In this chapter, I attempt to formulate a framework to analyze, understand, and explain the differences between things we consider fiction and things we consider reality. It all starts with the belief system we adhere to, upon which truth is attributed to things encountered in the world. The belief system is established through upbringing (religion, culture, science, education) and updated through personal experience. The belief system is formed through consistent, reliable, and trustworthy behavior of the parents, which induces a feeling of security and safety with the child. Because of this, truth claims have a moral side and ultimately rely on authority. When experiences in the physical world run counter to the belief system, doubt is induced and the feeling of security is no longer guaranteed. This is what fiction does all of the time; it is “unsafe.” If you are a strong believer, the inconsistency with your beliefs will be regarded as ‘wrong perception.’ If you are self-skeptic, the beliefs need adaptation. The belief system predefines what is true and based on that, phenomena in the physical world are classified as fiction or reality (ontological classification). Yet, these are judgments on a global level, trying to categorize the complete instance (e.g., people cannot fly with wax wings). At a more detailed level, fauns and water spirits can have a most realistic allure. The wings may look like real wings, the wax may be real wax, and the person playing Icarus may be a real person. These epistemic appraisals lead to an experience of realism that can be so strong that it overpowers the conceptual classification of a stage play or Virtual Reality environment as fiction.
Putting a genre label on a product of fiction is convenient to bypass the difficulties in the fiction-reality discussion. You can stop thinking because the label says what it is and you know what to expect. Genre helps to reinforce your concepts and classifications. However, the genre discussion is a mine field of its own. There is quite some confusion about the epistemic meaning of ‘reality soap,’ ‘social realism,’ or ‘virtual reality.’ This chapter treats a number of issues in genre theory such as the dynamics of genre, its pragmatic use, and its relation to schemata and cognitive scripts. In addition, it presents a reality-based genre taxonomy to overcome the inconsistencies of individual genre labels and incorporates this taxonomy into the fiction-reality framework.
Sometimes things happen that disrupt our world view. That we should be capable of adapting our understanding of the world is well-illustrated by biological metamorphosis or shape-shifting, which happens when an organism goes through a sharp change of physical structure (cf. butterflies, frogs, salamanders). If you cannot let go of fixed concepts, caterpillar and butterfly appear to be two unrelated animals. Metamorphosis occurs frequently and does not only happen to animals but to humans and dead matter as well. For many organisms, shifting into another form has great advantages, for example, to avoid danger or attract sexual attention. Because metamorphosis occurs so often and urges to reconsider the boundaries of ontological classes and the attribution of truth, this chapter discusses the position of metamorphosis in the theory of fiction. It offers a set of rules to distinguish different types of metamorphosis and demonstrates the relation between metamorphosis and impersonation, personification, and metaphor. Finally, this chapter offers a theory of how metaphor takes metamorphosis from shifting forms into shifting meanings as well.
The present chapter offers a signal-detection account of decision making in the fiction domain. Ontological classification, the fiction-reality confusion, the perception of metamorphosis; these phenomena are all liable to the effects of signal strength, personal sensitivity, and tolerance levels to determine in or out, yes or no, true or false. We look into the mechanism that regulates individual tolerance to find out that when the signal-to-noise ratio approaches one (1), illusion transpires. This chapter also shows that perceptual illusions are necessary for us to effectively navigate the world; hence, trusting on fiction as if it were reality is our second nature. We will look at the creation of illusions from a data-driven as well as a more conceptual level and then I will incorporate our findings in the fiction-reality framework.
Previously, I argued that the decision for fiction and reality was based on individual sensitivity and tolerance as related to signal strength. However, such decisions for ‘real’ or ‘unreal’ are the end phase of a larger process of epistemic appraisal. In addition, we also identified in earlier chapters a contamination between the attribution of truth and ethical considerations. This chapter argues that truth attribution and perception of realism have an affective component. The best way to illustrate this is to look at how we respond to virtual people. Not only do we have to deal with those who pretend being someone else (cf. the phisher), we also respond emotionally to fictional characters, whether we can interact with them (e.g., game characters, embodied agents, avatars, robots) or not (e.g., in novels, movies, soap series, reality shows, or theater play). In many of these cases, epistemic appraisals are affected by emotionally-laden factors. This chapter will also look at characters with a symbolic or figurative side and at humanoid robots that are meant to replace real people at certain tasks. Moreover, we will touch upon the possibilities of interacting with virtual people by connecting the computer directly to our brains (cf. cyborgs) and how that may relate to moral reasoning.
The lessons learned throughout this book are combined in this chapter and integrated into a semi-formal process model of how the epistemics of the virtual work. This framework accounts for the fiction-reality confusion, attribution of truth, perceived realism, and metaphor as well as the experiential side of dealing with virtual people (e.g., ethical behavior). Its purpose is not only to improve our understanding of fiction with a sophisticated framework of analysis but also to lay the foundation for formal models to equip our virtual counterparts with so that everybody stays on the same page when holding the virtual against the actual. This is the book’s final chapter and essentially an annotation of the final chart. To avoid repetition, I put more effort in constructing the chart than in its textual explanation, which is actually a summary of the book as a whole.
In this chapter, I attempt to formulate a framework to analyze, understand, and explain the differences between things we consider fiction and things we consider reality. It all starts with the belief system we adhere to, upon which truth is attributed to things encountered in the world. The belief system is established through upbringing (religion, culture, science, education) and updated through personal experience. The belief system is formed through consistent, reliable, and trustworthy behavior of the parents, which induces a feeling of security and safety with the child. Because of this, truth claims have a moral side and ultimately rely on authority. When experiences in the physical world run counter to the belief system, doubt is induced and the feeling of security is no longer guaranteed. This is what fiction does all of the time; it is “unsafe.” If you are a strong believer, the inconsistency with your beliefs will be regarded as ‘wrong perception.’ If you are self-skeptic, the beliefs need adaptation. The belief system predefines what is true and based on that, phenomena in the physical world are classified as fiction or reality (ontological classification). Yet, these are judgments on a global level, trying to categorize the complete instance (e.g., people cannot fly with wax wings). At a more detailed level, fauns and water spirits can have a most realistic allure. The wings may look like real wings, the wax may be real wax, and the person playing Icarus may be a real person. These epistemic appraisals lead to an experience of realism that can be so strong that it overpowers the conceptual classification of a stage play or Virtual Reality environment as fiction.
Putting a genre label on a product of fiction is convenient to bypass the difficulties in the fiction-reality discussion. You can stop thinking because the label says what it is and you know what to expect. Genre helps to reinforce your concepts and classifications. However, the genre discussion is a mine field of its own. There is quite some confusion about the epistemic meaning of ‘reality soap,’ ‘social realism,’ or ‘virtual reality.’ This chapter treats a number of issues in genre theory such as the dynamics of genre, its pragmatic use, and its relation to schemata and cognitive scripts. In addition, it presents a reality-based genre taxonomy to overcome the inconsistencies of individual genre labels and incorporates this taxonomy into the fiction-reality framework.
Sometimes things happen that disrupt our world view. That we should be capable of adapting our understanding of the world is well-illustrated by biological metamorphosis or shape-shifting, which happens when an organism goes through a sharp change of physical structure (cf. butterflies, frogs, salamanders). If you cannot let go of fixed concepts, caterpillar and butterfly appear to be two unrelated animals. Metamorphosis occurs frequently and does not only happen to animals but to humans and dead matter as well. For many organisms, shifting into another form has great advantages, for example, to avoid danger or attract sexual attention. Because metamorphosis occurs so often and urges to reconsider the boundaries of ontological classes and the attribution of truth, this chapter discusses the position of metamorphosis in the theory of fiction. It offers a set of rules to distinguish different types of metamorphosis and demonstrates the relation between metamorphosis and impersonation, personification, and metaphor. Finally, this chapter offers a theory of how metaphor takes metamorphosis from shifting forms into shifting meanings as well.
The present chapter offers a signal-detection account of decision making in the fiction domain. Ontological classification, the fiction-reality confusion, the perception of metamorphosis; these phenomena are all liable to the effects of signal strength, personal sensitivity, and tolerance levels to determine in or out, yes or no, true or false. We look into the mechanism that regulates individual tolerance to find out that when the signal-to-noise ratio approaches one (1), illusion transpires. This chapter also shows that perceptual illusions are necessary for us to effectively navigate the world; hence, trusting on fiction as if it were reality is our second nature. We will look at the creation of illusions from a data-driven as well as a more conceptual level and then I will incorporate our findings in the fiction-reality framework.
Previously, I argued that the decision for fiction and reality was based on individual sensitivity and tolerance as related to signal strength. However, such decisions for ‘real’ or ‘unreal’ are the end phase of a larger process of epistemic appraisal. In addition, we also identified in earlier chapters a contamination between the attribution of truth and ethical considerations. This chapter argues that truth attribution and perception of realism have an affective component. The best way to illustrate this is to look at how we respond to virtual people. Not only do we have to deal with those who pretend being someone else (cf. the phisher), we also respond emotionally to fictional characters, whether we can interact with them (e.g., game characters, embodied agents, avatars, robots) or not (e.g., in novels, movies, soap series, reality shows, or theater play). In many of these cases, epistemic appraisals are affected by emotionally-laden factors. This chapter will also look at characters with a symbolic or figurative side and at humanoid robots that are meant to replace real people at certain tasks. Moreover, we will touch upon the possibilities of interacting with virtual people by connecting the computer directly to our brains (cf. cyborgs) and how that may relate to moral reasoning.
The lessons learned throughout this book are combined in this chapter and integrated into a semi-formal process model of how the epistemics of the virtual work. This framework accounts for the fiction-reality confusion, attribution of truth, perceived realism, and metaphor as well as the experiential side of dealing with virtual people (e.g., ethical behavior). Its purpose is not only to improve our understanding of fiction with a sophisticated framework of analysis but also to lay the foundation for formal models to equip our virtual counterparts with so that everybody stays on the same page when holding the virtual against the actual. This is the book’s final chapter and essentially an annotation of the final chart. To avoid repetition, I put more effort in constructing the chart than in its textual explanation, which is actually a summary of the book as a whole.