Fiction, testimony, belief, and history

Abstract

This chapter examines to what extent it is true that fiction is a problematic source of information about empirical matters. This is done via a comparison with what are often thought of as paradigmatic sources of empirical knowledge, at least in well-formed cases: historical texts. The focus of the discussion is on testimony-roughly, the conveying of information to a hearer with the aim of being believed, partly on the speaker's say-so-as it occurs in both historical and fictional texts. The chapter concludes that despite appearances, in many typical cases fiction can be a relatively solid source of information about the world, so that indignant responses to occasions of inaccuracy in fiction may not be misplaced after all.