Paradox of fiction - Wikipedia
The paradox of fiction, or the paradox of emotional response to fiction, is a philosophical dilemma that questions how people can experience strong emotions to fictional things. The primary question asked is the following: How are people moved by things which do not exist? The paradox draws upon a set of three premises that seem to be true prima facie but upon closer inspection produce a contradiction. Although the emotional experience of fictional things in general has been discussed in philosophy since Plato,[ 1] the paradox was first suggested by Colin Radford and Michael Weston in their 1975 paper "How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?".[ 2] Since Radford and Weston's original paper, they and others have continued the discussion by giving the problem slightly differing formulations and solutions.[ 3]
The paradox is that all three premises taken individually seem to be true, but can not all be true at the same time. If any two points (e.g. 1 and 3) are taken to be true, then the third (e.g. 2) must either be false or else produce a contradiction.[citation needed ]
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