Predictive processing and the experimental solution for the paradox of fiction

The chapter explores how the predictive mind hypothesis provides the ground for an original answer—the Experimental Solution—to the two paradoxes concerning the emotional response to fiction. The first part begins by putting forward how the predictive processing of the mind gives rise to a new explanation, which provides an explicit understanding of the connection between emotions in the face of fiction and those within daily experience. Then, using Ronaldo de Sousa’s notion of paradigm scenarios, the Experimental Solution argues that fiction functions as a type of emotional laboratory where emotions are explored and tested. The second part of the chapter elaborates on taking fiction as emotional laboratories by showing that emotional learning occurs in emotional response to fiction, so as to provide a privileged space for emotional growth. Finally, the paper presents some of the ways in which the Experimental Solution makes a little step forward, though it agrees with many of the insightful conclusions of the make-believe theory, it adds two important modifications that occur with this new solution.