Fiction Writing as Philosophical Methodology

Abstract

In this paper I argue for a novel philosophical methodology, fiction writing. Much has been made, in philosophy, of the relationship between fiction and thought experiments, but this literature focuses predominantly on completed pieces of fiction: Fully fledged and polished published pieces. In this paper I focus on how the process of writing fiction, especially speculative fiction such as science fiction and fantasy, not just the outcomes of this process, can be viewed as a distinctive philosophical methodology. This will be bound up in arguing for two claims: (1) The process of writing short speculative fiction is essentially a process of argumentation. (2) The distinctive benefit of writing fiction as opposed to writing analytic philosophy is that the starting points need not be justified. These two claims -- which may seem like they are in tension with each other -- will each serve to justify two overall conclusions about the writing of fiction -- the very process whereby short stories or novels are created. The first is that this process is a legitimate philosophical methodology, sharing many relevant features with traditional analytical argument building and conceptual analysis. The second is that it is distinctive philosophical methodology, in that it can provide us with insights that would not be gained via other means.