Oxford
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Here are two puzzles about human beings. First, they spend a great deal of time thinking about things they know didn’t and won’t happen and about people who they know don’t exist. Why? That’s the problem of fictional stories. Secondly, they spend no time inventing fictional scientific theories, or legal systems, or recipes; instead their fictions are always narratives, and almost always narratives of people or creatures with minds like people. Why? That’s the problem of fictional stories. Discussing these two problems will give us an insight into our psychological present and our evolutionary past. I’ll also ask whether our taste for stories distorts our view of the worlds.
Gregory Currie is a professor of Philosophy at the University of York who has recently published a book on ‘Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories’.