Peter Goldie Fiction

In 2012 Peter Goldie questioned whether or not narratives are capable of truth and objectivity. Within his deliberation he outlined four ‘fictionalising tendencies’ that people might have. Goldie states that; we plot our lives, finding agency in the world where it is not, narrative thread and the desire for closure and finally genre and character. If it is true that people have these tendencies, it could possibly mean that the media should be allowed to create fiction around facts, as it is human nature to do so, however this could also imply that the media is telling lies as reporters will add fiction to stories they are reporting, therefore distorting the ‘truth’. It can be identified that humans don’t possess these tendencies, as outlined …show more content…
“Through narrative thinking, we make plots and plans for the future, form hypothetical imperatives, and so on, often based on narrative thinking about our past.” (Goldie 2012, p.161) It is easier to understand this through an example. People enact out future activities before they occur, utilizing a previous experience as basis to draw from. People prepare themselves on how to act around people, having previously had interaction with them. Goldie uses the example that he was late to work previously, therefore he will promise to avoid that tomorrow. He has no way of knowing for sure what will happen tomorrow that may affect his arrival to work. Unlike an author writing a novel, in which the story occurs exactly the way the author creates it, People are unable to control outside factors. Goldie would be unable to know of or prevent a car crash that causes traffic until that occurs at the time. Nor would he be able to predict there being an absence of traffic. Goldie acknowledges the Scottish Philosopher Alasdair McIntyre, in which he (McIntyre) states that people are less a single author, but more of a ‘co-author’, working with the rest of the …show more content…
“We often look for a ‘meaning’ of some natural event or accident, imputing it to an action by some other person or persons, or by some kind of non-human agency, such as gods, ghosts, and monsters.” (Goldie 2012, p.162) Humans seek to find the cause of an interaction. We apply beliefs to things such as horseshoes and rabbit feet, implying that they bring or cause luck, when it is likely that they are just items with no extraordinary qualities. We seek to find ‘the blame’ or what is responsible for an event. Goldie concludes that narratives are an expression of agency and mind. He explains that when something occurs in a fiction, that people assume that it is of some significance. What Goldie dislikes or finds wrong about this tendency is that “it misrepresents the way the world is: it represents non-agential events as being actions, initiated and controlled by agents of some