The Will to Make‐Believe: Religious Fictionalism, Religious Beliefs, and the Value of Art

Abstract

I explore some of the reasons why, under specific circumstances, it may be rational to make‐believe or imagine certain religious beliefs. Adopting a jargon familiar to certain contemporary philosophers, my main concern here is to assess what reasons can be given for adopting a fictionalist stance towards some religious beliefs. My understanding of fictionalism does not involve solely a propositional attitude but a broader stance, which may include certain acts of pretence. I also argue that a plausible reason to be fictionalist about a specific set of religious beliefs and practices has to do with the value of some artistic creations; namely, those that require the adoption of a religious point of view for their understanding.

Teleological Fictionalism in Biology:

“…Second, they can remind themselves that the metaphor is only useful in some, but not all, contexts, and step out of the metaphor when other important aspects of biological traits should be investigated. Underlying this latter strategy is a version of prescriptive fictionalism called contextualist fictionalism (Sauchelli, 2018), which holds that people should engage in fiction only in some contexts, but not all. 18 In sum, as long as these risks can be managed at low cost, they do not seem to pose an insurmountable challenge to prescriptive fictionalism.…”

“…Michael Ruse (2000), by contrast, takes a stronger view, arguing that the metaphor plays an essential heuristic role in the study of natural selection and adaptation. 18．This view is also called hypothetical, as opposed to categorical, fictionalism (Sauchelli, 2018). Sauchelli (2018) characterizes this view as a version of revolutionary fictionalism, but in my understanding it would be more accurate to characterize it as a version of prescriptive fictionalism.…”

Forms of belief-less religion: why non-doxasticism makes fictionalism redundant for the pro-religious agnostic

“…1.For an account that uses the two terms interchangeably, see Jay (2014). Other philosophers (Harrison (2010); Robson (2015); Sauchelli (2018) ) explicitly use the fictionalist label while relying heavily on resources commonly used in non-doxastic theories, such as epistemic possibility.…”

Religious fictionalism

“…A deeper enjoyment of certain aesthetic experiences has also been proposed as an advantage of religious fictionalism. Andrea Sauchelli argues that “many religious works of art could not be (fully) appreciated if they were not properly understood from within a specific religious perspective” (forthcoming). Works of art with a religious subject matter are widespread across times and cultures and often represent some of the world's finest artworks.…”

“…A third arm to the fictionalist taxonomy—“evaluative fictionalism”—has been recently proposed by Jay (, p. 211–212), in which fictionalist engagement in the domain is seen as a pro tanto good, but not sufficient to recommend engagement all things considered. A fourth variety is “hypothetical fictionalism” proposed by Sauchelli (forthcoming), which is a contextualist account, advising a fictionalist stance towards propositions from a domain only in certain contexts, but not in others.…”