David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Jack Alan Reynolds
Learn more about PhilPapers
Midwest Studies in Philosophy 34 (1):219-239 (2010)
Can fictions sometimes reveal important information about what beliefs audience members hold? I argue that a case can be made that emotional responses to some horror fictions can reveal that audiences harbor beliefs in the supernatural, beliefs that audience members might otherwise deny holding. To clarify the terms of the discussion, I begin with an overview of two leading theories of belief: the representational and dispositional accounts. I explore the role of belief in the production of emotional responses by posing a hard question that none of the leading theories answers directly: Why are some fictional scenarios and events so much more effective than others? I argue that the answer has to do with belief, that is, the beliefs about the world that audiences bring to fictions. After laying the groundwork, I argue that cultural differences in audience responses to some horror fictions might be best explained by what supernatural beliefs they hold. After developing the case, I offer several reasons to be skeptical of this conclusion.
|Keywords||horror paradox of fiction belief ghosts|
|Categories||categorize this paper)|
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server
Configure custom proxy (use this if your affiliation does not provide a proxy)
|Through your library|
References found in this work BETA
No references found.
Citations of this work BETA
No citations found.
Similar books and articles
Hamid Vahid (2010). Rationalizing Beliefs: Evidential Vs. Pragmatic Reasons. Synthese 176 (3):447 - 462.
Robin le Poidevin (2001). Fate, Fiction and the Future. Philosophical Papers 30 (1):69-92.
Hamid Vahid (2009). The Epistemology of Belief. Palgrave Macmillan.
David Hunter (2008). Belief and Self-Consciousness. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (5):673 – 693.
James Harold (2005). Infected by Evil. Philosophical Explorations 8 (2):173 – 187.
Moira Gatens (2012). Compelling Fictions: Spinoza and George Eliot on Imagination and Belief. European Journal of Philosophy 20 (1):74-90.
Aaron Smuts (2003). Haunting the House From Within: Disbelief, Mitigation, and Spatial Experience. In Steven Jay Schneider & Daniel Shaw (eds.), Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror. Scarecrow Press. 158--173.
R. Joyce (2000). Rational Fear of Monsters. British Journal of Aesthetics 40 (2):209-224.
Added to index2009-12-01
Total downloads44 ( #44,182 of 1,410,301 )
Recent downloads (6 months)4 ( #52,180 of 1,410,301 )
How can I increase my downloads?