基于情感认知视角的“虚构悖论”之思

Reflections on the “Paradox of Fiction” from the Perspective of Affective Cognition

受众明知电影、小说、戏剧中的人物与情节皆为虚构,为何仍会产生情感反应?这一问题是“虚构悖论”讨论的核心,也是哲学经久的话题,至今热度依旧。自从科林·拉德福德(Colin Radford)发表名篇《我们为何为安娜·卡列尼娜的命运感动》(1975)后,阐释、解悖、摒弃甚至复兴此悖论的论文数量持续激增。依据当代情感哲学理论,剖析“虚构悖论”的不自洽性、厘清“虚构悖论”的前提与内涵、导出并反思悖论依赖的情感–认知理论等是重新审视并实现“虚构悖论”解悖的合理路径,继而基于此提出受众对虚构作品的参与问题,即受众对虚构作品的情感反应如何促进文艺作品的鉴赏是继续延展该论题的合理进路之一。 Why do audiences respond emotionally when they know that the characters and plots in movies, novels, and plays are fictional? This question is at the kernel of discussions about the “paradox of fiction”, a perennial and heated philosophical topic today. Ever since Colin Radford published his famous essay “How can we be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina” (1975), the number of papers addressing, explaining, reinterpreting, rejecting and even reviving paradoxes have continued to proliferate. According to the latest development of philosophy of emotion theory, analyzing the inconsistency of “fictional paradox”, clarifying the premise and connotation, and deducing and reflecting on the emotion-cognition theory that paradox depends on are the reasonable ways to solve the paradoxes. Then, the problem of audience’s participation in fictional works is put forward. How the audience’s emotional response to a work of fiction promotes its appreciation is the only reasonable way to continue the discussion.