I'm a philosopher. I also wrote a techno-fantasy novel (to be published first of March in Swedish at Lundberg & Lennse, later this year - no date yet - in English at Ellipsis Imprints). So, when a philosopher writes a novel, it becomes a philosophical novel by default, right?
It started out, over six years ago now, as a therapy project. And then, I wanted to write for others too, not just for myself - I wanted to turn the therapy into an actually good novel. But I never really thought, along the way, that I wrote philosophy in fictional form. However, other people who have read the script spontaneously calls it a philosophical novel (this may sound like a humble brag, because it is one). And, I think, not merely because the person who wrote it is a philosopher.
A couple of people say it's about Cartesian metaphysics. And yeah, no mystery why people would say that, because it's a central theme that people have both bodies and souls, and the soul is constantly held up as more important. However, major difference: souls in my fantasy world have some physical properties, like volume and density. And they can, at least by indirect methods, be measured and registered by scientific instruments. In this way, the soul resembles an extra organ in a person's head - very different from how Descartes envisioned it. (Also, souls aren't exclusive to humans, but that's a much smaller difference.)
So, I didn't write some philosophical exploration of dualism in fantasy form. I'd say it's more about Mad/neurodivergent phenomenology than dualism.
One thing you can do better in fiction than standard philosophy papers is showing what certain experiences are like. Also, if you can show something, describe something, you thereby prove that it's at least prima facie conceivable. I've talked about how many philosophers of psychiatry are too quick to dismiss certain experiences as conceptually/logically/metaphysically impossible in my paper Allegedly Impossible Experiences , where I also refer to existing fiction like the X-men, Transferts, Altered Carbon, and Brand New Cherry Cola. In the future, I could add references to my own novel! (Now you think: wouldn't this completely destroy the anonymity of the peer review process? Possibly. Then again, I suspect lots of people can guess the author already, as soon as I start drawing on my own experiences ... More and more philosophers are coming out of the Madness closet these days, but I still think that few philosophers share my kind of Mad!)
So, these are two philosophical things you can do in fiction, and which I do in Cogwheel Souls: Deeper dives into phenomenology than the standard philosophical format allows for. Proving that something is at least prima facie conceivable, because if it weren't, you couldn't write fiction about it.
In addition, I think that fully fleshed-out fiction often makes for better intuition pumps than briefly described thought experiments. I write about fiction, thought experiments, and intuitions in my The Agential Perspective . My general view on the use of intuitions in philosophy is that they are, often, indispensable. However, we should use them critically. First, we shouldn't overuse them. For instance, conceptual analysis need not always rely on intuitions alone, and perhaps it need not always use intuitions at all. We can, e.g., look at how experts in relevant fields use a term, and how they need to use certain terms in order to make use of their expertise, in addition to or instead of merely introspecting on our own intuitions. Second, it's ridiculous (sorry-not-sorry) to think that "thought experiments" are analogous to laboratory experiments in natural sciences like chemistry, and that providing a very brief description of a scenario is like doing a chemistry experiment in a sterile lab instead of outdoors with all sorts of contaminants in the air. Philosophy isn't chemistry and our intuitions - even if indispensable in topics like ethics - are not data to be observed.
I show in the paper that our intuitions can change drastically depending on whether we read or watch fully fleshed-out fiction or just read a briefly described philosophy thought experiment about the same thing. I think we have reason to pay more attention to the former. In any case, this is something fiction can contribute to philosophy: the full picture, the full story, of a fantastical scenario.
The above - diving deep into phenomenology, showing prima facie conceivability, and fully elaborated fantastical scenarios to pump our intuitions - are obviously not meant as an exhaustive list of what fiction has to offer philosophy. I'm sure that others have lots to add!
However. I'm gonna finish this blog post by saying something about how you shouldn't do philosophy in fictional form: If you think you sit on some very deep and profound piece of wisdom, you shouldn't write a piece of fiction, include a character who's stipulated to be super wise and profound, and then have that character make the supposedly wise claim of yours. To prove that some statement truly is wise and profound, you must fucking argue for it. Whether you do so in a paper or full book, in a dry, analytical form or the continental tradition, or if you philosophize Madly (Zsuzsanna Chappell and I write about doing Mad philosophy and philosophizing Madly in this Oxford Research Encyclopedia chapter), you need some philosophy to prop up your claim. You can't just imagine a character, further imagine that they're super wise, and then make your idea wise by putting it in said character's mouth.
Despite, well, everything, I'm gonna use a Sandman example to illustrate because it's simultaneously so famous and so bad. (This isn't me pretending that I always hated everything Gaiman wrote. I liked Sandman a lot. But it's not some perfect work of art, it has flaws - like fake profundity.)
Death picks up a baby who died. The baby complains over their short life. Death says: "You got what everyone gets. A lifetime."
When I was young, you could even buy ankh necklaces with this quote engraved on! But it's not profound, it's stupid.
Compare: Imagine that I found out that my colleagues earned twice or thrice as much as I did. Furious, I walk up to my boss to demand an answer. He looks me solemnly in the eye and says: "You get what everyone gets. A salary."
That would be an asshole answer, not a profound answer.
If you ever catch me inventing a super duper wise character and have them spout my favourite philosophy, feel free to punch me in the face.
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