentional states involving non-existent objects. The conception of emotional states that emerges yields a natural anti-realist conception of the intentional objects of such states and supports the view that we can have genuine emotions for unreal fictional objects. I contrast this view with Tim Crane’s and Mark Sainsbury’s well-known anti-realist views of intentionality.
Source: Philosophia
Author: Frederick William Kroon
Institution: University of Auckland
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,090
Funder: University of Auckland
OpenAlex ID: W4407144033