Despite widespread evidence that fictional models play an explanatory role in science, resistance remains to the idea that fictions can explain. A central source of this resistance is a particular view about what explanations are, namely, the ontic conception of explanation. According to the ontic conception, explanations just are the concrete entities in the world. I argue this conception is ultimately incoherent and that even a weaker version of the ontic conception fails. Fictional models can succeed in offering (...) genuine explanations by correctly capturing relevant patterns of counterfactual dependence and licensing correct inferences. Using the example of Newtonian force explanations of the tides, I show how, even in science, fiction can be a vehicle for truth. (shrink)

The metaverse is equivocal. It is a science-fictional concept from the past; it is the present’s rough implementations; and it is the Promised Cyberland, expected to manifest some time in the future. The metaverse first emerged as a techno-capitalist network in a 1992 science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson. Our article thus marks the metaverse’s thirtieth anniversary. We revisit Stephenson’s original concept plus three sophisticated antecedents from 1972 to 1984: Jean Baudrillard’s simulation, Sherry Turkle’s networked identities, and (...) Jacques Lacan’s schema of suggestible consumers hooked up to a Matrix-like capitalist network. We gauge the relevance of these three antecedents following Meta’s recent promise to deliver a metaverse for the mainstream and the emergence of blockchain-oriented metaverse projects. We examine empirical data from 2021 and 2022, sourced from journalistic and social media (BuzzSumo, Google Trends, Reddit, and Twitter) as well as the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This latest chapter of the metaverse’s convoluted history reveals a focus not on virtual reality goggles but rather on techno-capitalist notions like digital wallets, crypto-assets, and targeted advertisements. The metaverse’s wallet-holders collect status symbols like limited-edition profile pictures, fashion items for avatars, tradable pets and companions, and real estate. Motivated by the metaverse’s sophisticated antecedents and our empirical findings, we propose a subtle conceptual re-orientation that respects the metaverse’s equivocal nature and rejects sanitised solutionism. Do not let the phantasmagorical goggles distract you too much: Big Meta is watching you, and it expects you to become a wallet-holder. Blockchain proponents want this as well. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of the realist view that fictional characters exist. It argues for an instance of abstract realist views, according to which fictional characters are roles, constituted by sets of properties. It is argued that fictional names denote individual concepts, functions from worlds to individuals. It is shown that a dynamic framework for understanding the evolution of discourse information can be used to understand how roles are created and develop along with story content. Taking (...) fictional names to denote individual concepts provides accounts of a number of uses of fictional names. These include non-fictional uses, fictional uses, metafictional uses, interfictional uses, counterfictional uses, and negative existentials. It is argued that this account is not open to objections that have been raised in the literature. (shrink)

A recent and growing discussion in philosophy addresses the construction of models and their use in scientific reasoning by comparison with fiction. This comparison helps to explore the problem of mediated observation and, hence, the lack of an unambiguous reference of representations. Examining the usefulness of the concept of fiction for a comparison with non-denoting elements in science, the aim of this paper is to present reasonable grounds for drawing a distinction between these two kinds of representation. In particular, (...) my account will suggest a demarcation between fictional and non-fictional discourse as involving two different ways of interpreting representations. This demarcation, leading me to distinguish between fictional and non-fictional forms of enquiry, will provide a useful tool to explore to what extent the descriptions given by a model can be justified as making claims about the world and to what degree they are a consequence of the model’s particular construction. (shrink)

I discuss two ways one may explain how we interpret the content of a fictional. In the first, the interpreter’s task aims at deciding what is true in a fictional story by figuring out the narrative intentions behind its production. Narrative interpretation is a matter of figuring out the story-telling intentions of the (implied) author of the work. This is Currie’s intentionalist model of narrative interpretation, a conception I present and discuss on the basis of experimental results in (...) the psychology of language. In the second, narrative interpretation is explained by reference to the emotions of the reader or the viewer of the fictional narrative. It is on the basis of his emotional sensibility, of how things feel to him that the reader or the viewer is led to understand the narrated events. This is Velleman’s emotional theory of narrative understanding. Finally, I compare both conceptions. (shrink)

Can fictions lie? According to a classic conception, works of fiction cannot contain lies, since their content is neither presented as true nor meant to deceive us. But this classic view can be challenged. Sometimes fictions appear to make claims about the actual world, and these claims can be designed to convey falsehoods, historical misconceptions, and pernicious stereotypes. Should we conclude that some fictional statements are lies? This article presents two views that support a positive answer, and two that (...) support a negative one. After examining various ways in which fictions can deceive, it concludes in favour of the view that fictional statements can mislead, but never lie. (shrink)

There are many data suggesting that we should acknowledge fictional entities in our ontological inventory, in spite of the paraphrasing strategies that Russell’s theory of descriptions can offer. Thus the realist attitude toward fictional entities of Meinongian and artifactualist accounts may seem well-motivated. Yet, these approaches infringe the Russellian “robust sense of reality.” A different realist account is proposed here, one that is compatible with the Russellian “robust sense of reality” in that it identifies fictional entities with (...) denoting concepts, understood as properties of properties. (shrink)

The epistemology of models has to face a conundrum: models are often described as highly idealised, and yet they are considered to be vehicles for scientific explanations. Truth-oriented—veritist—conceptions of explanation seem thereby undermined by this contradiction. In this article, I will show how this apparent paradox can be avoided by appealing to the notion of fiction. If fictionalism is often thought to lead to various flavours of instrumentalism, thereby weakening the veritist hopes, the fiction view of models offers a framework (...) much richer than it seems at first sight. To do so, I will call upon the concepts of modality, counterfactual structure and credible worlds. In the end, veritism of explanation and fiction can indeed go hand in hand, but the scope of explanations we can hope to draw from models must be more precisely delineated. (shrink)

The nature and consequences of readers’ affective engagement with literature has, in recent years, captured the attention of experimental psychologists and philosophers alike. Psychological studies have focused principally on the causal mechanisms explaining our affective interactions with fictions, prescinding from questions concerning their rational justifiability. Transportation Theory, for instance, has sought to map out the mechanisms the reader tracks the narrative experientially, mirroring its descriptions through first-personal perceptual imaginings, affective and motor responses and even evaluative beliefs. Analytical philosophers, by contrast, (...) have largely focussed on the problems fiction poses for traditional theories of rationality (as in the ‘Paradox of Fiction), challenging fiction’s wider epistemic value. The result has been a theoretical impasse in which the power of fiction to affectively ‘transport’ a reader is at once often lauded (by psychologists) as a privileged route to interpersonal understanding, and condemned (by philosophers) as an abdication of the authority of reason. This chapter surveys some of the central claims on both sides, tracing the source of the debate to competing conceptions of rationality. (shrink)

Abstract Impossible fictions have lessons to teach us about linguistic representation, about mental content and concepts, and about uses of conceivability in epistemology. An adequate theory of impossible fictions may require theories of meaning that can distinguish between different impossibilities; a theory of conceptual truth that allows us to make useful sense of a variety of conceptual falsehoods; and a theory of our understanding of necessity and possibility that permits impossibilities to be conceived. After discussing these questions, strategies for resisting (...) the picture of impossible fictions presented here and in Part I are discussed. Perhaps apparently impossible fictions describe possibilities after all; or perhaps impossible fictions are all trivial; or perhaps some apparently intelligible impossible fictions are unintelligible after all. (shrink)

Authors have a lot of leeway with regard to what they can make true in their story. In general, if the author says that p is true in the fiction we’re reading, we believe that p is true in that fiction. And if we’re playing along with the fictional game, we imagine that, along with everything else in the story, p is true. But there are exceptions to these general principles. Many authors, most notably Kendall Walton and Tamar Szabó (...) Gendler, have discussed apparent counterexamples when p is “morally deviant”. Many other statements that are conceptually impossible also seem to be counterexamples. In this paper I do four things. I survey the range of counterexamples, or at least putative counterexamples, to the principles. Then I look to explanations of the counterexamples. I argue, following Gendler, that the explanation cannot simply be that morally deviant claims are impossible. I argue that the distinctive attitudes we have towards moral propositions cannot explain the counterexamples, since some of the examples don’t involve moral concepts. And I put forward a proposed explanation that turns on the role of ‘higher-level concepts’, concepts that if they are satisfied are satisfied in virtue of more fundamental facts about the world, in fiction, and in imagination. (shrink)

This book examines the complex and varied ways in which fictions relate to the real world, and offers a precise account of how imaginative works of literature can use fictional content to explore matters of universal human interest. While rejecting the traditional view that literature is important for the truths that it imparts, the authors also reject attempts to cut literature off altogether from real human concerns. Their detailed account of fictionality, mimesis, and cognitive value, founded on the methods (...) of analytical philosophy, restores to literature its distinctive status among cultural practices. The authors also explore metaphysical and skeptical views, prevalent in modern thought, according to which the world itself is a kind of fiction, and truth no more than a social construct. They identify different conceptions of fiction in science, logic, epistemology, and make-believe, and thereby challenge the idea that discourse per se is fictional and that different modes of discourse are at root indistinguishable. They offer rigorous analyses of the roles of narrative, imagination, metaphor, and "making" in human thought processes. Both in their methods and in their conclusions, Lamarque and Olsen aim to restore rigor and clarity to debates about the values of literature, and to provide new, philosophically sound foundations for a genuine change of direction in literary theorizing. (shrink)

The book deeply analyses the bilateral relations between Switzerland and the European Union and their effect on the former's sovereignty in the context of Europeanisation. This touches on philosophical debates on the complexity of sovereignty. What sovereignty is at stake when talking about Swiss-EU relations? This issue not only faces the elusiveness of sovereignty as a concept, but also the proliferation of hypocrisy on its presence within states. The book encounters the deconstructionist hypothesis stating that there is nothing to (...) worry about but the belief there is something to worry about. Derrida's deconstruction of sovereignty allows indeed one to grasp the fictional essence of sovereignty based on the metaphysics of presence. The presence of self-positing sovereign inches per secondeity is fictional since absent in the present, but spectrally present in the belief of its presence to come. Sovereignty is a matter of credibility, or the credible promise of a normative statement to come. Hence, the book challenges the realist/neorealist argument stating that states are credibly sovereign until proven otherwise and explains that the debate on state sovereignty calls for the unveiling of this hypocritical epistemology cunningly disguised as an objective presence. Swiss-EU relations thus become the cornerstone to not only theorise but also test sovereignty and deconstruct the two ontological and epistemological sides of the same coin, or the modern hypocrisy of sovereignty. This deconstruction constitutes the very problématique of any attempt to understand whether and how a state can be sovereign and solve the problem as to how to neutralise the différance and identify the difference between credible and incredible claims of sovereignty. This problématique connects the theory and practice of sovereignty innovatively, providing positivist evidence on the arguable credibility of the Swiss claim of sovereignty and confirming the presence of a theological dimension within politics.<. (shrink)

This paper revisits the concept of fiction employed in recent debates about the reality of theoretical entities in the philosophy of science. From an anti-realist perspective the dependence of evidence for some scientific entities on mediated forms of observation and modelling strategies reflects a degree of construction that is argued to closely resemble fiction. As a realist’s response to this debate, this paper provides an analysis of fictional entities in comparison to real ones. I argue that the distinction (...) between fictional and real entities is reflected in their different relations toward their representations. This is particularly evident when it comes to the investigation of properties not explicitly given in a representation but that rely on knowledge external to it. A comparison of the resulting difference in the interpretation of fictional and real entities is then shown to provide guidelines for the assessment of when a realist claim can be made for model-based inferences to theoretical entities in science. At the end of this paper I advocate a pluralistic view on scientific realism by showing that representational pluralism, far from posing a problem for a realist interpretation of scientific practice, serves as an indicator for the reality of scientific entities. (shrink)

In this paper, my aim is to show that in Anglo-American analytic aesthetics, the conception of narrative fiction is in general realistic and that it derives from philosophical theories of fiction-making, the act of producing works of literary narrative fiction. I shall firstly broadly show the origins of the problem and illustrate how the so-called realistic fallacy – the view which maintains that fictions consist of propositions which represent the fictional world “as it is” – is committed through the (...) history of philosophical approaches to literature in the analytic tradition. Secondly, I shall show how the fallacy that derives from the 20th Century philosophy of language manifests itself in contemporary analytic aesthetics, using Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen’s influential and well-known Gricean make-believe theory of fiction as an example. Finally, I shall sketch how the prevailing Gricean make-believe theories should be modified in order to reach the literary-fictive use of language and to cover fictions broader than Doyle’s stories and works alike. (shrink)

This important book provides a theory about the nature of fiction, and about the relation between the author, the reader and the fictional text. The approach is philosophical: that is to say, the author offers an account of key concepts such as fictional truth, fictional characters, and fiction itself. The book argues that the concept of fiction can be explained partly in terms of communicative intentions, partly in terms of a condition which excludes relations of counterfactual (...) dependence between the world and the text. This communicative model is then applied to the following problems: how can something be 'true in the story' without being explicitly stated in the text? In what ways does interpreting a fictional story depend upon grasping its author's intentions? Is there always a unique best interpretation of a fictional text? What is the correct semantics for fictional names? What is the nature of our emotional response to a fictional work? In answering these questions the author explores the complex interaction between author, reader, and text. This interaction requires the reader to construct a 'fictional author' - a character in the story whose personality, beliefs and emotional states must be interpreted if the reader is to grasp the meaning of the work. (shrink)

Pierre Olivier distinguishes between two radically different concep-tions of legal fictions: on the one hand, the conception of legal fiction developed by the commentators of the Middle Ages, which culminates in Bartolus’s defini-tion; on the other hand, the conception developed by the 19th Century German scholar Gustav Demelius, who was followed, among others, by Joseph Esser. The main difference between the two approaches is individuated by Olivier in the fact that, while the former consider legal fictions as essentially implying an (...) actual fic-tional element, the latter deny this. In other words, according to Demelius and those who follow him, the term “legal fiction” is a misnomer. In this article, I first provide an example of a legal fiction. In the second and third section, I rely on this example to analyze and assess the two competing accounts. Finally, in the fourth part, I advance a syncretistic account of legal fictions, which should thus point to a possible middle ground between the two competing positions. As it is often the case, there is probably some truth to both accounts; the problem – I will argue – is that both theories tell only a part and not the whole of the story. More precisely, it will be argued that legal fictions essentially involve the structure of “as if”-statements, and that the one-sidedness of the two competing accounts derives from the fact that one focuses too much on the “if”-component (the assumption), whereas the other focuses too much on the “as”-component (the comparison). (shrink)

I argue that the ontological status of fictional characters is determined by the beliefs and practices of those who competently deal with works of literature, and draw out three important consequences of this. First, heavily revisionary theories cannot be considered as ‘discoveries’ about the ‘true nature’ of fictional characters; any acceptable realist theory of fiction must preserve all or most of the common conception of fictional characters. Second, once we note that the existence conditions for fictional (...) characters are extremely minimal, it makes little sense to deny the existence of fictional characters, leaving anti-realist views of fiction unmotivated. Finally, the role of ordinary beliefs and practices in determining facts about the ontology of fictional characters explains why non-revisionary theories of fiction are bound to yield no determinate or precise answer to certain questions about fictional characters, demonstrating the limits of a theory of fiction. (shrink)

Exploring Rhees's analogy between everyday conversation and literature, the paper suggests a conception of form that encourages us to see literary works as contributions to conversation in virtue of their concern. How we might read for the concern of a literary work is exemplified by readings of Ibsen's Ghosts and The Wild Duck. These readings suggest that Rhees's analogy not only throws light on the communicative powers of literature: viewing everyday talk in the light of works of literature also gives (...) us a better grasp of what goes on in conversation. (shrink)

La réflexion philosophique sur la non-existence est une thématique qui a été abordée au commencement même de la philosophie et qui suscite, depuis la publication en 1905 de « On Denoting » par Russell, les plus vifs débats en philosophie analytique. Cependant, le débat féroce sur la sémantique des noms propres et des descriptions définies qui surgirent suite à la publication du « On Referring » par Strawson en 1950 n’engagea pas d’étude systématique de la sémantique des fictions. En fait, (...) le développement systématique d’un lien qui articule approches logiques, philosophiques et littéraires de la fiction devait attendre les travaux de John Woods publiés en 1974 dans son livre The Logic of Fiction : A Philosophical Sounding of Deviant Logic. Un des enjeux les plus excitants du livre de Woods se situe au niveau de l’interaction entre les points de vue internalistes ou interne-à-l’histoire (principalement pragmatiques) et les points de vue externalistes ou externe-à-la-fiction (principalement sémantiques). Sur ce point, Woods fut le premier à formuler une sémantique pour l’opérateur de fiction à lire comme « selon l’histoire… » en relation à la notion logique de portée, ce qui permettait l’étude de l’internalisme et de l’externalisme. Suite au livre de Woods, loin de s’essouffler, les débats trouvaient une nouvelle impulsion. Le fait pertinent pour notre article est que la tradition phénoménologique également, l’étude de la fiction a joué un rôle central. En effet, l’une des problématiques les plus sujettes à controverses dans l’intentionnalité est celle de l’indépendance à l’existence, c’est-à-dire le fait que les actes intentionnels n’ont pas besoin d’être forcément dirigés vers un objet existant. Influencée par les travaux de Roman Ingarden (1893-1970), l’un des plus importants disciples de Husserl, Amie L. Thomasson développe le concept phénoménologique de dépendance ontologique en vue d’expliquer les processus de références inter- et transfictionnels – dans le contexte de l’interprétation littéraire par exemple. L’enjeu essentiel de cet article est de proposer une reconstruction multimodale bi-dimensionnelle de la théorie des personnages fictionnels de Ingarden-Thomasson. Cette théorie qui entend prendre au sérieux le fait que les fictions sont des créations montre la voie pour une articulation entre les approches internalistes et externalistes. Nous motivons certains changements quant à l’approche artéfactuelle - incluant une sémantique appropriée pour l’opérateur de fictionalité qui, nous l’espérons, éveillera l’intérêt des théoriciens de la littérature. L’article est à d’autres égards un panorama de la façon dont différents concepts d’intentionnalité pourraient fonder différentes sémantiques formelles pour la fictionalité. Nous proposerons enfin un cadre dialogique qui est une extension modale d’un certain système de preuve développé par Matthieu Fontaine et Juan Redmond. Le cadre dialogique développe la contrepartie inférentielle de la sémantique bi-dimensionnelle introduite par Shahid Rahman et Tero Tulenheimo dans un article récent. (shrink)

Understanding scientific modelling can be divided into two sub-projects: analysing what model-systems are, and understanding how they are used to represent something beyond themselves. The first is a prerequisite for the second: we can only start analysing how representation works once we understand the intrinsic character of the vehicle that does the representing. Coming to terms with this issue is the project of the first half of this chapter. My central contention is that models are akin to places and characters (...) of literary fictions, and that therefore theories of fiction play an essential role in explaining the nature of model-systems. This sets the agenda. Section 2 provides a statement of this view, which I label the fiction view of model-systems, and argues for its prima facie plausibility. Section 3 presents a defence of this view against its main rival, the structuralist conception of models. In Section 4 I develop an account of model-systems as imagined objects on the basis of the so-called pretence theory of fiction. This theory needs to be discussed in great detail for two reasons. First, developing an acceptable account of imagined objects is mandatory to make the fiction view acceptable, and I will show that the pretence theory has the resources to achieve this goal. Second, the term ‘representation’ is ambiguous; in fact, there are two very different relations that are commonly called ‘representation’ and a conflation between the two is the root of some of the problems that beset scientific representation. Pretence theory provides us with the conceptual resources to articulate these two different forms of representation, which I call p-representation and t-representation respectively. Putting these elements together provides us with a coherent overall picture of scientific modelling, which I develop in Section 5. (shrink)

How is it that we can be moved by what we know does not exist? In this paper, I examine the so-called 'paradox of fiction', showing that it fatally hinges on cognitive theories of emotion such as Kendall Walton's pretend theory and Peter Lamarque's thought theory. I reject these theories and acknowledge the concept-formative role of genuine emotion generated by fiction. I then argue, contra Jenefer Robinson, that this 'éducation sentimentale' is not achieved through distancing, but rather through the (...) engagement of our emotions. Literature does this, I claim, by its uniquely perspicuous presentations of emotional concepts, and the cognitive pleasure that such 'presentations' prompt in us. (shrink)

Fictional terms are terms that have null extensions, and in this regard pejorative terms are a species of fictional terms: although there are Jews, there are no kikes. That pejoratives are fictions is the central consequence of the Moral and Semantic Innocence (MSI) view of Hom et al. (2013). There it is shown that for pejoratives, null extensionality is the semantic realization of the moral fact that no one ought to be the target of negative moral evaluation solely (...) in virtue of their group membership. In having null extensions, pejorative terms are much like mythological terms like ‘unicorn horn’ that express concepts with empty extensions, even though it was thought otherwise: people who falsely believed the mythology were mislead into thinking that ordinary objects (i.e. whale tusks) were magical objects, and pejoratives terms work likewise. For example, the term ‘kike’ is supported by the ideology of anti-Semitism, and speakers who fall prey to its influence (perniciously or not) are mislead into thinking that ordinary people (i.e. Jews) are inherently worthy of contempt. In this paper, we explore the consequences of this parallelism, with an eye to criticisms of MSI. In particular, we will re-visit identity expressivist views - those that hold that there are kikes and that they are Jews, and hence deny null extensionality - arguing that this embeds a mistake of fiction for fact. Among the issues to be discussed are the role of fictional truth in understanding pejorative sentences and the relation of the semantics of pejoratives to offensive use of language. We conclude with meta-semantic reflections on the origins of word meanings. (shrink)

This article criticises existing solutions to the 'puzzle of imaginative resistance', reconstrues it, and offers a solution of its own. About the Book : Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts is the first comprehensive collection of papers by philosophers examining the nature of imagination and its role in understanding and making art. Imagination is a central concept in aesthetics with close ties to issues in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language, yet it has not received the kind (...) of sustained, critical attention it deserves. This collection of seventeen brand new essays critically examines just how and in what form the notion of imagination illuminates fundamental problems in the philosophy of art. (shrink)

Our interpretations of experience determine the limits of what we can do with the world.Jorge Luis Borges's short stories act as narrative experiments with the potential to alter the reader's experience. They provide momentary glimpses into a remixed reality that, through their vivacity, allow us to wonder at the immanent possibilities that emerge when we acknowledge the irreality of language. This function of Borges's writing follows from his understanding of fictions as imaginative verbal constructions that are effective due to their (...) aesthetic quality, the capacity to evoke emotional responses through play with narrative form. Borges does not write to produce truths. He is doubtful of the ability of any given... (shrink)

Lamarque and Olsen argue for a “no truth” theory of fiction and literature, holding that there is no essential connection between the concepts of truth and those of fiction or of literature. Instead, they argue for a broadly Gricean account of both. The core of their characterization of the fictionality of a text is that it be the product of an intention that its reader adopt the fictive stance towards it, and the producer of the text intends there to be (...) a mutual belief that the reader adopt this stance partly because of her recognition of the producer’s intention. To adopt the fictive stance is, at its most basic level, to entertain the sense of the text and to make-believe its truth and reference. Because appeal is made not to belief, but make-belief, there is no essential connection between fictionality and truth. Fictional content is aspectival, fictional objects being constituted by the properties expressed by the descriptions associated with the names of the objects. The account of literature is structurally similar to that for fiction. A text is literary when it is produced with the intention that its audience adopt the literary stance towards it, and a similar mutual belief condition holds. To adopt the literary stance to a text is to read it for literary aesthetic value, that is, with an expectation of finding humanly interesting content presented in a complex and coherent form. There is no requirement that the content be true, and hence there is no essential connection between literature or literary value and truth. Within this broad framework, Lamarque and Olsen develop a number of further points of interest, including a broadly Gricean account of metaphor that avoids the pitfalls into which Searle’s proposal stumbles, a distinction between different senses of “fiction” that usefully shows that logical fictions are distinct from make-believe fictions, and a sustained attack on structuralist and poststructuralist literary theories that one hopes will fall into the hands of aficionados of those theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fiction and Theory of MindBrian BoydWhy We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, by Lisa Zunshine; 198 pp. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006. $59.95Lisa Zunshine's Why We Read Fiction aims "to put the cognitive-evolutionary concept of the Theory of Mind on the map of contemporary literary studies" (p. 84). Any literary critic who has stumbled upon this active research program in recent clinical, cognitive, comparative, (...) developmental and evolutionary psychology will have realized that Theory of Mind (ToM)—our intuitive systems for understanding the minds of others—must be relevant to literature. As someone who has long deplored its neglect in literary studies (often on the very pages of this journal) I regret to report that as a cartographer of this new terrain Zunshine has an unsteady hand.As its title suggests, her book makes a large claim: that we read fiction in order to give ourselves a cognitive workout, to exercise our capacity for ToM. We normally understand readily four levels of embedded intentionality (you doubt that Brian accepts that Lisa knows what Robin says), but we find it rapidly more difficult to handle further levels. Fiction often pushes "our ability to process embedded intentionalities beyond our cognitive zone of comfort" (p. 130). Why We Read Fiction also makes a second, implicit but no less central, claim: that analyzing fiction in terms of ToM offers criticism greater explanatory power, precision, and clarity. [End Page 590]Zunshine's explicit claim seems unlikely. All peoples tell and attend to fictions, but as Zunshine sometimes concedes not all these fictions push the boundaries of ToM. Many individuals and groups, perhaps most, especially enjoy fiction that does not involve high-level ToM, such as myth, fairy tale, and action adventure stories from epics to Westerns or martial arts movies. Children already engage in pretend play and enjoy stories compulsively long before they attain a uniquely human, yet still imperfectly developed, level of ToM in their fifth year. How can fiction be explained in terms of setting stiff challenges to our capacity for ToM, when so many children and adults enjoy fiction that makes no exceptional demands?Fiction can experiment with ToM, with, for instance, multiple levels of embedded intentionality. Barth's virtuoso exercise "Menelaiad" (1968) involves seven degrees of embedding, but the story feels, and is meant to feel, comically overloaded. Less flamboyant but more searching experiment with our capacity to comprehend minds, like Tolstoy's in Anna Karenina, may involve at its most original only one, two or three levels of intentionality: Stiva's thoughts alone, brilliantly evoked in the opening chapter, or his thoughts about Dolly's feelings or his own thoughts, or his thoughts about Dolly's thoughts about his feelings.Zunshine acknowledges that fiction places varied emphases on ToM, but dwells only on examples that support her case, and ignores many kinds of fiction that do not. More damaging still, the examples she does draw on fail to provide the support she thinks they do, thus undermining both her first claim, that fiction provides an intense ToM workout, and her second, that analyzing fiction through ToM sharpens and strengthens criticism. Interpreting fiction with an explicit awareness of ToM can have this effect, but Zunshine inadvertently reveals dangers rather than opportunities.Since texts are the hard evidence in literary study, we need to see in detail how Zunshine handles them. Her first display example comes from Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. She cites:And Miss Brush [Lady Bruton's secretary] went out, came back; laid papers on the table; and Hugh produced his fountain pen; his silver fountain pen, which had done twenty years' service, he said, unscrewing the cap. It was still in perfect order; he had shown it to the makers; there was no reason, they said, why it should ever wear out; which was somehow to Hugh's credit, and to the credit of the sentiments which his pen expressed (so Richard Dalloway felt) as Hugh began carefully writing capital letters with rings [End Page 591] around them in the margin, and thus marvelously reduced Lady Bruton's tangles to sense, to grammar such as the editor of the Times... (shrink)

What makes someone an evil person? How are evil people different from merely bad people? Do evil people really exist? Can we make sense of evil people if we mythologize them? Do evil people take pleasure in the suffering of others? Can evil people be redeemed? Peter Brian Barry answers these questions by examining a wide range of works from renowned authors, including works of literature by Kazuo Ishiguro, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Oscar Wilde alongside classic (...) works of philosophy by Nietzsche and Aristotle. By considering great texts from literature and philosophy, Barry examines whether evil is merely a fiction. _The Fiction of Evil_ explores how the study of literature can contribute to the study of metaphysics and ethics and it is essential reading for those studying the concept of evil or philosophy of literature at undergraduate level. (shrink)

Le fameux paradoxe de la fiction (Radford 1975) a suscité maintes interprétations. L’une des distinctions importantes qui affleure bien souvent au sein de cette littérature, pour se voir presque aussitôt négligée, est celle entre les deux questions suivantes : « comment les émotions peuvent-elles être suscitées par des œuvres de fiction ? » et « les émotions suscitées par de telles œuvres peuvent-elles être rationnelles ? » Dans ce qui suit, je me concentrerai exclusivement sur la seconde de ces questions (...) et chercherai à montrer que la plupart de nos réponse affectives à la fiction ne sont pas irrationnelles. Ma discussion se structure de la manière suivante. La première section esquisse la nature du lien entre émotions et valeurs et introduit une conception selon laquelle les émotions sont des attitudes évaluatives. Au cours de la deuxième section, nous nous tournerons vers le problème de la rationalité des émotions pour mettre l’accent sur deux de ses aspects – celui qui regarde le rapport entre une émotion et sa base cognitive, d’un côté, et, de l’autre, celui entre l’émotion elle-même et les jugements et comportements auxquels elle peut donner lieu. La troisième section applique ces considérations à propos de la rationalité affective aux émotions suscitées par la fiction, dont je distingue trois types principaux : les émotions esthétiques, les émotions-blob et les émotions-pour. Une quatrième et dernière section explore quelques conséquences des conclusions auxquelles m’auront amené ce qui précède. (shrink)

In the classical era, imagination garnered poor press: fooling the senses, perverting judgment, subverting reason, skewing social relations, and generally providing wrong ideas about the way things are; it was a faculty of which to beware. Occasionally it was recognized as not being entirely without value—Descartes, for example, insisted on its great usefulness as a figurational function in simplifying the work of the understanding in geometry. The traditional tendency in philosophy, though, was to denigrate imagination for its misleading nature and (...) negative effects and to dwell on its limits as a faculty bound to the body. Indeed, its first function is to represent to the mind things previously perceived by the senses as images in their likeness. But as imagination has neither the same vividness nor the same order as sensation, it is potentially misleading, since in fact images look only approximately the same as their models. Above all, however, imagination was reproached to be potentially misleading for its second function, the creation of images or entire fictions bearing no relation whatsoever to reality, which made it dangerously capable of nourishing all manner of superstition and fantasy. Within such a context, Berkeley’s conception of the imagination hardly seems original at first glance. But as I will propose, in its creative guidance of reason, imagination plays an important and distinctive role in Berkeley’s scientific, moral, and religious discussions. Rather than focusing solely on the representational character of imagination, then, I suggest that we attend also to the way in which Berkeley appeals to the imaginative aspects of reason itself. In this way, we can better appreciate the educational presuppositions of human freedom. (shrink)

Twenty years after cultivating a new orientation for aesthetics via the concept of non-photography, François Laruelle returns, having further developed his notion of a non-standard aesthetics. Published for the first time in a bilingual edition, _Photo-Fiction, a Non-Standard Aesthetics_ expounds on Laruelle’s current explorations into a photographic thinking as an alternative to the worn-out notions of aesthetics based on an assumed domination of philosophy over art. He proposes a new philosophical photo-fictional apparatus, or philo-fiction, that strives for a (...) discursive mimesis of the photographic apparatus and the flash of the Real entailed in its process of image making. “A bit like if an artisan, to use a Socratic example, instead of making a camera based off of diagrams found in manuals, on the contrary had as his or her project the designing of a completely new apparatus of philo-fiction, thus capable of producing not simply photos, but photo-fictions.” One must enter into a space for seeing the vectorial and the imaginary number. Laruelle’s philo-fictions become not art installations, but “theoretical installations” calling for the consideration of the possibility of a non-standard aesthetics being of an equal or superior power to art and philosophy, an aesthetics in-the-last-instance that is itself an inventive and creative act of the most contemporary kind. (shrink)

This paper defends the cognitive value of literary fiction by showing how Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative understanding emphasizes the productive and creative elements of fictional discourse and defends its referential capacity insofar as fiction reshapes reality according to some universal aspect. Central to this analysis is Ricoeur’s retrieval of Aristotelian mimesis and mythos and their convergence in the notion of emplotment. This paper also supplements and specifies further Ricoeur’s account by retrieving an Aristotelian concept disregarded by Riceour, (...) namely, synesis. Although Ricoeur connects narrative understanding to the intelligibility of praxis and in turn phronêsis, as opposed to theoretical knowledge, he overlooks Aristotle’s discussion of synesis. This paper then clarifies how the fictional truth of narrative understanding remains related to, and yet distinct from, both theoretical discourse and praxis. (shrink)

The theory of social-property relations, or political Marxism, has argued that in contradistinction with pre-capitalist forms of exploitation, capitalism is characterised by the separation of the economic and the political, which makes surplus appropriation under this system uniquely driven by economic coercion. In spite of political Marxism’s various strengths, this article argues that the paradigm puts forward an ahistorical and sanitised conception of capitalism typical of bourgeois economics, which is an outcome of its formal-abstractionist approach to the concept of (...) the mode of production and the separation between theory and history that it operates. A more satisfactory solution to political Marxism’s inability to make sense of past and present forms of coercion and violence under capitalism can be found in Jairus Banaji’s emphasis on Marx’s historical – rather than formal – conception of the mode of production. (shrink)

A partir de las nociones de ficción, de animalidad y de mundo, el presente artículo pretende establecer ciertas ideas directrices para pensar los vínculos que las producciones culturales mantienen con la categoría de lo animal. El análisis de esta categoría se vincula igualmente a la problemática del sacrificio. Taking the concepts of fiction, animality, and world this article intends to lay down some leading ideas for analyzing the link between cultural productions and the animal category. This is also related to (...) the concept of sacrifice. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the status of mathematical fictions in Leibniz’s work and especially with infinitary quantities as fictions. Thus, it is maintained that mathematical fictions constitute a kind of symbolic notion that implies various degrees of impossibility. With this framework, different kinds of notions of possibility and impossibility are proposed, reviewing the usual interpretation of both modal concepts, which appeals to the consistency property. Thus, three concepts of the possibility/impossibility pair are distinguished; they give rise, in turn, to (...) three concepts of mathematical fictions. Moreover, such a distinction is the base for the claim that infinitesimal quantities, as mathematical fictions, do not imply an absolute impossibility, resulting from self-contradiction, but a relative impossibility, founded on irrepresentability and on the fact that it does not conform to architectural principles. In conclusion, this “soft” impossibility of infinitesimals yields them, in Leibniz view, a presumptive or “conjectural” status. (shrink)

"Le concept, principal ressort de l'abstraction philosophique, est aujourd'hui, paradoxalement, inadéquate pour exprimer les arguments philosophiques qui font débat en Afrique noire. Trop aride, trop étroit, trop univoque, le concept réduit ce qui est vécu comme un 'conflit de cultures' à un simple 'conflit intellectuel'. Pour éviter cet appauvrissement, le concept exige le détour par la fiction romanesque. En témoignent deux romans L'aventure ambiguë de Cheikh H. Kane et Entre les eaux de V.Y. Mudimbe. À travers eux, (...) le romancier se fait philosophe, et le philosophe pleinement écrivain. Autant dire que le discours philosophique exige un 'dehors', une extériorité radicale capable de l'éclairer. 'Philosopher en Afrique noire' relève autant du faire voir que du penser, tous deux inséparables l'un de l'autre."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

This paper argues that Maimon’s metaphilosophy presents a distinctive view on what the scientific role and method of philosophy should consist in: in the production of fictions of systematicity. It shows how Maimon’s philosophy of science links to metaphilosophical views, and ultimately leads him to adopt the so-called “method of fictions” to transform philosophy into a proper science. By connecting his remarks on scientific fictions and their methodological role with Kant’s doctrine of regulative ideas and the latter’s conception of systematicity, (...) the paper develops a systematic account of the method of fictions, its employment in theoretical philosophy and the scientific image resulting from this view. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 31.1 (2007) 189-196MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Fiction and Theory of Mind: An ExchangeLisa Zunshine University of KentuckyBrian Boyd's review of my new book, Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (Ohio State University Press, 2006) engages a large variety of issues.1 I would like to address an important question about the integration of scientific methodology with literary analysis suggested by Boyd's discussion.2 As (...) I argue below, two different perspectives of this integration may mark two different—indeed, incompatible—ways of formulating the disciplinary goals and philosophy of the new field of cognitive literary theory.Why We Read Fiction makes a case for admitting the recent findings of cognitive psychologists into literary studies by showing how their research into the ability to explain behavior in terms of the underlying states of mind can furnish us with a series of surprising insights into our interaction with literary texts. Using as my case studies novels ranging from Richardson's Clarissa, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and Austen's Pride and Prejudice to Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Nabokov's Lolita, and Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, I advance and explore a series of hypotheses about cognitive cravings that are satisfied—and created!—when we read fiction.Although my study draws on the already well-established as well as forthcoming work of numerous cognitive scientists (including Simon Baron-Cohen, Clark H. Barrett, Richard Byrne and Andrew Whiten, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, Christopher Frith, Uta Frith, Paul Bloom, Susan Carey and Elizabeth Spelke, Peter Carruthers, Andy Clark, Antonio Damasio, Daniel Dennett, Alison Gopnik, Francesca Happe, Paul [End Page 189] Harris, Lawrence Hirschfeld, Stanley Klein, Alan Leslie, Andrew Meltzoff, Robert Mitchell, Keith Oatley, Gloria Origgi, Oliver Sacks, Dan Sperber, James Stiller, and Endel Tulving), it makes a point of being accessible to non-specialist readers. Cognitive science can be incredibly complicated and so can literary criticism, but I wanted to write a book on cognitive literary theory that does not scare anybody away with unnecessary jargon, knotty sentences, and overlong quotations. (Ironically, I must have succeeded too well in making my book reader-friendly and tucking my references in the endnotes since Boyd observes that I rely on only "a few findings" of cognitive scientists in my discussion.)The book consists of three parts. The first part, "Attributing Minds," introduces the first key theoretical concept of this book: mind-reading, also known as Theory of Mind. Drawing on the work of Simon Baron-Cohen (Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind), I suggest that fiction engages, teases, and pushes to its tentative limits our mind-reading capacity. Building on the recent research of Robin Dunbar and his colleagues, I then consider one particular aspect of Woolf's prose as an example of spectacular literary experimentation with our Theory of Mind. Finally, I turn to Steven Pinker's controversial analysis of Woolf in The Blank Slate to discuss the possibilities of a more profitable dialogue between cognitive science and literary studies.Of particular importance to this part of my argument is my belief that fictional narratives endlessly experiment with rather than automatically execute our evolved cognitive adaptations. When cognitive scientists succeed in isolating a certain regularity of our information-processing—for example, a constraint on the number of mutually reflecting minds that we can process with ease—we can take that constraint and see how it plays itself out in a fictional narrative. What we discover is that where there is a cognitive constraint, there is a "guarantee" of sorts that writers will intuitively experiment in the direction of challenging that constraint, probing and poking it and getting around it. The exact forms of such probing and poking will depend on specific cultural circumstances, including the mind-reading profiles of individual writers and their readers. The cognitive "limits" thus present us with creative openings rather than with a promise of stagnation and endless replication of established forms. This realization marks the possibility of a genuine interaction between cognitive psychology and... (shrink)

Les théories contemporaines de la fiction, comme les poétiques de la Renaissance, privilégient une conception de la mimesis fondée sur la vraisemblance : la démonstration du profit cognitif et moral de la fiction passe toujours par une définition de l’imitation (de quelque façon qu’on la définisse) fondée sur la rationalité. L’auteur de cet article examine tout d’abord le statut des contradictions et de l’impossible chez quelques théoriciens actuels (principalement J.-M. Schaeffer, M.-L. Ryan, L. Doležel) et poéticiens du 16e siècle (L. (...) Castelvetro et F. Patrizi). Sont ensuite étudiées la forme et la fonction que prend l’impossible dans trois fictions narratives de la Renaissance. L’hypothèse majeure qui est défendue est que ces paradoxes permettent de penser le non-existant, dans la continuité de la scolastique médiévale et en relation avec une problématique religieuse, sérieuse ou parodique. Par là même, et en raison de leur auto-référentialité constitutive, les paradoxes inscrivent dans la fiction une réflexion sur elle-même qui n’a rien d’une apologie. La pensée de la fiction s’articule en définitive de façon bien différente dans les théories et dans les fictions elles-mêmes. (shrink)

This paper delves into Jody Azzouni's ideas on the ontology of fictional characters. Azzouni interestingly maintains that even though fictional characters like Hermione Granger, Sherlock Holmes, and Mickey Mouse do not exist in reality, assertions about them can still be true. However, Azzouni dismisses the necessity of these characters to be ontologically real to validate the truth of sentences concerning them. Instead, Azzouni proposes that truth in speech and thought corresponds with the world, but not necessarily by attributing (...) properties and relations to tangible things in it. This stance opposes the conventional philosophical notion that every true statement must directly represent an aspect of reality. This paper scrutinizes Azzouni’s argument and appreciates his attempt to dissociate ontology from the truth in fictional discourse. Nonetheless, it also recognizes certain gaps in this perspective. The paper endeavors to refine and extend Azzouni's approach by introducing the concept of 'metaphysical explanation', which explains the truth of statements about fictional characters by correlating them to relevant acts of fiction, rather than positing the reality of fictional entities. This extension preserves the essence of Azzouni’s view while addressing its limitations, thus paving the way for a more comprehensive understanding of how we can talk truly about fictional characters without holding that such entities are real in any sense. (shrink)

The present paper explores the moral psychology of fiction conceptually through the paired concepts ‘fictional relief’ and ‘reality check’. I suggest that the spectator of fictional films and television series sees himself as relieved from some of the moral obligations the spectator of nonfiction films sees himself as subject to, such as considering the consequences of a character's actions and attitudes. A fictional attitude is disturbed when elements of nonfiction are inserted into the fiction, such as the (...) documentary photographs in Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003), or when the fiction otherwise reminds the spectator of the moral and political consequences of his engagement. I call this reality check, and explore how Dr Melfi often reminds the spectator of The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007) of the consequences of having a sympathetic attitude towards the main character and gangster Tony Soprano. The related notion fictional relief captures the relief from considering such consequences, and finally I discuss how Omar Little exemplifies fictional reliefs at work in a socially realistic setting in The Wire (HBO, 2002–08). (shrink)

With "Literature and the Right to Death", Blanchot makes his most sustained contribution to the debate initiated in France by Kojeve and Hippolyte concerning Hegel's philosophy. At times Blanchot's reading is forced and idiosyncratic. Yet this reading has another motivation than the succinct and faithful paraphrase of the earlier thinker. Arguably Blanchot positions himself within Hegel’s terminology in order to rethink the sense of the expression 'the philosophy of art'. What is with Hegel an objective genitive becomes a subjective genitive. (...) The rules therefore change. Whereas Hegel offers in his lectures on aesthetics an expatiation on art fixed under the gaze of philosophy, Blanchot installs art as the subject and submits the conventions and expectations of philosophical discourse to its procedures. In the light of this reversal, what might otherwise be judged a deviation or a lapse with respect to the genre of the philosophical essay can be seen to play its role in Blanchot's reassessment of the relations between metaphysics and literature. (shrink)

In 'Fiction as Knowledge', John McCormick proposes that much of the vitality of modern fiction derives from romantic conceptions of history. He demonstrates the vitality of the romantic impulse in the work of seven major novelists.

This paper argues that there is no genuine puzzle of ‘imaginative resistance’. In part 1 of the paper I argue that the imaginability of fictional propositions is relative to a range of different factors including the ‘thickness’ of certain concepts, and certain pre-theoretical and theoretical commitments. I suggest that those holding realist moral commitments may be more susceptible to resistance and inability than those holding non-realist commitments, and that it is such realist commitments that ultimately motivate the problem. However, (...) I argue that the relativity of imaginability is not a particularly puzzling feature of imagination. In part 2, I claim that it is the so-called ‘alethic’ puzzle, concerning fictional truth, which generates a real puzzle about imaginative resistance. However, I argue that the alethic puzzle itself depends on certain realist assumptions about the nature of fictional truth which are implausible and should be rejected in favour of an interpretive view of fictional truth. Once this is done, I contend, it becomes evident that the supposed problem of imaginative resistance as it has hitherto been discussed in the literature is not puzzling at all. (shrink)