The main accounts of the documentary in contemporary analytic aesthetics have difficulties in dealing with the distinction between documentaries and docudramas. On the one hand, the assertion-based accounts proposed by Noël Carroll, Trevor Ponech, and Carl Plantinga cannot properly differentiate documentaries from docudramas. On the other hand, Gregory Currie's account can do so by relying on the notion of trace, but this involves an undesirable side effect, namely, the exclusion, from the documentary, of those documentaries that do not include traces of their subjects, as, for instance, documentaries that resort to reenactment. Is there a way to exclude docudramas from the documentary without also excluding other films that we usually treat as documentaries? This article affirmatively answers by relying on the notion of perceptual belief, that is, a belief that one can form by endorsing the demonstrative content of one's perception. While documentaries primarily involve the formation of perceptual beliefs, docudramas invite us to form nonperceptual beliefs by primarily involving the formation of perceptual imaginings. That is why docudramas are not documentaries. By contrast, a documentary that resorts to reenactment primarily involves the formation of perceptual beliefs, namely, perceptual beliefs about the reenactment itself.

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纪录片、纪录片和感性信念

当代分析美学中对纪录片的主要叙述难以处理纪录片和纪录片之间的区别。一方面，Noël Carroll、Trevor Ponech 和 Carl Plantinga 提出的基于断言的叙述无法正确地区分纪录片和纪录片。另一方面，格雷戈里·柯里的叙述可以依靠痕迹的概念来做到这一点，但这会带来一个不良的副作用，即从纪录片中排除那些不包括其主题痕迹的纪录片，因为，例如，诉诸重演的纪录片。有没有办法从纪录片中排除纪录片而不排除我们通常视为纪录片的其他电影？本文依靠感性信念的概念肯定地回答，也就是说，人们可以通过认可自己感知的示范内容来形成一种信念。虽然纪录片主要涉及感性信念的形成，但纪录片通过主要涉及感性想象的形成来邀请我们形成非感性信念。这就是为什么纪录片不是纪录片。相比之下，诉诸重演的纪录片主要涉及感性信念的形成，即对重演本身的感性信念。