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Column Research Audio

Philosophy of Fiction

(Jul 2026: Philosophy of Fiction)

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I’m your host, Michael Alan Prestwood and this is the column research for the  

July 2026 edition

 of The Prestwood Column.

This is the expanded story mode edition.  

This month we wrap up TST Metaphysics and the Understanding Philosophy series with On Truth in Fiction. Last time, we explored Truth in History as a disciplined attempt to tell true stories about the past. This month, we turn to fiction: invented stories that can still reveal truth. This area of thinking covers both truth in fiction and untruth in nonfiction. This column explores how fictional worlds borrow reality as their background, how imagination bends fact without escaping it, and why invented stories can sometimes tell truths that ordinary factual summaries miss.

The bonus article this month is my TST Philosophy of Fiction: Imaginative Realism paper. This academic working paper explores the idea that pure fiction is impossible. The TST position is called Imaginative Realism, and it is the idea that humans cannot create fiction from the void. We live in a self-reconfiguring universe. Our fictional stories arise from the recombination of real impressions, not from nothing.

With that, let’s frame the key idea. 

Philosophy of Fiction.

This week, we explore the idea of Philosophy of Fiction.

Philosophy of Fiction studies how stories relate to reality. Its central dichotomy explores truth in fiction and alignment with reality in nonfiction.

Now for the 6 research tidbits. The goal, to blend intersections into wisdom.

Timelines, quotes, FAQs, and short explanations function as research anchors — designed to be reused, cross-linked, and updated as better evidence emerges.

The key ideas are available on the home page, but this is the only place to get the “rest of the story.”

1.

History Story.

The famous Lewis “Truth in Fiction” Paper.

1978
by David K. Lewis

David K. Lewis, born in 1941, opened the modern technical doorway into fictional truth. In his model, we can say things like “in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street” without pretending Holmes was a historical person. That distinction helps separate empirical event truth from truth inside a fictional construction.

His 1978 paper, “Truth in Fiction,” asks what it means for a statement to be true within a fictional world, often framed in symbolic shorthand as “in fiction f, Φ.” This means, “Within the fictional story called f, the statement Φ is true.” The letter f stands for the fiction, while the Greek letter phi represents a statement made about it.

Lewis gave the question its modern analytic form, asking what makes a statement true within a fictional world. Aristotle had earlier argued that fiction can express universal truths about human life. The TST Idea of Ideas adds a different distinction: fictional worlds also borrow already-true ideas from reality. Trees, flight, mathematics, grief, and gravity do not become true because they appear rationally consistent within Star Wars. They remain empirically or rationally true because they belong to the Grand Rational Framework. The speculative story rearranges them alongside invented elements such as the Force. In this sense, fiction adopts reality as its starting framework, then modifies selected parts of it.

 


I wrote that History Story, 

and posted it to TST 2 months ago.

2.

Critical Thinking Quote.

“Truth is stranger than fiction…[which] is obliged to stick to possibilities;”.

  • Mark Twain.
  • 1897.

Mark Twain sensed the tension between truth and fiction. In this famous quote, he feels the nature of latent ideas. Fiction lives within the possibilities of reality. Truth must answer to reality itself.

The mind can recombine real impressions in endless ways, but it cannot create from nothing. Fiction can rearrange impressions, exaggerate them, symbolize them, and turn them into story, but it is still limited to recombining materials reality has made available. Truth carries a different burden. For something to be true, it must allow reality to push back.

Twain’s line fits the idea of latent ideas and natural philosophy almost perfectly. Here is the full quote:

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” — Mark Twain, 1897.

His quote fits science-first philosophy and the idea that our minds are limited to recombining actual impressions of reality. Twain is saying fiction has a coherence obligation. Even when fiction is invented, it has to feel possible, meaningful, structured, and believable inside the story-world. Real events do not have that burden. Reality can be absurd, random, grotesque, unlikely, or narratively unsatisfying and still be real.

So Twain is not just making a joke. He is pointing to a real philosophy of fiction: fiction can depart from fact, but it’s toolbox is still limited to the reality of the possible. Reality, meanwhile, is not required to “make sense” to us. Reality just happens. It is truth.

 


I wrote that Critical Thinking Quote, 

and posted it to TST 2 months ago.

3.

Science FAQ.

Why does fiction feel real?.

It’s interesting that humans engage with fiction. The mind can enter structured make-believe to explore aspects of true things for many reasons from entertainment to preparation for real events.

Children do this with toys, adults do it with novels, films, theater, games, myths, and even social roles. Fiction becomes a guided imagination system. It lets the brain simulate danger, relationship, fear, grief, courage, betrayal, temptation, and identity without needing the event to happen.

Kendall Walton helps explain why fiction can feel emotionally real without being factually real. A novel, film, or play does not merely present fake events. It guides the imagination. The reader enters a structured game of make-believe, where fear, grief, hope, and empathy can become real experiences in the mind. The monster is not real. The feeling is.

Fiction feels so real because it gives the mind props for make-believe. The body and emotions can respond to imagined situations even when the person knows the story is invented.

Fiction traces are real as artifacts and experiences. The dragon did not exist, but the fear, attention, empathy, and memory can be real.

 


I wrote that Science FAQ, 

and posted it to TST 2 months ago.

4.

Philosophy FAQ.

Can authors create fiction beyond our universe?.

Authors don’t create fiction from nothing; they combine existing ideas in new ways. When J.K. Rowling created Harry Potter, she drew from universal themes like magic, heroism, and good versus evil—concepts that have existed for centuries. These elements were reassembled into a unique narrative that feels both new and familiar. This process illustrates the concept of latent ideas, showing how fiction is crafted by reconfiguring timeless concepts into novel forms.

Exploring the boundaries of creativity not only stretches the limits of imagination but also deepens our wisdom about human potential and the nature of reality.

In “30 Philosophers,” it’s put it this way:

“All fiction exists within the material world and is therefore limited to and by it. Our imaginations are vast and originate from the possible. Irrational ideas are works of fiction and come from blending real things. Put simply, irrational ideas are made up of two or more ideas that break down to rational and/or empirical ideas. Through conceptual blending, we fuse ideas together, but not from a void, because we are explorers, not deities.”

From David Hume to Margaret Boden. In 1748, Hume’s take was that imagination recombines the materials of experience. Much later in 1998, Boden’s take was that modern creativity theory explains several ways genuinely novel ideas can emerge from existing conceptual materials and structures. My own work in 30 Philosophers in 2024, places that process inside a broader metaphysical claim—new configurations can be real and original, but minds do not create materials or possibilities from absolute nothing.

 


I wrote that Philosophy FAQ, 

and posted it to TST 2 years ago.

5.

Critical Thinking FAQ.

How do we know what is true in a fictional world?.

First, we start with reality unless the story tells us otherwise. If a story mentions a human walking into a room, we assume humans breathe, have bodies, and experience gravity. The fiction does not need to rebuild reality from scratch. It borrows reality as its default background.

Second, we measure the story against reality. We let reality push back. If a fictional character falls from a cliff and survives, the story owes us an explanation: a miracle, a safety net, a dream, a superpower, or even just cartoon logic. Without some story-world reason, reality still sets the expectation.

Stacie Friend argues along these lines. She challenges the common idea that fiction is simply opposed to fact. Fiction is not cut off from reality. It is about reality, even when it asks us to imagine reality differently. That means fictional truth does not float in a separate metaphysical bubble. It depends on how the work guides our imagination against the background of the real world.

The basic rule is simple:

Real-world truths carry into a fiction unless the work excludes them.

That is why we can understand fictional worlds so quickly. We do not need the author to tell us that people have parents, cities have streets, fire burns, or death matters. We bring those facts with us. The story then tells us where to adjust: dragons exist, ghosts speak, time travel works, or one detective can solve impossible crimes.

In TST, this supports the idea that fiction is constrained by reality. Fiction departs from fact without escaping reality. It rearranges real-world materials: bodies, emotions, and consequence. The story may be invented, but the background it leans on is real.

 


I wrote that Critical Thinking FAQ, 

and posted it to TST 2 months ago.

6.

History FAQ.

What is the history of philosophy of fiction?.

The earliest philosophy of fiction begins before anyone called it that. Ancient myths, epics, and dramas were already using invented stories to explore such topics as gods, fate, and moral failure. Fiction as a philosophy started the first time someone asked, “Is that really true?”

In the East, fiction was used to explore concepts in wisdom literature. In the West, the clearest philosophical turn comes in ancient Greece with the idea of mimesis, or imitation. Plato worried that poetry and drama could mislead the mind. For him, fiction had a danger: it could stir emotion, deepen illusion, and make shadows feel like reality.

Aristotle answered with a more generous view. In the Poetics, he argued that poetry can be more philosophical than history because history tells what happened, while poetry shows what could happen according to probability, character, and consequence. That is the classic starting point.

In the medieval worlds, myth, scripture, and the like often blended together. Stories were often used as vehicles toward another aim including teaching wisdom, theology, and virtue. Allegorical interpretation became especially important. A story could be read beyond its literal surface meaning. This set in stone the idea that a story does not have to be factually literal to carry some truth.

In the modern period, the rise of history, science, and journalism sharpened the distinction between fact and fiction. Fiction became more clearly understood as invented narrative. At the same time, novelists and philosophers kept noticing that fiction could reveal human nature in ways bare facts often could not. 

In contemporary philosophy, the discussion becomes more technical: fictional worlds, fictional truth, possible worlds, narrative identity, propaganda, and the ethics of representation. TST enters this story with Imaginative Realism: fiction is not reality denied, but reality recombined.

 


I wrote that History FAQ, 

and posted it to TST 2 months ago.

That’s it for this issue!

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Thanks for listening.

The end.

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