LAUSR

Why do we say that a certain fiction is good, or acceptable, or even credible? Are there any criteria that determine these judgments? The paper does not discuss the metaphysical status of fictional entities but, rather, the criteria of fiction acceptability or credibility, with reference to the literary and legal domains in particular.Coleridge claimed that “poetic faith” involves a suspension of disbelief. If he was right, to be good a literary fiction must be credible. Of course, literary credibility does not mean truth or truthfulness. So, what does that mean? I consider the hypothesis that it means, in some senses to be specified, coherence. Coherence is not to be identified with logical consistency and is not easily definable. It is something more than mere logical consistency, being a sort of “making sense” that concerns not only the logical relations between sentences but also their content and relations to the world. Specifying such senses permits us to provide a coherentist theory of fiction that will be checked against some literary and legal fictions. Although the differences between these fictions must not be underestimated, the paper concludes that coherence provides a general explanation and justification of fictions and of our judgments on them.