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Daniel Hartenstein: "The Cognitive Value of Fictional Names"
Wolfgang Huemer: "Aesthetic and Cognitive Dimensions of Achieving (and Failing)"
Eva-Maria Konrad: "Why No One's Afraid of Stanley Fish - On Panfictionalism and Knowledge"
Christian Kohlroß: "From a Philological Point of View Or: Towards a General Theory of Meaning"
Tilmann Köppe: "Knowing the impossible? On inconsistent fictional worlds"
Thomas Petraschka: "Locating Literary Meaning. Literary Interpretation and the Principle of Charity"
Robert Stecker: "Fiction, Truth, Knowledge and Cognitive Value, or Literature as Thought"
Director, Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, Professor of German, Concurrent Professor of Philosophy, and Concurrent Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame (USA)
Verstehen entsteht aus einer dreifachen Erkenntnisleistung: erstens geht es um eine Kenntnis des Interpretandums in allen seinen Eigenschaften (den physischen wie symbolischen), zweitens bezieht sich das Interpretandum selbst auf eine Sachebene, die dem Interpreten vertraut sein muss, drittens entsteht das Interpretandum aufgrund einer Reihe von Ursachen, deren Gesetze dem Autor des Interpretandums nicht bewusst zu sein brauchen. Ich will zeigen, wie Verabsolutierungen einer der drei Operationen auf Kosten der jeweils anderen zu reduktionistischen und deshalb fehlerhaften Interpretationen führen.
Veröffentlichungen in Auswahl:
riceratore in Philosophie an der Universität Parma
If literary texts can impart knowledge to the reader, they can also fail to do so; for the possibility of achievement entails the possibility of failure. In my talk I will suggest that the cognitive value of literature does not consist in its communicating information in the way a textbook or a newspaper article does; the cognitive dimension of the text goes well beyond the communication of true proposition or the author’s (presumed) intention to illuminate the reader.
In order to get a better understanding of the cognitive dimension of literature, I will suggest to change perspective: rather than focusing on the cognitive achievements of literature, we should analyze cases where they fail to achieve – and especially those cases, where this failing can be considered a shortcoming of the text. In this perspective we might get a better understanding also of the relations between aesthetic and cognitive value of literature.
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Professorin an der University of Warwick (UK), Philosophie
This paper considers the bases for caring about the fictional characters we encounter in literary works. We commonly talk about them as if they are people, and it may seem that ordinary experience favours the view that we care about fictional characters on those terms, as people. But the proposal here, assuming that caring rests on having real or perceived interests at stake, is that we care about characters at least in part as representations. We have strong interests in representational activity, as we are beings for whom representing and being represented are centrally important. This gives us a basis for relating to fictional characters, as entities that are like us in their dependence on representational activity and as entities that provide a forum for ambitious representation. This way of approaching our engagement with fictional characters allows the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ perspectives on fictional characters to be more integrated. While I focus here on fictional characters, the argument is not intended to promote a strong distinction between fiction and nonfiction with respect to caring about representational activity.
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Privatdozent am Seminar für Deutsche Philologie an der Universität Mannheim, im Moment Gastdozent am Walter-Benjamin-Lehrstuhl der Hebrew University in Jerusalem
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Juniorprofessor am Courant Forschungszentrum "Textstrukturen" an der Universität Göttingen
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Professor an der University of York (UK), Philosophie
The paper explores the possibility of applying so-called Thought Theory, as a response to the Paradox of Fiction, to the debate about literature and cognition. Perhaps the cognitive value of literary fiction resides not in the truths it imparts but in the thoughts it elicits. It is entirely obvious that reading works of fiction induces thoughts in readers but the interest lies in characterising the different kinds of thoughts and the different modes of elicitation. This paper will make a start in that enquiry.
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Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Germanistik, Universität Regensburg
In this talk, I want to explore the possibility of applying the principle of charity to literary interpretation. Although there are some obvious problems (literary interpretation does not start “from scratch”, sentences in literary texts are usually not considered to be true, sometimes they may even be inconsistent etc.) I will argue that a modified version of the principle of charity should nonetheless play a central role in the interpretation of literature if we want to reach a sensible understanding of literary texts. Such modifications concern the formal structure of the principle as well as the specific meaning of the term charity. I will suggest some specifications in both areas and argue that a philological version of the principle of charity should be understood as a revisable presumption of understandability. As there are various objections against this view, I will try to refute at least the three I consider most important.
Professorin für Philosophie der kulturellen Welt an der RWTH Aachen
In this paper, I want to deal with the following questions: Can we gain knowledge from fictional works of art, in particular from literary works of fiction? If so, what kind of knowledge? How is it possible that we can gain knowledge from works of fiction? Is the knowledge-enhancing function of fictional works (if such there is) just a sort of side effect or is it something essential for works of fiction? And what role does it play for our appreciation of these works?
I shall argue that readers cannot only gain knowledge from fictional literary works, but that, in many cases, the epistemic value of a fictional work is relevant for the overall value of the works in question, even if the work is valued explicitly from an aesthetic point of view (that is, as a work of art, and not, say, as a textbook or source for a historian).
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Professor für Philosophie (Schwerpunkt: Theoretische Philosophie) am Philosophischen Seminar der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Professor an der Central Michigan University (USA), Philosophie
In this talk, I begin by briefly outlining a view about the semantics of fictional terms and of sentences occurring both in, and when talking about, fictional works. This is meant to address one of the fundamental ideas we were asked to think about: “How can we learn anything from texts that we know are literally false?” I will argue that there is no uniform truth value that can be assigned to the sentences of fictional works, but those that contain proper names ‘of’ fictional characters, places, etc., are neither true nor false. They express incomplete propositions. However, the semantics of fiction is not a good guide to the aims and uses of fiction either by artists who create it or audiences who attempt to understand and appreciate it. The bulk of the talk concerns these uses and aims. I argue that fiction in the form of literary works and other fictional artworks often functions as a form of thought, that is, a cognitive exploration of various conceptions of the objects of human experience. However, I also argue that the chief aim of these explorations is not to articulate true statements about these objects. Although any simple generalization about these aims is inadequate, they have more to do with enabling audiences to experience “worlds” in which certain conceptions of these are true and to react to, as well as reflect on, those experiences. For this reason, the cognitive aims of literature and fictional artworks are intimately bound up with aesthetic ones.
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Christof Sendhardt -
22.07.2012 14:25 
