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To Delight and Instruct:
Fiction as an Adaptation and as
a By-Product
Steven Pinker
Professor of Cognitive Science
MIT
Why do people enjoy fictional narratives? Building on Horace's observation
that the purpose of literature is "to delight and instruct," I suggest
that an enjoyment of fiction may be both an evolutionary by-product and
an evolutionary adaptation. The by-product consists in using virtual reality
technologies to simulate pleasurable experiences, especially gossip. The
adaptation may consist in mentally exploring the ordinary consequences
of combinatorial, strategic human interactions involving fitness-related
goals in a simulated world, not unlike case-based reasoning in artificial
intelligence systems.
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