Disagree completely on fiction not being intellectually stimulating. It's much easier to get many different views on a subject from a fictional discussion between characters or to see something from a wildly different point of view via a fictional character. In addition, fiction gives you a hook in the form of a story, to bring you along. Many speakers are not as interesting as their ideas and a story gives you an extra incentive to keep going.

Art is certainly for entertainment but it's the intellectual stimulation that makes certain fiction great.