Fiction, simulation, pretending

In ordinary linguistic communication, the speaker says something and the public, if it considers its interlocutor trustworthy, believes what it is told and integrates the information into its database. In fictional communication (such as that between author and reader in fictional texts), the recipient acts as if a trustworthy interlocutor is communicating information to him/her, and stores it in a separate mental compartment where he/she builds up a complex representation of the fictional universe he/she is being depicted. Whereas the representation of the world perpetually updated by our brain guides our behavior, the representation of the fictional universe has no impact on behavior: it is disconnected, separate from the representation of the world we use as a database for acting. This disconnection ensures that we don't confuse fiction with reality.

This phenomenon of compartmentalization goes beyond fiction in the narrow sense. Assumption is an intellectual operation that works in the same way. When you assume something, you act as if you admit it, and draw the consequences. These consequences are deduced hypothetically. The deduction in question simulates the deduction you would actually make, or could make, if you actually accepted the initial premise (corresponding to the supposition). You pretend the premise is true, in order to see what follows, but the consequence is not integrated into the primary representation, any more than the initial premise is.

All this suggests that, in addition to the representation of the world that plays the role of primary representation, the one that guides action and that we constantly update, we have the capacity to deploy, temporarily (as in supposition) or permanently (as in our representation of the Sherlock Holmes universe), secondary representations that function in the same way and use the same cognitive resources, but are disconnected from the primary representation that is directly linked to motivation and action.

To account for this disconnection of secondary representations, some authors postulate a separate workspace where ordinary first-level mental states can be simulated. The first-level mental states and acts that can be simulated in this way are not reduced to states of knowledge. When you see a monster approaching on the movie screen, you're a little scared, but you don't run away, because you know it's a movie. Your emotional state is an attenuated and disconnected version, i.e. without any effect on behavior, of the fear of the monster you would feel if you didn't know it was cinema.

This ability to "recreate" first-level mental states in a separate, disconnected workspace enables us to put ourselves in someone else's shoes in order to understand or anticipate their behavior, but also to envision and explore possibilities, notably by planning our future behavior. Imagination refers to all mental states or acts that are disconnected from primary representation, i.e. mental states that relate not to the real world (the one in which we live) but to virtual worlds - what philosophers since Leibniz have called "possible worlds". When we imagine the future, particularly when planning or anticipating, we consider different possibilities, corresponding to as many virtual worlds. But the imagination can also be turned towards the past, as when we regret or rejoice in what has already happened. In this case, we compare reality with other possible worlds. Simulation thus plays an essential role in mental life, and the study of fiction provides a privileged observatory.