Fiction: A By-Product of Intellect?

A hypothesis that fictions are a necessary part of being an animal with intellect and exploring what the implications of this might be.

The Fear of Being

It can be disturbing to have a brain… It brings about the anxiety that all of this consciousness we feel is predicated on the wellbeing of one biological clump of matter. So we reach out for kinder truths; that the brain is really just a mechanism of a higher power; a bridge between the spiritual and our tangible reality. Gilbert Ryle’s ‘ghost in the machine’ theory, argues that the body and mind are altogether separate categories, and to ask “ok, but where is the mind?” When looking at an organic body, is to have committed a categorical error. The mind, he asserts, isn’t a part of the body as any biological component is.

Credit: Pablochavesuy

All of this intrinsic desire for something divine may be the plan of a deity, or deities, to ensure that we never forget where we came from, or may arise spontaneously out of the implacable feeling of their presence. But what if the mind’s proclivity towards fiction (1a) were just a necessary condition for our intellect to function properly?

Disclaimer for the rest of this piece: I am not a trained psychologist. I am drawing heavily from research and Dr Robert Sapolsky’s lectures found here. This is first and foremost a philosophical investigation.

Spandrels for Churches, spandrels for Minds

A spandrel (in biology) is a component of an organism which supports a directly “chosen” evolutional trait. They are so named after the triangular areas that extend out of the pillars in churches and other buildings. These are by-products of design, resulting out of the primary objective: the load-bearing utility of the pillars. These triangular areas would often be decorated in order to make them seem intentional in the grander scheme of the building.

A Spandrel Illustration

The chin is an example of a spandrel, developing not as a useful and selected-for mechanism in itself, but to permit the human mouth to fit in line with the face (more or less), instead of the mouth extruding out into a muzzle. So, why might one suppose that fiction is a spandrel of intellect?

Human intellect has many practical applications such as effectively organising actions with positive results, but it permits much introspection and doubt - to such an extent that it can lead to existential dread. A dread so profound that an entire genre of horror was born out of it. Many functions that serve our survival of body, threaten in other ways our survival of mind. This can be based on the disparity between the complexity of questions we can ask and our limited capacity to answer them, especially as individuals. It can also be based on trauma; the ability to comprehend the moral conflict in an act we commit, observe or become victim of. Thus, in this line of thinking, a by-product is born: the healing aura of fiction.

Every time that the mind is injured it begins to rationalise using narrative frameworks, to justify the events of a life in a way that serves the unfolding plot and allows the intellect to be unburdened of emotional disturbance. Rarely, if ever, is this a truly accurate accounting. A person steals from another and creates an idea related to their victim’s higher economic status: “I need it more than them” or “they were probably a greedy person anyway”. And vice versa, a rich person refuses to do charity out of some preconceived notion about the impoverished and their lack of determination to rise above their circumstance. Sometimes a fiction becomes so elaborate that it begins to reconstruct memories or amplify their potency increase its territory in the mind. This is more evidence for the fiction as by-product of intellect and not the other way round, for the mind enraptured too greatly by fiction (common to Schizophrenia) is more susceptible to catatonic and socially incompatible behaviour. These can result in severe or fatal harm to oneself or others.

To clarify my presuppositions going forward:

• Intellect (the pillar) develops “true” assumptions about the environment or other organisms and produces actions based on those assumptions. This assumption is influenced by emotions, observations etc.

• Fiction (the spandrel) serves to contextualise this truth in a way that makes action easier.

Throughout the rest of this piece, I will take the ‘fiction as a type of spandrel’ premise as an accurate description, for brevity. I am most certainly open to discussion on this matter:

Fiction as compensation and healing

Carl Jung believed that dreams serve us in a compensatory manner, warning us to the oversights and discrepancies between our actions and unconscious (to adopt Jung's lexicon). Let us note here that this too is compatible with the theory of fiction as a spandrel, for the fiction of a dream in Jung’s theory provides a connective arc between the realms of consciousness, rather than being a behavioural end in itself. This theme of dreams as psychological, or genetic correction for issues brought on by behaviour seems to ring true in many aspects of nature. For example, according to Dr Robert Sapolsky, animals such as vultures will eat foods that are parasitic (behaviour), and in order not to dissuade potential mates, will direct greater organic resources to the enhancement of their aesthetic characteristics, this being a stronger orange colouration of their face (see 25:00 of the video below). This is effectively a biological proclamation to mates that despite their less than sanitary diet, they have a powerful immune system and can afford to lose resources on purely aesthetic features. This is relevant because it shows that their biological systems correct for environment and their social dynamic.

Hyperdiffusionism asserts that all civilisations arose from one origin civilisation, but it is generally considered inaccurate. Rather, evidence points to many separate civilisations arising from geographically and temporally isolated zones. This same feature of organisms across the world to adapt and behave in uncannily similar ways is seen time and time again. Plants found in specific altitudes and climates will appear almost as aesthetic duplicates of each other, despite thousands of kilometres of separation, yet be wholly distinct in taxonomy. Religions in desert regions tend towards monotheism, whilst tropical regions favour polytheism. Human languages produce lots of overlapping grammatical rules. The patterns that we observe in these phenomena suggest that nature is far more predictable than we might suppose.

Therefore, we could assume that the organic mechanisms that give rise to humans are at least in part able to “anticipate” the behaviours that bring about civilizational development and progress. Thus, those mechanisms have granted us a mind that is complex enough to understand and feel, not only for our kin, which is seen in many animals, but for our communities. What nature likely did not anticipate is that we would extend that communal empathy and kinship to humans across the planet, and to animals, and even to the fictional characters we developed. We are beings who are designed to be effective in communities, yet as a defect, or a blessing, are now aware of an entire world of, for all intents and purposes, conscious beings. That is all subtle pain, taken in until it reaches intolerable levels and the system disassociates.

If indeed, the biology that orients the brain has some predictions about the potential downfalls and outcomes of intellect-driven behaviour, fiction suddenly does not seem so out of place, so… other-worldly, as once we might have suspected.

Religion vs Fiction

It is noteworthy that religion has arisen in almost, if not every successful nation. Many developed countries are now facing higher levels of depression and other mental health issues. Just recently, the UK was placed second on a list of the unhappiest countries. One might preach that it is a collapse in religion that has made the UK fall so low, but correlation is not causation, and the variables are extensive. The damaging effect of technology on mental health cannot be understated, and where children, adolescents and young adults generally have more free time, it is very easy to become a slave to addictions and fear of lost potential.

It might be the case that religion was the best solution before, but I very much doubt that we would fair better in the long run if we successfully made a return to it en masse. It appears that not religion, but narrative, is the real through line of societal cohesion. The narrative of religion is one approach, though there can also be the narrative of nation, monarchy, science and ethics. Religion only seems to win out in these areas because it makes itself most impervious to scrutiny, by purporting itself to be unknowable by nature. Where a society needs fiction, which by the nature of spandrels is veritably true, it logically proceeds that civilisations would take ideas that they deem moral and decorate them so that they slot in seamlessly to their truth complex. This is ostensibly the use of religion. The dressing up of intellectual, sense and emotional data in a package of (ideally timeless) stories and analogies.

Now for the most controversial part: What if most, if not all religious projects were doomed from the start by a defect of our minds to confuse a fictional by-product with an actual truth value? Let us concede at least, that the vast majority of religions are incorrect in their assertions of the nature of divinity, if it exists in the first place, by view of their contradictions with others. There are countless examples then, of religions diluting truths with fiction, simply because there is no line drawn between the two domains. If I assert that murder is wrong and unicorns exist, where ought you draw the line between fiction and truth? I could write a story about a unicorn, killed for sport, and one might conclude that it was wrong to kill all the unicorns, for why else would they be absent from the world. If I instead label my story as fiction, the distinction becomes clear, and my “true” assertion that murder is wrong is divined, with no reason to believe that it has anything to do with the nature of the subject being harmed.

In the modern day, we find ourselves lacking a unifying narrative. There is a left and right narrative, a religious and atheist narrative, a capitalism vs everything else narrative. Yet no one is content to say that the narratives they deliver are just that: a necessary by-product of the intellect(s) trying to communicate a correct action or principle.

Fiction as a Guiding Hand

Fiction in its most applied form, becomes a communicative tool, embellishing dry, rational concepts with a dramatic flare. Moral messages become a compelling invitation, when embedded in a well executed narrative structure. This may seem like a reason to abandon the previous notion of fiction as a by-product of intellect, but this is not so clear to me. The moral message, concept, or idea which the intellect wants to communicate, seems to be the load-bearing beam, whilst the fiction represents the decorated spandrels. Would it not be more efficient, more concise, if we didn’t need the fiction? Perhaps. However, nature did not make us machines, and there is something attractive about this curious necessity.

Credit: CDD20

Fiction also allows our intellect to chart a path in the external world, before we venture it. Science fiction in particular, has notoriously been the the domain of prophets; in one moment it imagines a dystopian vision of the future, then that future is realised in often disturbing ways. The fiction is necessary for the following reasons, amongst others: it invites the audience to engage with ideas they would otherwise find unpalatable, it allows the author to test the boundaries of thought, and it nestles the author’s truths in an emotion, which are more likely to excite action than a reel of facts alone.

The practical application of this idea is to reframe from fictions as true in themselves, to fictions as connective frameworks or homes for the truth. We should be honest when we engage in narratives, and wary of those who do so deceptively. Reading a fictional story, we agree that the characters are not “real” in common parlance, but nonetheless find them compelling.

Whenever someone speaks of Lord of the Rings, or Macbeth, or Dune, and derives some essential truth about the world or human nature, it is not made less by the knowledge that these are fictions. If anything, they inspire in such a way that one wishes to elevate the virtue of themselves or humanity, by emulating the victories and learning from the failures in the story. This might actually, when embraced fully, be more compelling than the religious invitation, because it does not imply that we are straggling behind a perfect being; which is inaccessible on account of our moral failings. Fiction in its purest form is more akin to a mentor than an authority.

Paul Atreides from Dune

Further, those stories which do not deny themselves and proclaim “I am a fiction”, do not limit their own potential by self imposed truth requirements. They make the statement “I am I! I need not the veil of deceit or self aggrandizing truth claims to justify myself”. The more time any given fictional piece lays itself bare for what it is, whilst remaining relevant, the more assuredly it can be used as a reliable compass for truth. Shakespeare survived on the merits of his writing, whilst most religions survived in large part by dogma and the sword. Religions, now losing their statutory power, will be tested on their narratives alone, but only if the followers of those religions do not insist on the truth value of their texts; to do so will indubitably result in them being disregarded as relics of primitive thought, and many, evidently, are not. I think it a better approach that the faithful allow atheists and agnostics to read religious stories for their implicit lessons, not for their wrote truth.

Conclusion: A Radical Age of Fiction

Current creatives who wish to contribute to the pursuit of truth should strive to produce the best possible interrogations of ideas and the best possible arguments for or against behaviour. They should not assert the truth value outright, but leave it implicit in the story. And as audiences, we should weigh the quality of advice, before being confident to follow its guidance. Simply:

Fiction as a mediator, not as an end in itself

As we develop the skill of critique, we will see more clearly in the rhetoric of those who wish to deceive, that they are not pursuing truth or our interests. How ought we improve this skill?

We should treat fictional stories more seriously, as once we almost universally did with religions, thereby restoring our ability to grapple with moral complexity and novel ideas. Although religion once satisfied our desire for narrative and moral lessons, I do not believe it will survive the course of time, for better or for worse. For the sake of decreasingly religious populations, we should explore new ways to fill those gaps left behind, before they are instead satisfied by those who deal only in self-interest and deception. Entertaining, superficial fiction holds a monopoly on attention in the modern day, and its relationship with us is one-sided: high demand for attention, low return on fulfilment. It would be in our best interest to redirect some of that attention to more challenging stories: more diligent explorations of how we orient ourselves in the world and our relationships. However, we must be wary of our mind’s proclivity to confuse those fictions too with our reality.

I will write more on this topic, exploring the ways by which we turn fiction into a healthy fuel for the mind and speculating on how it can address the void that will be left if religion loses its last foothold.