Feeling for fictions: An analysis of our emotional engagement with fictional characters in response to Radford's Paradox

Radford's Paradox is a problem about how it can be possible for us to respond emotionally to fictional characters, given that we know fictions are not real. My project is to understand the nature of this paradox and then resolve it. First, I argue that Radford's Paradox is best understood as a collection of three separate paradoxes Second, I argue that previous theorists have failed to adequately resolve these paradoxes for three reasons: they have failed to acknowledge the tri-partite nature of the problem; they have misunderstood what it means to say that fictions are unreal; they have failed to understand the problem's relationship to the nature of emotions. I show that while previous theorists have attempted to resolve Radford's paradoxes by considering the nature of emotionality in general, a more accurate analysis requires examining each emotion individually. In Part II, I analyze four specific emotions with respect to Radford's paradoxes: pity, fear, worry, and being made to feel good. I conclude that each of these four emotions can coherently be felt in response to fictions, though perhaps not in all circumstances. While I provide no conclusion about emotionality in general, I take my work to be a start to the longer project of understanding the relationship between fictional stories and our emotional lives.