You do care though. You may not think you care but you absolutely do. If somebody tells you that in the Hood canal west of Seattle, there is a population of endangered tree octopuses, who are unique among octopuses in that they climb up to land and lay their eggs under fallen tree trunks in old growth forests, and that they are now endangered because road construction is cutting their access to the old growth forests, so they cannot lay more eggs.

You would care about that story, until you found out that this story is a lie, an old April’s fools joke that escaped confinement. The words are the same, but your reactions to the exact words have changed with new information about the source.

When we read personal stories it affects our emotions as we empathize with the author, or otherwise share the feelings that the author is trying to convey. When we find out there is no such author, our empathy and our notion of shared feelings vanishes with the new information even though the words stay the same.

> You do care though. You may not think you care but you absolutely do.

This is something I have a lot of trouble explaining and generally don't try to because I've never actually studied this or anything. So I can only go from my 45 years experiencing of experiencing art along with others.

Of course if you are just putting on music to work to, this isn't going to matter much if at all, but...

Generally people do really seem to care about the person behind something they are experiencing. The simplest example I can give is one of those extremely well shot photos that very few people have taken from a sitting position of their feet dangling off a massive building. I would have a very hard time believing anyone claiming that such a photo wouldn't give them very different feelings if they knew it was a real person v not. Again, this is the simplest example I can think of but I think it goes much deeper with all sorts of art, ie, most people to some degree are attempting experiencing art through the person who created it whether they "know" it or not. This is evident when presented with something they don't like and say something like, "Who would make this?"

Your example hinges on whether a bunch of words is true, not on how they came to be written.

> When we read personal stories it affects our emotions as we empathize with the author, or otherwise share the feelings that the author is trying to convey. When we find out there is no such author, our empathy and our notion of shared feelings vanishes with the new information even though the words stay the same.

This isn't true for me. If I read an incredibly moving poem and later learned that it was written by someone casting the I Ching and picking words out of a hat, it would not affect how I felt about the poem.

> You would care about that story

No, I wouldn't. I don't live in Seattle, and I don't care about octopi. Why project what you think a reader cares about?