Learning from fiction and theories of fictional content

I present a dilemma for defenders of two theories of fictional content: Hypothetical Intentionalism and Value-Maximising Theory. The dilemma concerns the presence of testimony in passages of fiction, and the fact that the very same passage might serve both to produce justified beliefs in a reader and as a source of fictional content. On the first horn of the dilemma, these theories reject the author’s actual intentions as the source of the content of the testimony: in which case they cannot accommodate the potential function of the passage to produce justified beliefs in readers. On the second, they accept the author’s actual intentions as the source of this content: in which case they cannot accommodate the reader’s experience of interpreting testimony-in-fiction in a way which is continuous with the experience of interpreting fictive utterance, according to their own views. Since Actual Intentionalism escapes this dilemma it should be preferred