The Reflective Afterlife and the Ends of Imagining

Abstract In the “mood-stance” approach to fiction and nonfiction, it is held that nonfiction invites viewers to take the states of affairs represented as asserted, while fiction invites viewers to take the represented states of affairs as presented for our imaginative consideration. The relevant distinction then is belief versus imagination. This chapter demonstrates that this distinction harbors important ambiguities in that both fiction and nonfiction elicit imagination and belief. The idea of fiction as a prompt to imagination also does not sufficiently account for the importance of fictions in human life. Imagination to what end? One of the primary functions of fiction, this chapter argues, is to scaffold our exploration of the space of possibilities, such that we are able to discover and formulate new hypotheses about moral understanding.