Reducing Consciousness to Literary Fiction
Angelika Friedrich and Henry Whittlesey
Prelude
Presumably, many of us are intrigued by the relationship between life and artistic media such as literature, movies or theater. Some of us consider writing fiction to be the (potentially) income-generating work most closely tied to the experience of living (and thus the most desirable job). A probably smaller group – to which we belong – surmises that the way our mind or consciousness interacts with the experience of living is replicated better in literary fiction than any other medium. A part of this conjecture stems from fiction’s ability to represent consciousness more authentically than motion picture and theater (which are the closest competitors to fiction) where thought, especially narrated thought, appears contrived, artificial or cannot be represented adequately. Ultimately, there is more to say, however. As we will see via Kant, the form of consciousness aligns with the form of literary fiction to understand experience. Form in literature serves two critical functions: it mirrors consciousness by using material or empirical content as support, and it counterbalances content-governed experience by essentially inverting the empirical-rational structure of Kant.
In this perypatetik project, the authors from around the world have been showing us the manifestations of romantic and pragmatic mindsets. It is trivial to note that if there is a special relationship between fiction and life, it will apply around the world. No less trivial is the observation that the architecture or form of literature, life and mental states or consciousness is equally shared by all peoples of the globe: literature is composed of words; life consists of eating, sleeping, working, etc.; and the mind is furnished with short-term memory, working memory, consciousness and whatever else we want to attribute to it, but all universally across cultures.
Yet somehow differences crop up between divergent cultures as well as between a mainstream culture and subcultures. Although content certainly differs across cultures, we have focused on how similar content – the content of life (eating, sleeping, working, etc.) – is manifested in values and norms. Differences in content are also of secondary importance, on our view, because of our tendency to forget content.
The values and norms are weightings. This means that all cultures will, on the whole, have similar spectrums of values and norms with similar content, but weight the content on the spectrum divergently. For example, all cultures presumably value the (successful) end of a project as well as the process of executing the project. Yet one culture may attach greater importance to the achievement of the end, while another focuses on the process of execution.
A similar phenomenon is found in our cognitive architecture: we all share the same functional components, but the use of one language rather than another may shift the weighting of the various functional components.[1] For example, a person speaking German will have greater exposure to peripheral cognitive networks due to peripheral belief updating facilitated by German being a left-branching language (see Whittlesey [Schroeder] 2025) as well as lower trust expectations in discourse due to the Konjunktiv I tense in German (see Whittlesey [Schroeder] 2024).
All this boils down to the simple point that one experience can prompt incongruent responses despite identical architecture (form) due to discordant perception resulting from bifurcating practices. So, in this anthology, when the employee fired in Castro’s story Need is offered her job back, she takes it, with the narrator telling us: “I’m so happy I almost start jumping. This is when the phone rings again and I am pulled back to reality. Because people like me don’t get to be happy: for every good thing you’ll pay with many, many things that go bad” (99).[2] Architecturally similar minds with different perceptions (values and norms) will approach the depiction of this set of events divergently. Note: we are talking about the mind of the author (not narrator) choosing this confluence of events to reflect a certain mentality. The story reflects a romantic’s orientation. A pragmatist, that is, an author with a pragmatic orientation, would not tie the happiness of re-employment to the sadness brought about by the phone call (presumably announcing her grandmother’s death or hospitalization). Why? Because defining characteristics of pragmatists are their disregard for counterbalancing, the rejection of fatalism, the embrace of moderation, to name but a few. Romantics prefer the opposites (harmony with “nature”, fate, polarization).[3] That is what the author demonstrates when the narrator says “people like me don’t get to be happy…” In this case, the author chooses to return the pragmatist to equilibrium immediately. The protagonist is not given the chance to dream about a better future or recall other wonderful things in her life. She is doused with a bucket of cold water (the death of her beloved live-in grandmother). A pragmatic author would (generally) set the stage differently because they do not perceive experience as, e.g., requiring counterbalancing or marked by fate or polarized.
Castro’s denouement presents us with a situation we could easily encounter in real life and do encounter in this work of fiction. It is a (single) situation bearing the possibility of (at least) two type-related responses. This circumstance may exist in the world or in a medium such as fiction.[4] We have looked at this matter as a worldly phenomenon in both the theory (Peripatetic Alterity) and in papers refining the theory (“The Purpose of Literary Fiction in the 21st Century”, “An Analysis of the Values and Norms of Romanticism and Pragmatism in Literary Fiction”, “The Process and Concomitant Characteristics”). Now we need to consider the relationship between life and literature.
Hitherto it has simply been assumed that (at least) a correlation can be established between an interpretation of worldly events by a person and by a work of literary fiction. For example, in both “An Analysis of the Values and Norms of Romanticism and Pragmatism in Literary Fiction” and “The Process and Concomitant Characteristics”, we showed how the stories in the perypatetik project exhibit either a romantic or pragmatic orientation. The romantic and pragmatic orientation is grounded in empirical findings, i.e., is based on experience or life. There and elsewhere, we have presupposed the quasi-equating of consciousness with works of literary fiction. This is far from commonly accepted, however.
To close this lacuna, the foreword here will probe the following analogies:
1a. The form of my consciousness vis-à-vis the world = A work of literary fiction vis-à-vis the world
1b. The content of my consciousness vis-à-vis the world ≠ A work of literary fiction vis-à-vis the world
2a. My consciousness in relation to another person’s consciousness = My consciousness in relation to a work of literary fiction
2b. My consciousness in relation to my own consciousness (myself) ≠ My consciousness in relation to a work of literary fiction
Each of these equations is a tentative, preliminary hypothesis. They will be based on the Kantian empirical-rational model. We will get there after setting the stage below.
The roadmap: in section one, we discuss the inferiority of content (relative to form). Section two defines materialism and immaterialism (the spiritual, metaphysical, transcendental, formal, whatever term you want to insert here) and can be skipped by those well versed in the dualism of materialism and its counterpart. Building on the dualities of content-form and material-immaterial, we look at the epistemological positions informing these categories and how they relate to the romantic-pragmatist spectrum. In section four, we address the analogies (1a-2b) just mentioned. Finally, in section five, we explain how literary fiction consists of transforming (material) content into (immaterial) form, which is consistent with what romantics do in everyday life.
1. Content can be forgotten
In the interaction with written texts (and most experiences of any kind), we all face a frustrating conundrum: we expend a substantial quantity of time interacting and remember very little over the long term.
Of the content, we remember next to none.
Of the affective or emotional experience or the spirit, if you will, we might do a little better.
I am integrated in Russian culture so I can remember the names of characters like Raskolnikov, but I don’t remember the details of his interactions with the investigator (whose name I’ve forgotten) or other characters in Crime and Punishment.
Yet I do recall (mistakenly) identifying with him at the time of reading it twenty years ago and still retain the spirit of Russian Realism’s idealistic hope of a better future. Long-term, then, the aesthetic experience of reading Dostoevsky left me with little material content, but some non-material state of mind. The same applies to many of the stories in these collections – I’ve forgotten the details, but recall the general alignment of the intellectual responses prompted by the story contents with the peripatetic counterbalancing of romantics or the unipolarity of pragmatists.
In the case of worldly experiences, I remember the high-school reunion a couple years ago as a purely joyous experience without intrigue or social maneuvering, but I couldn’t tell you much about what others said to me and I said to them. Even less so for the reunion seven years ago.
This brief summary of an experience we are all very familiar with leads us straight to the second conundrum:
We may primarily talk about the reductionist or physicalist material content: the names of the protagonists, the things they do, their character type or the setting.
Yet it is exactly this content that we will overwhelmingly not remember.
There are many good reasons for focusing on content. Far too many to address here. Nonetheless, a couple merit attention: one is simply that we want to avoid unverifiable statements.
First, discussing beliefs about content (rather than spirit) will habituate us to consider a statement as true or false. This might be called a verification requirement for statements. It is understandable because it gives us a solid basis to determine truth. You and I can probably agree on the truth (or falsity) of the statement “Crime and Punishment has more than 300 pages” or that a or the lead protagonist is Raskolnikov. However, it will be much more difficult for various interlocutors to agree on the truth content of the statement that Dostoesky conveys the “spirit of Russian Realism’s idealistic hope of a better future.” What can I point to in defense of this claim? My guess is that you can pick out a counterexample.
Second, for a functional society and economic system, we must build on objective, materially established facts. For example, I can’t fantasize about saving money and keeping down costs; it won’t help much to speak of the spirit of work or entrepreneurship in the hope that this spirit will motivate people today to materially prepare for the uncertainties of tomorrow. Between the ages of 25 and 50, I need to save $500 to $1,000 per month and invest 90% of that amount monthly in the companies listed in the DOW 30 or near equivalents (and the other 10% in speculative equities) and never sell them when the world is collapsing. That means my cost of living must be set well below my potential standard of living. The reductionists or materialists (rightly) argue that such measures will do a lot more for you than talk about the immaterial, the spiritual, the metaphysical or aesthetic.
None of this support for a content-based materialist orientation changes the brute fact that we will forget most of the facts. Yet we will recollect something – a feeling, an emotion, a perspective, a sense or spirit in ourselves, perhaps extended to the moment or the times and shared with others. This is where the non-content sets in.
2. Definitions
The historically well-trodden (non-Kantian) categories of materialism and whatever its counterpart is called are no longer readily accessible to even distinguished philosophy professors and extremely intelligent and talented graduate students of philosophy in America.[5] It may be a cultural phenomenon (European vs. American). Or a generational one (pre- vs. post-Millennial). Or something related to New York (the bastion of materialism) or English (arguable the perfect language for materialism – after all, we pay attention, we pay visits, and we even pay our respects to the dead(!) and others). But since our entire perypatetik project is grounded in this distinction and the attempt to carve out a place for the non-material realm, we must hazard some general definitions. It is not our intention to be particularly precise or to draw a clear line between the material and non-material. The point of these definitions is simply to allow readers unfamiliar with the material/non-material distinction to picture something roughly accurate in their head (in contrast to what one of us heard recently):
Material/Materialism = Physical objects as the sole entities of relevance to human life and knowledge
Immaterial/Immaterialism = Physical objects as only one entity of relevance to human life and knowledge; non-physical objects are central entities as well.
Subcategories of materialism would separate worldly materialism from human materialism.
In the world, for someone with such an orientation, there is no God, nor are their deities, spirits, metaphysical forces, invisible hands, etc. What there is, our ontology, is reduced to scientifically verifiable entities.
A person who identifies with materialism (human materialism) would pass judgement on other humans likewise on the basis of verifiable phenomena. Not only would physical objects be the focus of their attention, but they would dismiss alternatives as ungroundable. For example, such a materialist would judge another person based on physical or tangible facts – the location and size of their apartment or house, their profession (and the income implied by it), the car(s) they drive, the clothes they wear and the vacations they take. Ideas, character traits, emotional landscapes, vibes, aura and the like would be disregarded. Defenders of this position are undeterred by deceptive (material) evidence of a person’s mental state. Criticism of behaviorism is well known in philosophy, and fiction proffers a plethora of scenes where the material evidence prompts false conclusions: such as Wilhelm’s persuasion that Mariane loves him because of her attention (in Wilhelm Meister) or Anne Elliot’s conviction that Captain Wentworth’s attention to Louisa Musgrove is evidence of his love for the woman (in Persuasion) or most characters’ (and readers’) assumption that Dmitry Karamazov murdered his father because of his hatred of him, his erratic behavior and his financial needs (in Brothers Karamazov).
Human materialism is closely tied to consumption (broadly interpreted). It is possible to consume or possess material objects to a greater and clearer extent than non-material ones. Perhaps we can’t concretely consume or possess verifiable objects like atoms or quarks, but these are exceptions to the rule. Notwithstanding abstract meaning, metaphorical use and linguistic peculiarities, we can rarely if ever possess or consume the non-material.
The need for clarification on this topic came to a head in a recent discussion on French philosopher Simondon’s concept of supersaturation. It was suggested that when a new technology such as artificial intelligence disrupts the metastasis or existing balance in society similar to heat applied to a saturated salt solution, the prevailing ideology is broken down, leaving space for the incorporation of something new (see Hui). The interpretation proposed was that if the prevailing ideology was materialism, now broken down by AI. Each individual would gain additional (time) capacity that can be allocated to either more materialism (consumption) or something non-material. The non-material could encompass a kaleidoscope of pursuits that produce primarily intellectual, spiritual, emotional, i.e., non-material mental states without a physical object tied to the mental state (in the aftermath). For example, a pursuit such as forest bathing (walking in the woods) can produce a non-material mental state of, say, refreshment, but the forest bather possesses nothing during it or in the aftermath. By contrast, buying a new jacket may also produce a mental state of refreshment, but it will be material because it is tied to the possession or consumption of a new jacket.
What we have said so far is not new, radical or even particularly eloquent. Surely, philosophers and writers have expressed themselves on this topic far better than we have. However, the application of this underlying duality becomes more interesting within the framework of the perypatetik division of mindsets into pragmatists and romantics.
3. Three types of minds
Under the assumption of an ability to survive on the whole independently of assistance from others, we have inferred from the values and norms of people in America, Germany and Russia that there are two existent types of minds:
(i) Minds that acknowledge solely materialism
(ii) Minds pursuing a balance between materialism and immaterialism
It should be noted that a third type is possible, but, in our opinion, would not be capable of survival without the assistance of others:
(iii) Minds with an (almost) exclusive non-material orientation
This third type should not be viewed deprecatingly. On the contrary, it is very possible that such a mind is the most poetic or pure.[6]
These types of minds share a long history in philosophy.
Roughly, mind (i) would be associated with the dominant tradition of empiricism that dates back to David Hume and John Locke. Empiricism seeks explanations by reference to evidence in experience. It is similar to materialism in its recognition of solely entities that are observable. According to our line of thinking, what is observable is aligned with what is possessable.
To an approximation, mind (iii) with an (almost) exclusively non-material orientation aligns with Berkeleyan idealism. The world of experience, the objects we can possess, are figments of our imagination. Berkeley’s position is an outlier. The position usually held to be in contrast to empiricism is rationalism, which is discussed below.
Speaking loosely, mind (ii), one pursuing a balance between materialism and immaterialism, would share in the spirit of rationalism often originally identified with Descartes and later exemplified by the empirical-rational framework of Kant.
Basically, our argument is that materialist or empirical minds are limited in their ability to grasp the truth because no universal truth can arise from disparate interpretations of facts. As Quine stated, no doctrine can emerge from the various ways specific aspects of experience (concepts) can be interpreted.[7] In Kant’s language, the faculty of sensibility, which interacts with the empirical world of experience, cannot ground truths because it gives us “use forms” rather than “rules”, the latter being provided by the faculty of understanding via the categories.[8]
Simplified: one might think of materialist minds as dependent on the senses and unable to establish universal rules or laws because of the generally recognized subjectivity of sense impressions. Ultimately, a person with this type of mind will gravitate toward perypatetik pragmatism and the values and norms associated with it because both empiricism and (perypatetik) pragmatism are unipolar. Empiricism disregards rational contributions to understanding; pragmatism dismisses the non-material.
The immaterialist or empirical-rational mind, by contrast, extends the possible scope of knowledge beyond experience. This could stretch to the extreme of Berkeley’s idealism or traditional religious beliefs or speculative metaphysics. But we will stick to the generally more palatable Kantian model for our purposes here.
Kant’s idea is that any appearance or representation in the mind (via the faculty of sensibility, intuition, (faculty of) imagination, apperception) can only be something apprehended if it is prescribed or ordered by an a priori category arising from the faculty of understanding.[9] The need for categories to make sense of experience can be seen in a thought experiment about their absence: without the category of relations (with its motions or subcategories of 1) substance and inherence; 2) causality and dependency; and 3) community), for example, we would have to test anew at each encounter the relation between one entity and another.[10] And even that would produce no certainty for the future. We would not be able to infer for the future whether the sight of the moon behind the tree was a motion of community (where the “moon” and the “tree” stand in a non-causal relation to each other) or a case of causality (where the moon stands in a causal relationship to the tree, so that the appearance of the moon brings about the tree or vice-versa). The moon-tree relation would be as unclear as marks on a piece of paper after using a pen. Either might be in a relation of community or causality or substance/inherence. We would never know without the categories.
Again, to unpack that, an immaterialist mind will take account of factors not present to the senses. Certainly, in daily life and thought, nobody considers whether the category of quantity, quality, relation or modality and which of the three motions under each category applies to something perceived by the senses. Rather, they refuse to reduce their mindset solely to empirical experience. Even without knowing exactly why. It is an instinctual act often accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, a remark like “who knows,” coupled with laughter, when an empiricist challenges a rationalist to provide an explanation. However, by acting in such a manner, perhaps on religious or spiritual grounds, these so-called romantics (in the perypatetik sense) adopt numerous norms and values almost completely contrary to pragmatists.[11]
This conception is derived from Kant’s transcendental aesthetics and logic in the Critique of Pure Reason, the former relating to the world of experience grounded a priori in time and space, the latter independent of experience entirely, consisting solely of a priori concepts furnished by the categories.
In short:
- a pragmatist possesses a mind that acknowledges solely materialism. Knowledge is based primarily on empirical content that does not allow for generalizations or laws (doctrine in Quine’s language). Not only does the content of experience not furnish laws, but it is also forgotten. Past content forgotten is filled with new content soon to be forgotten and replaced anew;
- a romantic possesses an architecturally identical mind, but acknowledges (implicitly) at a bare minimum the Kantian a priori Consequently, empirical content is complemented by form (at a minimum Kantian rationalism), allowing for both form-based generalizations (doctrine, laws) and the translation of content into form as that which supports one or another characteristic of form. Content forgotten is therefore not necessarily waste because of its potential contribution to form.
4. Analogy: equating consciousness to work of literary fiction
4.1 Consciousness vis-à-vis the world
The analogy can be conceived in the following two (simplified) examples.
First, a person perceiving the world through experience:
A building is seen by my eye and then thought about in my head.
Graphically:
Second, a person perceiving the world through fiction:
Now, a building is seen through fiction and then thought about in my head.
Graphically:
If we abstract from the instantiations of these two examples, the uniformity of form becomes apparent:
Building = World
Thought = Consciousness[12]
Eye/Fiction = Medium through which world passes to consciousness
Naturally, there are differences between the building-eye relation and the building-fiction relation. As there are between the eye-thought and fiction-thought. Yet at the fore of these differences are acts affecting content. For example, the eye can be instructed to check whether the object is a physical or illusionary building in a way that cannot be done with fiction. For the building to appear in fiction so I can think about it, an author must call it into existence by the use of a referential word. We are solely attempting to show that mental states (in consciousness) bear interesting similarities when they are caused by a faculty of sensibility (the eye) and a medium such as fiction.
Such an observation should not come as a surprise. Similar mental states will arise from the two following beliefs:
I believe that the cat is on the mat (after reading that the cat is on the mat).
I believe that the cat is on the mat (after seeing that the cat is on the mat).
Perhaps I am more certain that the cat is on the mat after seeing it. But that affects my credence, my degree of certainty, not the picture of a cat lying or stretching or pawing or doing whatever on a mat.
This position is also supported by neuroscientific research. Boulenger et al. and González et al. have produced evidence that a word can activate neural circuits that respond to actual experience; for example, the word apple (heard or read) activates the visual cortex in the occipital lobe for shape and color; the motor cortex in the frontal lobe for the biting movement, and the gustatory cortices in the insular lobe for its taste (Juarez and Toutée 27).
Objection 1
In all likelihood, the attentive reader (which you must be if you have made it this far) will have already objected to this analogy for readily apparent reasons (if you haven’t, there is an obvious excuse: it is because we express ourselves so unclearly that you are allocating too much brain power to following our thoughts).
The first objection is simply that my eye can shift or be shifted to another object and give these additional representations to consciousness. If consciousness possesses a kind of controlling function, then once it has received, say, an initial representation of the building, it could direct the eye to shift its focus to something about the building that allows for depth to be ascertained, thereby determining that the building is a physical entity, not a digital one, for example. When my consciousness imagines the representation of a building based on fiction, it cannot direct the medium, the work of fiction, to do something similar. I can continue reading Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, for instance, but I can’t instruct Goethe to provide representations of the (not-described) lighting for Wilhelm’s improvised theater in his childhood: my imagination must satisfy itself with the information furnished by the narrator: the sheet for the background and tables turned on their sides with branches in front of them to create the impression of a forest.
Rebuttal: the content versus the form
The analogy of the eye to the work of fiction and relation of consciousness to these only applies formally. Not to the content. Specifically, the eye prompts an imagining based on a representation. The words do the same. It is the act of imagining on the basis of a representation. This causality is analogous. What the causality consists of and what downstream acts (such as controlling or checking) may be performed does not concern us (at least at this stage).
The representation (produced by the eye or the words) causes beliefs in consciousness much the way the derivation of beliefs via hearing what others say is equated in Millikan to making a direct observation.[13] For Millikan, it is the normal focused function of language that grounds truth: for example, an injunctive always bears the primary (formal) focused function of engendering obedience in the hearer; an indicative involves the generation of beliefs.[14] Similarly, between the eye and fiction, it is the formation of a representation delivered to consciousness that grounds equivalent truth: two means to one representation.
Objection 2
Second, it is clear that a person perceives the world through experience with more than just their eye. The other four sensory organs are also available in any experience. And furthermore, they can be activated simultaneously to the visual organ.
This argument cannot be refuted, even in light of Juarez and Toutée’s findings cited above: experience is apprehended more multidimensionally than fiction. Yet this reservation does not affect the position that life or the consciousness of life can be best reduced to literary fiction.
Such an observation also does not change the similar way in which content serves form in both life (experience) and literature (fiction). In both cases, the given content is subsumed under a relevant (Kantian or non-Kantian) category. The content thereby becomes a part of an intellectual form (not present in life or experience or nature). That form is associated, in our perypatetik project, with a predilection for romanticism or pragmatism. Accordingly, identical content can be assigned to different types by the means of apprehension. For example, the protagonist’s successful rehiring in the story Need is the content that falls under the category of success, but how this category is viewed, i.e., the form, varies from pragmatists who regard it as central to romantics, like the protagonist, who merely chalks such events up to haphazard chance.
4.2 Relation between fiction and my own consciousness versus that of others
Another obvious difference between objects in the world and ones depicted in fiction is that we find myriad origins for the objects of the world, but only one (or at least a limited number) for those in fiction. A building in the world may be erected by one or, more likely, many people; a tree originates from a seed germinating in nutrient-rich soil, with sufficient moisture and then growing; wind arises from differences in pressure. In fiction, all those objects that produce representations in my mind stem from words now usually typed into a computer by an author.
When we interact with the world, we do not stand in a relation to another consciousness. With fiction we do. As we sketched above, the representations mediated may produce the same beliefs in consciousness. My single consciousness is (hopefully) generating beliefs from those representations that are similar to the beliefs produced by the author’s consciousness. That is the purpose and the focused function of the representations triggered by fiction. We can visualize this dynamic for clarity:
A work of fiction is a creation of another person. So a reader of fiction gains insight into another person’s consciousness via the work. That is, the author’s consciousness, to which I stand in a relation, can be analyzed in terms of what I would have added, removed or done differently in a given representation. Toward the end of Washington Square (by Henry James), Catherine Sloper finally rejects the mercenary or gold-digger Morris Townsend who was the sole love of her life 20 years before until he broke off the engagement. When she does this, I, as the reader, can say that I would have added, in James’s place, a line describing the inner calm she sensed for the first time in her life when he left for the final time. In other words, I can set my consciousness in relation to James’s. I can picture myself in his position, producing representations of mid-19th-century New York, Catherine, Morris, and say, on the basis of an existent representation, what could be supplemented or amended.
At first blush, it might also seem like my consciousness relates to me (in the world) akin to its relation to a work of fiction. If I assume a separation between thought and consciousness, then, to stick with Washington Square, I can view my sympathetic beliefs about Catherine in relation to those about my friends in Germany who like Catherine really wanted to get married to (non-gold-digging) guys they met when they were young. However, on my interpretation, this holds, but falls mutatis mutandis under the world-medium-consciousness relation discussed above. The necessary change would simply be that the eye is replaced by working memory or something like that.
When I have thoughts about myself or observe my behavior or body (as opposed to entities separate from me), it is difficult to draw a line between the internal world of, say, thought, on the one hand and consciousness on the other. Basically, whatever is in thought is also in consciousness with respect to thought about oneself. That is different with objects in the external world: when I am driving, I must be thinking about the car in front of me even if my conscious thoughts are mulling this paper.[15] A perfect example of this phenomenon appears in the short story An Unexpected Trip Down Memory Lane where the protagonist Toni is literally driving and thinking about Johannesburg and her past there when her consciousness shifts back to the present: she rolls to a stop at a malfunctioning light and notices two pickup trucks (bakkies) in front of her with a group of men sitting in the bed with AK-47s (part of 2026 collection; see serialized version online, Hoofstuk 3, January 17). But wherever the line is drawn, this relation does not compare to the relation of my consciousness to a representation given by the external world because the author of a novel will associate a memory with any narration or dialogue (respectively, monologue) just as I do in all my worldly experiences, but cannot do in the reading of the author’s story. Some parts of the story will simply be devoid of meaning or lack associations (even wrong ones) for me.
Cast a glance at the first story in this collection. In The Roads We Take by Svetlana Molchanova, the first-person protagonist, Katia, is walking home from a party with her friend, Oxana, when they are mugged. We shall assume that the narrator in the story is dissociated from the author, but that the author is familiar with these types of events from hearsay. The author, Molchanova, and I can read this work of fiction that she has produced. Given familiarity with Russia, the building or block, for example, that the narrator describes will generate a similar picture in my and Molchanova’s mind. Obviously, Molchanova will associate different thoughts with the story than I will, and her thoughts are likely to be closer to the true beliefs the story aims to convey (intentionalists will like this). There may even be an interweaving of Molchanova’s access thoughts and higher order thoughts (consciousness) just as there is when I think about myself, my behavior or my mental processes. The reader of her story is in a different position, one of trying to understand what Molchanova, via narration, dialogue and possibly commentary, is trying to communicate. So we see:
(2a) My consciousness in relation to another person’s consciousness = My consciousness in relation to a work of literary fiction
The reader of Molchanova’s story is analyzing her consciousness as reflected in the work of fiction, which is equivalent to analyzing my consciousness vis-à-vis the story. For example, the author (Molchanova) describes the narrator’s thought process after Katia returns home after the mugging in a mix of interior monologue and narration: “Oxana. My racing thoughts suddenly stopped and focused on her… I needed to make sure she was ok. But how?” (5) Molchanova’s text here suggests that Katia is still so shocked she can barely formulate sentences: first she utters simply the name of her friend (“Oxana”); then the narrator steps in to recount her state – racing thoughts and lack of knowledge (see expanded version in text); next, again, a question fragment (“But how”). That is the author’s presentation of the situation. Would it be mine? No. Not exactly. It is certainly a plausible account, but I might depict Katia as immediately guided by reason once she is in the safety of her apartment. The exact alternative is beside the point, however. We just need to show that my consciousness vis-à-vis a fictional text can be formally equated to the author’s consciousness vis-à-vis the text. The same analogy holds as we saw above with the form of consciousness vis-à-vis the world:
However,
2b. My consciousness in relation to my own consciousness (myself) ≠ My consciousness in relation to a work of literary fiction
because there is no clear boundary between access thoughts and higher-order thoughts (consciousness) when I consider myself. This boundary clearly exists with a work of fiction. When I picture a scene in fiction, I must be tapping into consciousness. I cannot passively think about the fictional scene the way I might passively think about the car in front of me as I drive. Or when I do such, I am not reading the text – I have departed to the world of imagination.
The relation also cannot be saved by a form-content distinction. It goes without saying that content of self-reflection will be different from the content of fiction in all but works of fiction we personally compose. And here we cannot fall back on similarities in form. The form of knowing about ourselves is convoluted: access consciousness and higher-order consciousness are fluid. The form of knowing about fiction, like external objects, can harness content as supportive of one form or another. Accordingly, each of us relates to my own consciousness differently than to a work of literary fiction.
5. Point(s) (in lieu of a conclusion)
So why of all media is literary fiction preferable for the reduction of life and consciousness? And what is the relevance of this to the perypatetik project?
To the first question:
Films or theater fail to replicate consciousness because interior monologue must be expressed orally or in subtitling that competes with image apprehension. Even if this were addressed in a movie-inverted medium such as a graphic novel, the viewer of such media would switch between the visual apparatus for images and the imagination for processing words.
Music does not produce specific images the way movies produce them with footage and books with words.
Art presents mostly non-successive images, i.e., an image at a fixed point in time, but generally no speech or thought.
Hybrid attempts to incorporate image and word succeed in replicating the duality of the Kantian model with a faculty of sensibility giving appearances or representations (of the empirical world) to the rational structure (of thought) in the faculty of the imagination, but it is precisely the partial activation of the faculty of sensibility in such genres that differentiate them from the (pure) consciousness of literary fiction (firmly ensconced in the faculty of the imagination or between it and the faculty of understanding (with the categories).
This would seem prima facie to be the ideal genre, combining both the empirical component of Kant (the faculty of sensibility for images) and the rational component (the categories for words). In a sense, this view is also correct. Furthermore, it may account for the popularity of graphic novels and, inversely, film. The combination of image and text in any genre is ideal for pragmatists because it brings more of the material world into the world of art, thereby aligning art more closely with the empirical-material orientation. Yet pure fiction offers something else.
It is not new to suggest that fiction can have an impact similar to worldly experience. As Juárez and Toutée note, fiction induces empathy (emotional perspective-taking) and encourages cognitive perspective-taking (31). They cite extensive research showing that narratives activate the motor system, especially “mirror neuron mechanisms”, cuing simulation or mental enactments that convey understanding (29). We would imagine that motion picture is capable of producing both empathy and cognitive perspective-taking as well. Yet there is a key difference between fiction and motion picture in terms of consciousness. We saw it in section 4.1:
A building is seen by my eye and then thought about in my head:
A building is seen through fiction and then thought about in my head:
These parallel constructs prompted us to suggest a uniformity of form:
Building = World
Thought = Consciousness
Eye/Fiction = Medium through which world passes to consciousness
Yet the analogy does not quite work with motion picture. It is true that the building on the screen is not a carbon-based structure, but rather a digital one. As such, we experience the world (with the building) through a medium, but that medium is perceived by the eye.
In the case of fiction, the building is perceived without any sensory faculty. To use Kant’s language, we perceive the building without the faculty of sensibility.
This aspect of fiction is unique. It transforms all the content of the world into a form because it bypasses the faculty of sensibility. The empirical/material of experience does not penetrate literary fiction. The (faculty of) imagination becomes the starting point with the synthesis of the representations (produced by the words) and then ordered by the categories. This is the non-empirical, rational structure of Kant.
So – to the second question – fiction is not just producing empathy and cognitive perspective-taking. It is also counterbalancing what we experience in the world (empiricism) by inducing what we imagine through fiction (rationalism). A reader of literary fiction enjoys two worlds: i) their everyday experience governed primarily by content (representations given through the faculty of sensibility) and supported by the form (e.g., transcendental logic of Kant’s categories) and ii) the world of fiction commanded primarily by the form and supported by the content.
The forgetting of content becomes irrelevant because the point of content is simply to support the form of empiricism or the form of rationalism. From these forms, we gain the doctrine, laws, universals, generalizations and all the ilk that serve to guide focused functions (Millikan), conventions (Lewis), scripts and deviations from both via intention recognition (Grice).
In touch with this duality, constantly preserving the balance, unswervingly defending their orientation against the onslaught of empirical materialism is one type: perypatetik romantics and their defense of bipolarity.
The ideal medium for pragmatists is either film or graphic novels with their unipolar materialist bent.
The perfect medium for romantics is literary fiction with the immaterial representations they read balancing out the material representations they experience.
Works cited
Friedrich, Angelika; Smirnov, Yuri; Whittlesey, Henry (Eds.) Peripatetic Alterity – A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being: Romantics and Pragmatists. New York: perypatetik, 2019.
Friedrich, Angelika; Whittlesey, Henry. “An Analysis of the Values and Norms of Romanticism and Pragmatism in Literary Fiction.” Material Dissent: Adulthood Transadapted. New York: perypatetik, 2023.
Goethe, Wolfgang. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. Edited and Translated by Eric A. Blackall. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Hui, Yuk. “Tendency and Intuition in Simondon’s ‘Genesis of Technicity’.” SubStance, Vol. 54, Number 2, 2025: pp. 80-95.
James, Henry. Washington Square. New York: Blackstone Publishing, 2001.
Juárez, Fernanda Pérez-Gay and Toutée, Louise. “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Literary Fiction: Bridging Biomedical Sciences and Health Humanities.” Embodied Narratives in the Health Humanities and Literary Studies. Eds. Eftihia Mihelakis and Lucille Toth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2025: 21-43.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Millikan, Ruth Garrett. Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. Cambridge; London: The MIT Press, 1984.
Smirnov, Yuri; Whittlesey, Henry. “The Purpose of Literary Fiction at the Beginning of the Third Millennium.” Evanescent: Young Adulthood Transadapted. New York: perypatetik, 2022.
Quine, Willard Van Orman. Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.
Footnotes
[1] See Whittlesey [Schroeder] 2024 and ibid 2025.
[2] The bad is probably the death of her grandmother who has disappeared.
[3] See Peripatatic Alterity, especially chapters 2, 3 and 6.
[4] Or motion picture.
[5] A very short list of philosophers, writers and artists whose work addresses material/non-material or body/mind dualism includes Rene Descartes, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Caspar David Friedrich, Vassily Kandinsky, Gabrielle Munter, Franz Marc, Thomas Mann, Martin Heidegger, Henri Bergson, Gilbert Simondon, etc.
[6] In Peripatetic Alterity, chapter eight, especially pages 219-221 (chapter 8.4.2), we discussed a type of this mind in the context of romantics who reject almost everything in life and just play video games. More poetic would be if they read, but we are realists. More extreme cases of this are the voluntary homeless, people who live off the grid, sects, the Amish, Quakers, the Orthodox, etc.
[7] Quine 71-2.
[8] Kant A 126.
[9] Kant B 145.
[10] See Kant A 83; B 111-113.
[11] See Peripatetic Alterity for more.
[12] Consciousness here is understood as higher level thought that is actively engaged in. It can be viewed in contrast to access consciousness where thinking may occur passively
[13] Millikan 67, 297-324.
[14] Ibid 56-59.
[15] See Rosenthal, “Explaining Consciousness.”