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I suppose the alternative is that fictional knowledge is empirical.

Currently I’m thinking fictional knowledge is an important issue regarding the debate surrounding a priori vs a posteriori knowledge. I'm looking for clarification on the interrelation of these terms.

Please provide some analysis or scholarly sources, thank you. I know some philosophers say all knowledge is empirical, which contradicts the title’s question and the some philosophers even reject these terms. Please don’t just cite their position. I’m hoping for analysis or debate in the literature or novel takes.

Is any fictional knowledge purely a priori knowledge?

For reference, it seems standard in the discourse to say Tony Stark and Pepper Potts were engaged in the MCU, is (fictional) knowledge.

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  • Wehler's ask for clarification in his comment foreshadows additional criticism of a similar vein. I edited to help stave off closure; as always, feel free to roll back edit.
    – J D
    Commented 9 hours ago
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    You might first want to ask if fictional knowledge is knowledge at all. Commented 9 hours ago
  • @DavidGudeman Oops. That's a good encouragement.
    – J D
    Commented 8 hours ago
  • @DavidGudeman Was that your answer if a teacher quizzed you on a work of fiction, or can you cite a philosopher with that position?
    – J Kusin
    Commented 6 hours ago
  • @JKusin, there's a difference between knowledge about a work of fiction and treating your knowledge of the work as if it is knowledge about the fictional characters themselves. As to citing philosophers, most philosophers would say that fictional characters and events don't exist and a lot of philosophers would say that you can't have knowledge about something that doesn't exist. Commented 6 hours ago

2 Answers 2

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A caveat is that the terms a priori and a posteriori are open to debate, and knowledge and justification pertaining to them is controversial. See A Priori Justification and Knowledge (SEP). However, responding through the lens through mathematical intuitionism (SEP):

You ask:

Is any fictional knowledge purely a priori knowledge?

With the exception of mathematical knowledge that is independent of language (let's say, the recognition of a triangle by a baby before the acquisition of language), no. Knowledge of fictional matters in both the lay sense (fictional narratives, for instance) and the technical sense on par similar to nominalism, aka fictionalism (SEP), is largely a posteriori. This is because both forms of fiction are an expression of the language which is largely a social convention that must be learned with experience to be used. Two examples will serve our needs to illustrate a response framed in both theses from the SEP article above:

The linguistic thesis is, roughly, that already expressed above, according to which utterances of sentences of the discourse are best seen not as efforts to say what is literally true, but as useful fictions of some sort. The ontological thesis, by contrast, is the thesis that the entities characteristic of the discourse do not exist, or have the ontological status of fictional entities.

First, consider Lord of the Rings. There is no doubt it is a work of fiction in the lay sense. Gandalf is not real. Sauron is not real. Middle-Earth is not real. And despite you can read it in dozens of languages, more languages and more readers do not make it real. And the story did not spring into existence by the powers of your mind (though obviously some a priori faculties are required to make sense of language in the general case). This work of fiction must be learned, and it must be learned after the language it is expressed in is learned.

Second, consider mathematical fictionalism (SEP), the technical sense of fiction. If you were to grant this as a respectable philosophy of mathematics (and certainly not everyone does), you would certainly need in a broadly Kantian understanding a priori abilities to make sense of the mathematics. No doubt. However, are some form of Peano's axioms learned? Absolutely. And so is the mathematical notation. And if you wanted to engage in a debate over the proper formulation of the basis of set theory, is it self-evident that NBG is superior to ZFC, or that any of these axiomatic systems are preferable to any other? If it were self-evident, extensive study wouldn't be required to learn the language and the ontology of graduate level mathematics.

Remember what it means to be a priori. From the WP article:

A priori knowledge is independent from any experience. Examples include mathematics,[i] tautologies and deduction from pure reason.[ii] A posteriori knowledge depends on empirical evidence. (emphasis mine)

Any, of course, is a difficult bar to clear, so it might be better to think in tempered terms when dealing with the term a priori

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  • This is an excellent question, but controversial because it depends on one's metaphysical disposition towards the relationship between concept and percept. For instance, see McDowell's conceptualism. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptualism#Contemporary_philosophy Here, even perception becomes interwoven with conception and language, much in the spirit of theory-ladenness.
    – J D
    Commented 9 hours ago
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Fictional knowledge is no knowledge at all but the fiction of knowledge. Like a fictional elephant is no elephant but the fiction of an elephant.

Please clarify what you mean. Thanks.

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  • How many Greek gods are there named Zeus? That’s knowledge, and if it’s not fictional, what is it? This is standard in the literature from what I can tell, as is what street does Sherlock Holmes live at, who did Tony Stark marry in the MCU?
    – J Kusin
    Commented 8 hours ago
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    @JKusin I think one could respond to that with "0, there are no greek gods" and instead insist that the only real element of knowledge reflected there is something phrased like: "the figure of Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, was a common part of greek mythology and literary tradition". i.e. the knowledge is knowledge of stories told by humans, not knowledge of Zeus.
    – Kaia
    Commented 7 hours ago
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    @Kaia I don't consider that an objection. The Zeus question implicitly refers to the mythology already. Were you ever quizzed in school about a fiction? If I had answered "Mrs. Smith, there are none, they never existed" to the question "Who was the main character of the Odyssey", I would have gotten a zero.
    – J Kusin
    Commented 6 hours ago
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    @JKusin I suppose in many parts of philosophy we try and be explicit about assumptions and careful about exactly what we mean. What exactly a piece of knowledge "implicitly refers to" might be very important when determining if it's a priori.
    – Kaia
    Commented 6 hours ago
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    @Kaia Again, no teacher writes, "Who was the main character of the Odyssey" without implicitly referring to the mythology. Do I have to append "in the literary fiction Sherlock Holmes by Doyle" to "What street did Sherlock Holmes live at"? I just see needless pedantry to be quite honest.
    – J Kusin
    Commented 6 hours ago

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