Abstract
According to Merel Semeijn, in addition to our stable representation of the real world, we have a workspace that houses, among other things, the temporary representations we construct during our fictional immersion. The objection to this idea is that the representation of the imaginary world built up during immersion in fiction can be reactivated. Some authors (such as Regine Eckardt) see fictional representation as a permanent representation parallel to the main representation (the representation of the world that guides behavior). In this conception, there is not a single workspace serving in turn to represent the various fictional universes, but a multitude of parallel representations corresponding to the universes in question.
Semeijn's response is that, although the information conveyed by a fictional statement remains isolated and does not integrate the representation of the world that guides the subject's behavior in the real world, it nevertheless integrates the main representation indirectly after embedding under a parafictional operator. The algorithm she proposes in her thesis is as follows: if a text is non-fictional (and if the information is credible and the source reliable), we integrate the content of the workspace with the main representation and reset the workspace. If the text is fictional, we embed the workspace content under the operator "in fiction F" and integrate the result (the parafictional statement) into the main representation, after which we reset the workspace. The permanent availability of fictional information comes from the fact that it is represented in the main database (the real-world representation) in the form of parafictional information.
Semeijn proposes to integrate parafictional information into the main representation because this information is true or false and concerns reality. This puts parafictional information on the same level as metafictional information. Metafictionalinformation is information about the fiction, such as its author, date of production, distribution or influence. Parafictional information is also information about fiction, and so it's tempting to think of it as metafictional information of a special kind. What distinguishes them is that they deal with the content of fiction.
Because they reveal the content of fiction, however, parafictional statements are about both the real world (i.e. fiction and its properties) and the imaginary world projected by it. Parafictional statements impose a double perspective in relation to fiction: an external perspective, comparable to that of other metafictional statements, and an internal perspective such as that adopted by those who engage in fictional practice and project themselves into the imaginary world of fiction. Parafictional statements thus establish a link between the main representation (where metafictional information about fiction considered as belonging to the real world is stored) and the separate mental space where information about the imaginary universe of fiction is stored. In this conception, fictional spaces are not temporary workspaces, as in Semeijn's case, but stable representations that coexist with the main representation and are linked to it through pointers that associate a representation (considered as an entity that exists in the real world) with its content, which is conceived as a projection of an imaginary world accessed through simulation.
