LITERARY FICTION AND RATIONALITY
School of Social Sciences and Humanities / philosophy
University of Tampere
May 30-31, 2013
Literature gives us a unique opportunity to examine persons and their lives. For example, literature may be seen as illuminating rationality and the different kinds of reasons that agents have for their actions, beliefs, and judgements. It also enables us to examine rationality as a property of a person, and reasons as constituted by the context of a person’s life narrative. Literature may also be considered a source of empirical, moral, and aesthetic reasons and beliefs. The purpose of this conference is to critically discuss these and other conceptions of the relation between literary fiction and rationality.
Conference program:
Thursday May 30
All Thursday sessions are held at Pinni B 1097
10.00 Welcome by Leila Haaparanta
10.15-11.45 Plenary talk by Kathleen Stock:
Fiction, Belief, Imagining and Cognitive Value
(Chair: Leila Haaparanta)
Session I.
Chair: Jenni Tyynelä
11.55-12.30 Arto Laitinen: On Literary Fiction, Science Fiction and
Thought Experiments in Practical Philosophy
12.30-13.30 Lunch
Session II.
Chair: Jukka Mikkonen
13.30-14.05 Lars-Olof Åhlberg: Imaginary and Imagined Worlds in Narrative Fiction
14.10-14.45 Karen Simecek: The Rationality of Poetry
14.50-15.25 Alexander Bareis: The Interpretation of Fictional Narrative and Rationality
15.25-15.55 Coffee
Session III.
Chair: Hanne Appelqvist
15.55-16.30 María José Alcaraz León: Warranted Emotional Responses to Artworks and
the Problem of Moral Education through the Arts
16.35-17.10 Angela Curran: Aristotle on the Nature of Our Affective Responses to Literature
17.15-17.50 Stephen Chamberlain: Emotion and Imagination in the Rationality of Fiction
Friday May 31
09.15-10.45 Plenary talk by Elisabeth Schellekens:
Understanding Fiction: Concepts, Character and Coherence
(Pinni B 1097. Chair: Jukka Mikkonen)
10.45-11.15 Coffee
Session IV. (Pinni B 1096)
Chair: Hanne Appelqvist
11.15-11.50 Riku Juti: Philosophical Lessons from Dickens
11.55-12.30 Timo Vuorio: A Novel as an Argument. Dostojevsky on Crime
Session V. (Pinni B 1097)
Chair: Leila Haaparanta
11.15-11.50 Hanna Meretoja: Literature, Ethics and a Sense of History
11.55-12.30 Olli-Pekka Moisio: Ernst Bloch and Literature
12.30-13.30 Lunch
Session VI. (Pinni B 1096)
Chair: Jenni Tyynelä
13.30-14.05 Jukka Mikkonen: Literary Experience, Reason, and Philosophical Insight
14.10-14.45 Ana Falcato: Form is an Expression of Content. John Coetzee against Substitution Ethical Thought
14.50-15.25 Bridget Vincent: Reasoning with Literature. Poetic and Prosodic Irrationality
Session VII. (Pinni B 1097)
Chair: Hanne Appelqvist
13.30-14.05 Niklas Forsberg: Teachings of Density and Distance. Remarks on the Philosophical Significance of Novels beyond the Presence of “Philosophy”
14.10-14.45 Ingeborg Löfgren: Cavell and Projective Imagination in Philosophy and Literature – Clarification, Mystification, and the Logic of Narration
14.50-15.25 Nora Hämäläinen: Cora Diamond, Alice Crary and an Extended Conception of Rationality
15.25-15.55 Coffee
16.00-17.30 Plenary talk by Garry Hagberg: TBA
(Pinni B 1097. Chair: Hanne Appelqvist)
Closing Words by Leila Haaparanta
The conference is organized by Prof. Leila Haaparanta’s research project Judgment and Human Rationality, funded by the Academy of Finland.
For more information about the event, please contact Hanne Appelqvist (hanne.appelqvist -at- helsinki.fi) or Jenni Tyynelä (jenni.tyynela -at- uta.fi).