There is an unseen smuggling operation between fiction and reality

This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places and events in this work are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Disclaimers like this at the beginning of a book or a movie reassure us that there is a sharp boundary between the fictional and the real – a distinction we first learned in early childhood. Back then, we were taught that witches fly on broomsticks and that dragons spit fire, but also that they may do so only in our imagination. In other words, if we are to get by in the real world, our fantasies must not spill over and contaminate our beliefs concerning reality. It is not only our parents who taught us these lessons. Starting in the late 1980s, many psychologists and philosophers – such as Alan Leslie, Josef Perner, and Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich – have argued that our imaginings take place in some sort of quarantine. Nowadays, this view is widely accepted in the field.

Although this idea sounds plausible in theory, in practice things are much more complicated. After all, if fiction and reality were sealed off from one another, governments would not ban movies or books, and concerned citizens would not worry about the negative influence of video games or song lyrics on children and young people. Rather than appealing to quarantine, we believe there’s a need for a better metaphorical framework – one that acknowledges the potentially manipulative power of fiction. We suggest that fiction and reality interact through some sort of trade exchange with all its dark sides and complexities. Some transactions occur in the light of day, while others happen under the table – we unconsciously import beliefs, desires and biases into fiction, and we unconsciously export ideas, worldviews and perspectives from fiction back into the real world.

According to the US philosopher Kendall Walton, as we become absorbed by fictional works, we come to play along with the game of make-believe devised by the authors: they prescribe what we have to believe to be true-in-the-fiction. However, our imagination is not entirely controlled by the authors and their choices. Even the most detailed descriptions of fictional scenarios leave some blank spots that readers fill in, often relying on their real-world beliefs and assumptions. Readers, thus, routinely import beliefs into fictional scenarios. For instance, we imagine that Sherlock Holmes has a heart pumping blood through his veins, even though Arthur Conan Doyle never explicitly said so.

In his book Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990), Walton explains this import mechanism through two core principles. What he calls the ‘Reality Principle’ suggests that, when fictional worlds are sufficiently similar to the real one, we make inferences on the basis of our worldly beliefs. Think of the short story Neighbors (1971) by Raymond Carver, where the protagonists are supposed to take care of their neighbours’ house while the latter are on vacation. Instead, after snooping around the house and leaving a mess behind them, they accidentally lock themselves out and are unable to tidy up. The story ends abruptly right before the neighbours return, leaving readers to wonder what might happen next. Although Carver does not explicitly tell us about the upcoming fight, we can easily imagine such a conclusion because it is exactly what would happen if these events unfolded in reality.

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