Graduation Year

2015

Date of Submission

12-2014

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Philosophy

Reader 1

Dustin Locke

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© 2014 Antonia Ivo Antonova

Abstract

This thesis uses Amy Kind’s defense of epistemic relevance in imagination to examine how and when true beliefs imparted in literary imaginings are justified as knowledge. I will show that readers’ literary imaginings must pass a test of epistemic relevance, as well as be paired with a strong affirming emotional response in order to justify the truth behind the beliefs they impart. I believe the justificatory affective response is a kind of non-propositional emotional imagining, distinct from the type of literary imaginings that initially imparted the beliefs. Due to this thesis’ focus on the justificatory power of literary imaginings related to emotion, my work shows how literature can provide new knowledge to the philosophical realms of ethics and emotion. Literary implications in other types of philosophical inquiry still remain unexplored.

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