Paradox of fiction

The paradox of fiction is a philosophical problem about how people can experience strong emotions from purely fictional things, such as art, literature, and imagination. The paradox draws attention to an everyday issue of how people are moved by things which, in many ways, do not really exist. Although the ontology of fictional things in general has been discussed in philosophy since Plato, the paradox was first suggested by Colin Radford and Michael Weston in 1975. After Radford and Weston's original paper, they and others have continued the discussion by giving the problem slightly differing formulations and solutions.

The basic paradox is as follows:

The paradox is that all three premises seem to be true, but can not logically be true at the same time. If any two points (e.g. 1 and 3) are taken to be true, then the third (e.g. 2) must either be false or else produce a contradiction.

The various proposed solutions to the paradox can be divided into three basic groups:

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