Philosophy

You cried for a character you know doesn't exist — how is that rational?

Philosopher Colin Radford pointed out an odd inconsistency: we feel genuine grief, fear or joy for fictional characters, even though real emotional responses are supposed to require believing a situation is real. We know Anna Karenina never lived, yet we mourn her anyway. Philosophers still disagree on whether this makes our emotions irrational, or reveals something wrong with our theory of emotion instead.

Colin Radford, How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina? — Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 1975

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