Stories and What They (Don't) Teach Us
Gregory Currie
interviewed by Hans Maes
(excerpt)
Hans Maes: According to Quintillian, irony is that 'in which something contrary to what is said is to be understood. ...despite its long pedigree, you take issue with this view. ...
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Gregory Currie: What's really going on is that I am pretending to ask...thereby demonstrating my contempt for anyone who would seriously ask...
In other words, he's saying that this latter irony is "performative" rather than "linguistic"?
Hans Maes: ...since irony requires the capacity to engage imaginatively with another's perspective, even though one may think it defective, and ironic exchange can also indicate closeness in understanding. ...
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Hans Maes: ... Why do you think irony is more difficult to achieve in a pictorial medium than in a linguistic one?
Gregory Currie: ... It is difficult to distinguish...whether the picture is genuinely ironic in the communicative sense we have been discussing rather than merely a picture of a situation deemed to be ironic,... Trying to make a picture unambiguously ironic in the communicative sense often destroys the lightness of touch essential to effective irony.
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LEARNING FROM LITERATURE
In recent work,...Currie has shown himself to be much more of a sceptic in relation to the cognitive value of literature. In 'Creativity and Insight' (2013) he compares people who claim that literature is educative to smokers who claim their habit is good for them and insists that we ask for hard evidence in both cases. ...
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Gregory Currie: I have changed my mind in this way: I used to believe firmly in the cognitive potential of literature but now I am much more confused. I think we can agree that literature can induce cognitive change;
Yep. Almost anything can . But do it?
but change is cheap: a chance might be an increase in ignorance. ...you can get true beliefs from epistemically hopeless sources like fortune tellers. Reliability presumably has something to do with it. ...
But truth is only one aspect of the question. People are constantly telling us that we don't learn true propisitions from fiction: we gain skills, abilities, sensitivities, a knowledge of what certain kinds of experiences are like. Again, I think that's a very problematic claim, though it might turn out to be true.