Fiction or Nonfiction

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

This post was inspired by a couple of Joker’s threads, which can be found here and here:

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=162877

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=162879

Fiction or Non-Fiction

What is fictional? What is nonfictional? More importantly, what is the difference?

For those of you that know my personal beliefs and outlooks on the world, the dualities that I perceive are almost always blurred together. I cannot decipher the separation of many similar concepts: reality vs. illusion, truth vs. untruth, good vs. evil, selfish vs. selfless, etc.

So keeping that in mind, to me there is mainly a contextual difference between ‘fiction’ and ‘nonfiction’.

  • What is fictional are stories or accounts that are meant or assumed to be unreal in the world.

  • What is nonfictional are stories or accounts that are meant or assumed to be real in the world.

All is fine and dandy until you consider my view of reality. I believe that reality is an illusion, because what people perceive through the senses are illusive by nature. If truth and reality were inherently unchanging and predictable in nature, then things as we know them would be truly knowable and real, but they are not. Since reality is actually illusive by nature, then my concepts of fiction and nonfiction are necessarily entwined. How am I supposed to separate the definitions further into a practical understanding of them? Save that question though, because it is important to handle the concepts as they are given, since people in general assume these definitions are true… In fact, they are not.

There is a second, jumbled point I would like to make. If people can believe in God, then why can’t I create a fictional story of my own device (similar to Ancient Greek/Roman mythology of gods) and put a ‘real’ faith into the characters I have made? If I write myself a religion and morality, supposedly based on fiction, then why should I not believe it as ‘real’???

If Christians can believe in God, then why can’t I create my own and believe in it if I want to?

Let the discussion begin! :sunglasses:

2

You can go ahead and believe it if you like…it won’t be any more real than any other god, but you can do it.

Make him a guy that hates shoes. I always wanted to make up my own religion and say that shoes were prohibited so that my employers couldn’t make me wear shoes.

3

Done. Seriously.

My God of Tricksters will hate shoes. He will kill people based on the shoes they wear.

4

I was part of a made up religion for a while.

It was called Macherism. We prayed by making jokes about christians, we weren’t allowed to wear shoes or eat any kind of junk food, and our god was a giant meatloaf.

5

As i have mentioned here ILP a few times before, I was diagnosed as mentally ill. This happened when i was writing a story that was partly based on my present situation at the time and I started to believe the fictional aspects of the story because, to me, they were becoming more believeable. My mind was exploring What-if scenarios and it went for a ride.

Looks like I was a little too passionate about my writing. Or, like the OP states, reality is illusive.

6

Please ensure that thine deity is depicted as a giant pair of bare feet on all religious iconography that thou might fashion; and that He is depicted as viciously Smiting the foul menace of footwear with his mighty !JUSTICE! Hammer, wherever He might find it.

7

The problem with fictional and non-fictional discussions is that some measure of solipsism is involved.

Solipsism is not the worry but the problem in the discussion of dualities is basically one group speaking how their solipsism is better than another’s without bothering explaining how.

As of yet there is no philosophical school of thought that goes into detail of these issues.

I have tried to address some of these issues but it usually ends up in a conversation with someone slinging around the naturalistic fallacy everywhere.

8

Interesting point. But if reality is an illusion, is all mankind cast under the same illusory spell. As I understand it, this is similar to what Hindu’s believe and their understanding of the veil of maya. But if this is what you are saying, then we can still share a common language and talk about things within this illusion. We may not exist in ultimate reality but the fact that we can communicate a shared understanding about the external world means one can salvage the idea of non-fiction in terms of a common, dare I say it,objective, unreality. Or does it? I guess i’m just trying to understand how u thinking, i don’t know if i’ve hit exactly wot u mean!But I think this overlaps into your second point. You question why you cannot create a God and not just believe it is real. Well you can if you want to but it would not mean anything to the common context of humanity which is where I contend reality can be found, through our common usage of reason. I reckon it would be irrational. I don’t think all religion has to be irrational though, i think it can just require an extension of reason. Kant wrote a great work , Religion Within The Bounds of Mere Reason.

I think reason is what we share but how we use it is maybe what separates us and maybe in an ideal world it would be easy to recognise the good arguments from the bad and progress as a race.

9

There are two truths. One that the body believe in and one that the mind believe in. They are both in direct opposition. What is fiction to one is nonfiction to the other and vice versa. We need this in order to exist because the mind need the body and the body need the mind but the two are forever in opposition and therefore fighting with each other. I see this reflected in the universe and I see this reflected in us because we are the universe and the universe is us.

10

I acknowledge this dualism, but I disagree with explaining it as such. In my mind and body, the two are blurred into a single unity.

11

What you are experiencing is a bias toward the body or the mind. The truth is that we’re all biased toward the body but some more than others. Conservatives are more biased toward the body then liberals are. The war that’s in us is reflected outside of us. It’s also the war of the Sun against the Earth. Men vs. Women. Space vs. Time.

12

Your body isn’t capable of believing in anything without your mind to process the data around it. Two inanimate objects have a bit of trouble being in opposition…your body and your mind rarely have wants of their own, they simply have two different needs…for instance, your body needs the food in front of you to survive, but your brain tells you that the food is poisoned and will kill you. Your physical desire for food and your mental knowledge that it will kill you are at odds, but your body and mind want the same thing. They want to live, they want you to find food that is safe to eat.

13

Your brain is split in half because half is devoted to your body and half is devoted to your mind. Your mind and body do have two different needs but unfortunately we subjugate the need of the mind to the need of the body. We all do this to a degree, some more than others.

14

You have a strange idea of how the human brain works. All parts are devoted to the body. Your mind doesn’t have any needs of it’s own, since the only real purpose of the mind is to keep the body alive.

15

Except that half is devoted to keeping it alive now and half is devoted to keeping it alive in the future.

16

Both of which involve keeping it alive…thus…both devoted to the body.

17

Keeping it alive now and keeping it alive later are two different things. Saying both devoted to the body is leaving the time aspect out of it.

18

Time doesn’t really matter. All parts of the brain are dedicated to the preservation of the body.

19

Time does matter. It matters a lot. That’s our problem, we keep confusing the two. We think living fast is the same thing as living long. We have a bad sense of time and the more we feed our body the worst our sense of time get.

20

We have parts of the brain dedicated to living a LONG time, and parts of the brain that are interested in our immediate survival. They are still dedicated to the body.

We have parts of our brain that think “I should consume this food right now, because I am hungry.” and parts of the brain that think “I should buy a roast beef so that I can eat for the next week.” and parts that say “I should work hard so I can get a job and buy meat every week.”…still dedicated to keeping the body alive.