Reasoning about Fiction

In this paper we provide a suggestion on how to model reasoning about fiction. We will argue that three things happen: (1) one (sequentially) takes on board the explicit content of the fiction; (2) one imports background beliefs; this is represented by the most plausible worlds after an update triggered by the explicit content; and (3) from these most plausible worlds, an agent reasons on alternative courses of action within the fiction. We suggest to model (1) and (2) by means of a plausibility ordering on worlds after having up-dated with the explicit fictive content. Finally, we use an inferential ordering on worlds to model (3).