This chapter contains sections titled: Welcome to Rapture Meet Niko Bellic Experiencing Game Worlds Acting in Game Worlds.

Both adults and children have the ability to not only think about reality but also use their imaginations and create fictional worlds. This article describes the process by which world creation happens, drawing from philosophical and psychological treatments of this issue. First, world creators recognize the need to create a fictional world, as when starting a pretend game or opening a novel. Then, creators merge some real-world knowledge with the premises of the fictional world to construct (...) a fuller representation, though there is some controversy about how much of the real world is represented in any given fictional world. After the world is created, events can be set in motion within it. While it is generally accepted that this basic process is used for a wide variety of fictional worlds, including fictional stories, pretend games, and counterfactual scenarios, this process of world creation can vary over the course of development and depending on the use to which it is put. (shrink)

Resumen: La obra videoescénica es un producto híbrido que presenta un mundo posible significado por medios teatrales y audiovisuales procedentes de dos modos de representación diferentes, el narrativo de enunciación audiovisual y el dramático. Esta investigación tiene como objetivo descubrir su funcionamiento. Para ello utiliza una metodología que pone en relación el campo interno de referencia del texto y el campo externo de referencia. Se señala a la pantalla de proyección, soporte material de la representación audiovisual, como interfaz entre medios (...) y modos de representación, permitiendo el acceso del personaje teatral al universo audiovisual y activando la participación del espectador en la construcción de sentido, porque comparte con el propio texto los niveles de producción y recepción de la cultura de la imagen en la que se encuentra inmerso. Abstract: The videoscenic play is a hybrid product that presents a fictional world meaned through theatrical and audiovisual media from two different modes of representation, the narrative of enunciation audiovisual and the dramatic one. This research aims to discover how it works. To do this, it uses a methodology that relates the Internal Reference Field of the text and the External Reference Field. It is pointed to the projection screen, material support of audiovisual representation, as an interface between media and modes of representation, allowing the access of the theatrical character to the audiovisual universe and activating the viewer's participation in the construction of meaning, since it shares with the own text the levels of production and reception of the culture of the image in which it is immersed. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted that theatrical fictional worlds could serve as a potent tool for increasing man’s understanding of his own world. This research connects insights that have been developed in such diverse areas of thought as semiotics of theater and drama, philosophical logic and ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of science, so as to establish a model that suggests an explication of this epistemic effect and thereby a new observation of the theatrical enterprise. The theory advanced in this (...) study states that fictional worlds are a kind of thought experiment through which spectators’ theories about their own world may be tested, amended or even invented. (shrink)

This edited collection investigates the kinds of moral reflection we can undertake within the imaginative worlds of literature. In philosophical contexts of ethical inquiry we can too easily forget that literary experience can play an important role in the cultivation of our ethical sensibilities. Because our ethical lives are conducted in the real world, fictional representations of this world can appear removed from ethical contemplation. However, as this stimulating volume shows, the dichotomy between fact and fiction cannot be (...) so easily categorised. Moral perception, moral sensitivity, and ethical understanding more broadly, may all be developed in a unique way through our imaginative life in fiction. Moral quandaries are often presented in literature in ways more linguistically precise and descriptively complete than the ones we encounter in life, whilst simultaneously offering space for contemplation. The twelve original chapters in this volume examine literary texts – including theatre and film – in this light, and taken together they show how serious reflection within fictional worlds can lead to a depth of humane insight. The topics explored include: the subtle ways that knowledge can function as a virtue; issues concerning our relations to and understanding of each other; the complex intertwining of virtues and vices in the modern world; and the importance of bringing to light and reconsidering ethical presuppositions. With an appreciation of the importance of richly contextualized particularity and the power of descriptive acuity, the volume maps out the territory that philosophical reflection and literary engagement share. (shrink)

I argue that judgments of what is ‘true in a fiction’ presuppose the Reality Assumption: the assumption that everything that is true is fictionally the case, unless excluded by the work. By contrast with the more familiar Reality Principle, the Reality Assumption is not a rule for inferring implied content from what is explicit. Instead, it provides an array of real-world truths that can be used in such inferences. I claim that the Reality Assumption is essential to our ability to (...) understand stories, drawing on a range of empirical evidence that demonstrates our reliance on it in narrative comprehension. However, the Reality Assumption has several unintuitive consequences, not least that what is fictionally the case includes countless facts that neither authors nor readers could ever consider. I argue that such consequences provide no reason to reject the Reality Assumption. I conclude that we should take fictions, like non-fictions, to be about the real world. (shrink)

How do readers create representations of fictional worlds from texts? We hypothesize that readers use the real world as a starting point and investigate how much and which types of real-world information is imported into a given fictional world. We presented subjects with three stories and asked them to judge whether real world facts held true in the story world. Subjects' responses indicated that they imported many facts into fiction, though what exactly is imported depends on two (...) main variables: the distance that a narrative world lies from reality and the types of fact being imported. Facts that are true of the real world are more likely to be imported into worlds that are more similar to the real world, and facts that are more central to the representation of the real world are more likely to be imported overall. These results indicate that subjects make nuanced inferences when creating fictional worlds, basing their representations both on how different a story world is from the real world and on what they know to be causally central to the real world. (shrink)

There has been a steady stream of articles written on the relations between political thought and the interpretation of literature, but there remains a need for a book that both introduces and significantly contributes to the field – particularly one that shows in detail how we can think more freely and creatively about political possibilities by reading and reflecting on politically significant literature. This volume offers analytically acute and culturally rich ways of understanding how it is that we can productively (...) think philosophically about political literature and what kind of distinctive conceptual progress we can make by doing so. Given the extremely widespread interest in political issues, this volume will strike resonant chords far and wide, while offering something that has not been done quite in this way and for which the time certainly seems right. (shrink)

There has been a steady stream of articles written on the relations between political thought and the interpretation of literature, but there remains a need for a book that both introduces and significantly contributes to the field – particularly one that shows in detail how we can think more freely and creatively about political possibilities by reading and reflecting on politically significant literature. This volume offers analytically acute and culturally rich ways of understanding how it is that we can productively (...) think philosophically about political literature and what kind of distinctive conceptual progress we can make by doing so. Given the extremely widespread interest in political issues, this volume will strike resonant chords far and wide, while offering something that has not been done quite in this way and for which the time certainly seems right. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 218 Seiten: 91-117.

Although fictional characters have long dominated the reception of literature, films, television programs, comics, and other media products, only recently have they begun to attract their due attention in literary and media theory. The book systematically surveys todays diverse and at times conflicting theoretical perspectives on fictional character, spanning research on topics such as the differences between fictional characters and real persons, the ontological status of characters, the strategies of their representation and characterization, the psychology of their (...) reception, as well as their specific forms and constellations in - and across - different media, from the book to the internet.". (shrink)

Some works of fiction are widely held by critics to have little value, yet these works are not only popular but also widely admired in ways that are not always appreciated. In this paper I make use of Kendall Walton’s account of fictional worlds to argue that fictional worlds can and often do have value, including aesthetic value, that is independent of the works that create them. In the process, I critique Walton’s notion of fictional (...) worlds and offer a defense of the study and appreciation of fictional worlds, as distinguished from the works of fiction with which they are associated. (shrink)

This paper critically analyzes the fiction-view of scientific modeling, which exploits presumed analogies between literary fiction and model building in science. The basic idea is that in both fiction and scientific modeling fictional worlds are created. The paper argues that the fiction-view comes closest to certain scientific thought experiments, especially those involving demons in science and to literary movements like naturalism. But the paper concludes that the dissimilarities prevail over the similarities. The fiction-view fails to do justice to (...) the plurality of model types used in science; it fails to realize that a function like idealization only makes sense in science because models, unlike works of fiction, can be de-idealized; it fails to distinguish sufficiently between the make-believe worlds created in fiction and the hypothetical worlds envisaged in models. Representation characterized in the fiction-view as a license to draw inferences does not sufficiently distinguish between inferences in fiction from inferences in scientific modeling. To highlight the contrast the paper proposes to explicate representation in terms of satisfaction of constraints. (shrink)

There are several attempts to build a theory of art starting from analytical philosophy, the best of which is probably the one provided by Nelson Goodman. Pavel's work is the first attempt to write a theory of literature from the premisses of analytical philosophy. Pavel, whose earlier work was influenced among others by Eco, Greimas, Hrushovsky and Brooke-Rose, begins with an analysis of recent philosophical positions regarding fiction and distinguishes on one side the hard-line "segregationist" position of Bertrand Russell which (...) denies "nonexistent individuals any ontological status" and maintains that any "statements on such individuals are false on logical grounds", a view more moderately followed by P. F. Strawson and G. Ryle. On the other side he finds the more tolerant and "integrationist" theories, derived from the views of Alexis von Meinong, according to which every kind of object is "equally endowed with being, although not necessarily with existence". Pavel clearly inclines towards broadly Meinongian theories but he would like to qualify them in a number of ways. First he finds it useful to speak, like premodern cosmologists, of "degrees of being". Furthermore he outlines a "speech-act theory of fiction" in which the measure of a genuine statement would be the epistemological adherence to the linguistic practice of a community or the correspondence to a "coordinate system" as Quine would say. (shrink)

Our purpose has been to illuminate questions surrounding the use of literature in medical education, and to propose criteria for selecting literature which is more likely to evoke readers to reflect on their personal and professional selves. We have suggested that literature promoting vicariousness and vulnerability may validate readers' questions, insecurities, and beliefs insofar as readers are willing to engage with the text cognitively and phenomenologically. This we call reader responsibility. Crucial to nurturing this responsibility are medical educators 2- ducators (...) in any context, for that matter – who are vulnerable themselves, who puzzle outloud, who admit their own incompleteness. Together as learners, teachers and students may come to realize that it is, in the end, the artist whopresses upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power... seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered. (shrink)

The authors explain our attraction to strange, literary places as resulting from our attraction to strange places in real life. I believe this is correct and important. The aim of the following commentary is to show that their main conclusion is closely related to – even (retrospectively) predictable from – the operation of simulation and the consequences of that operation for storytelling.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FÉLIX MaRTÍNEZ-?????? TOWARDS A FORMAL ONTOLOGY OF FICTIONAL WORLDS In this discussion ' I propose a few concepts for the description and classification of fictional "worlds." The variety of fictional systems of"reality" can be understood, I diink, as an aspect ofthe phenomenon of style in literary imagination.2 But styles of imagination or of vision, and die style of literary works, are more than simply (...) kinds of fictional worlds. To put in some perspective my attempt at classification of literary works according to their systems of reality, I will make first a few remarks on the notion of style. It is a well-known preliminary problem when speaking of style diat this word seems to have more than one meaning in ordinary usage. I think that some ofits current meanings are rich and important, and that literary knowledge would profit if we could reconstruct them in abstract and defined concepts, so that the notions involved were somewhat clarified. I doubt diat diis is possible with current conceptual tools. We can see what is meant, say, when we hear diat a certain person we know "has style"; and we certainly distinguish diis attribute from others such as elegance, good manners, character, taste, originality, mannerisms, or idiosyncracies. Thus, we occasionally perceive in personal behavior a phenomenon called style. A conceptual description or a satisfactory definition of such a given, however, seems very difficult. Speaking of matters of art and literature, "style" has been used, among other things, to designate both the conventional forms of traditional expression (as in "manuals of style") and the anomalous, convention-breaking forms of highly individuated creation (as in die classic conception of Vosslerian-Spitzerian Stylistics, or in Buffon's "Le style c'est l'homme même," as usually understood). Style, dien, as conformity and style as singularity and deviance; style as impersonal decorum and as presence of a unique personal essence in the work. This perplexing ambiguity may be reducible though. Whether conventional and common or personal and innovative, style appears to be a form that characterizes and holds together a creation or a phenomenal entity. Indeed, the fact that 182 Félix Martínez-Bonati183 singular innovations of style often become the common trait of a school or current and sometimes a part of general tradition seems to indicate that neither singularity nor general acceptance are the most basic elements of die notion of style. On first reflection, we may conceive of style as a formal principle that consistently determines the constitution of die pertinent objects. Nonetíieless, constitutive form is too weak a definition for style, since it would also apply to what is called "technique" and even to genre. We must look for a more specific determination. There is anodier ambiguity in everyday uses of die word "style" diat deserves attention. We speak often of "good style" and "bad style." But sometimes we speak as if no style is bad and the thing that matters is to have style at all and as much of it as possible. Thus, we condemn a work because of its having no style or only a weak one. This contradiction probably derives from the confusion of a particular normative, a general normative, and a merely descriptive notion of style. We should keep, if possible, to a merely descriptive notion. Still another uncertainty of usage, in literary matters, relates to the (not universally accepted) restriction of the notion of style to a linguistic one; style, in this restricted usage, is seen as primarily an attribute of diction. The most numerous of literary studies of die style of singular works have been, so far as I can see, descriptions of idiolects. In many cases, the linguistic peculiarity is taken as an index of the world-view or die style of imagination diat is supposed to have produced the work. Alternative to this approach, indeed complementary, is the study of literary style as an attribute of die fictional entities to which literary discourse refers. We find the latter kind of approach mostly in characterizations of genres or of periods ("the naturalist novel," "romance," "classicism," etc.). One may suppose that an exhaustive analysis of the idiolect of a work... (shrink)

Does telling a story imply a fictional world in which that story takes place? In contemporary philosophy, “fictional worlds” are one solution to the problem of how there can be true and false judgments about fictional characters. Fictional-world accounts generally disregard whether facts are explicitly stated in the story or not; it is enough for them to be logically implied. And yet, as Ruth Lorand has observed, whether a fact is stated or merely implied changes (...) the meaning of a story. “Imagine that the original text contains the following sentence: ‘Daisy Miller is human and as such she was born to human parents.’ Wouldn’t.. (shrink)

At the heart of our experience of literature is the idea that fiction can show us new possibilities for the world in which we live. I open up fictional worlds’ hermeneutic dimension by investigating the intersection of Roman Ingarden’s analytic phenomenology of the literary work with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. Reading Ingarden together with Gadamer, I understand a fictional world as an orientation towards a fictional environment whose foundation is our capacity for language, showing how the (...) reciprocal relationship in which we discover its fictional objects and states of affairs is of the same kind that exists between language and world, so that fiction can be understood to orient us towards the happening of language. By thinking on the relationship between language and experience, I suggest that Ingarden and Gadamer propose to understand a fictional world as an orientation towards our very capacity to be otherwise and to exceed ourselves. (shrink)

The canonical version of possible worlds semantics for story prefixes is due to David Lewis. This paper reassesses Lewis's theory and draws attention to some novel problems for his account.

It is an idea that stands at the heart of fiction that it can show us new possibilities for the world in which we live. It is perhaps partly for this reason that philosophers and theorists of ficti...

In recent work, Walton has abandoned his very influential account of the fictionality of p in a fictional work in terms of prescriptions to imagine emanating from it. He offers examples allegedly showing that a prescription to imagine p in a given work of fiction is not sufficient for the fictionality of p in that work. In this paper, both in support and further elaboration of a constitutive-norms speech-act variation on Walton’s account that I have defended previously, I critically (...) discuss his objections. In addition to answering his concerns and developing the account further, I provide additional abductive support for its explanatory virtues vis-à- institutional accounts like Walton’s, and Gricean speech-act proposals. (shrink)

By examining the idea found in the works of several contemporary philosophers that the multiplicity of worlds is no longer merely possible – as it was for Leibniz – but actually determines our experience of reality, the article proposes an understanding of worlds as transcendental structures that frame the ontological multiplicity. The article argues that such a proliferation of actual worlds implies that the concept of world should be seen today as a category that belongs to the (...) order of fiction, making the world-building devices of literature relevant for understanding the contemporary experience of reality. The first part examines the conceptions of multiple worlds of Leibniz, Deleuze, and Badiou through the structural differences and similarities between possible and fictional worlds. While Deleuze actualises possible worlds, Badiou actualises fictional worlds. The second part explores worlds as political fictions, revisiting Kant’s conception of cosmopolitanism via Rancière’s definition of politics as a conflict of worlds. Rancière’s formulation of political dissensus in fictional and narrative terms sheds a new light on Kant’s description of cosmopolitanism as a perspective that presents history as a novelistic narrative. (shrink)

We present a theory of truth in fiction that improves on Lewis's [1978] ‘Analysis 2’ in two ways. First, we expand Lewis's possible worlds apparatus by adding non-normal or impossible worlds. Second, we model truth in fiction as belief revision via ideas from dynamic epistemic logic. We explain the major objections raised against Lewis's original view and show that our theory overcomes them.

In the paper we will study the notions of possible-worlds semantics, fiction, and creativity. The intention is to show how the notion of possible-worlds semantics allows us to generate a fresh interpretation of the notions of fiction and creativity. To do this, we have to consider the philosophy of logic. Possible-worlds semantics can be used in interpreting modal notions. The intention is to interpret the notions of fiction and creativity as modal notions. However, the analysis shows that (...) the notions of fiction and creativity are multimodal notions. (shrink)

We outline a neo-Meinongian framework labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM) to account for the ontology and semantics of fictional discourse. Several competing accounts of fictional objects are originated by the fact that our talking of them mirrors incoherent intuitions: mainstream theories of fiction privilege some such intuitions, but are forced to account for others via complicated paraphrases of the relevant sentences. An ideal theory should resort to as few paraphrases as possible. In Sect. 1, we make this (...) explicit via two methodological principles, called the Minimal Revision and the Acceptability Constraint. In Sect. 2, we introduce the standard distinction between internal and external fictional discourse. In Sects. 3–5, we discuss the approaches of (traditional) Meinongianism, Fictionalism, and Realism—and their main troubles. In Sect. 6 we propose our MMM approach. This is based upon (1) a modal semantics including impossible worlds (Subsect. 6.1); (2) a qualified Comprehension Principle for objects (Subsect. 6.2); (3) a notion of existence-entailment for properties (Subsect. 6.3). In Sect. 7 we present a formal semantics for MMM based upon a representation operator. And in Sect. 8 we have a look at how MMM solves the problems of the three aforementioned theories. (shrink)

Imaginary worlds are extremely successful. The most popular fictions produced in the last few decades contain such a fictional world. They can be found in all fictional media, from novels (e.g., Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter) to films (e.g., Star Wars and Avatar), video games (e.g., The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy), graphic novels (e.g., One Piece and Naruto), and TV series (e.g., Star Trek and Game of Thrones), and they date as far back (...) as ancient literature (e.g., the Cyclops Islands in The Odyssey, 850 BCE). Why such a success? Why so much attention devoted to non-existent worlds? In this paper, we propose that imaginary worlds co-opt our preferences for exploration, which have evolved in humans and nonhuman animals alike, to propel individuals toward new environments and new sources of reward. Humans would find imaginary worlds very attractive for the very same reasons, and under the same circumstances, as they are lured by unfamiliar environments in real life. After reviewing research on exploratory preferences in behavioral ecology, environmental esthetics, neuroscience, and evolutionary and developmental psychology, we focus on the sources of their variability across time and space, which we argue can account for the variability of the cultural preference for imaginary worlds. This hypothesis can, therefore, explain the way imaginary worlds evolved culturally, their shape and content, their recent striking success, and their distribution across time and populations. (shrink)

What does it mean for a proposition to be "true in a fiction"? According to the account offered by Kendall Walton in Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990), what is fictionally true, or simply fictional, is what a work of fiction invites or prescribes that we imagine. To say that it is fictional that Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, for example, is to say that we are supposed to imagine that event. Yet Walton gives no account (...) of the kind of imagining relevant to understanding fictionality. In this paper I argue that the relevant kind of imagining is imagining a storyworld. I propose an account of this sort of imagining, as well as the nature of the invitations or prescriptions to imagine generated by fiction. I show that this account can be defended against various criticisms of Walton's original view, including his own argument in 2015 that prescriptions to imagine provide only necessary conditions for fictionality. (shrink)

In "World Literature, Industrialization, and the Two Faces of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction" Yiping Wang discusses contemporary Chinese science fiction against the backdrop of the influence of world literature and the development of industrialization in China. Wang argues that two sides represented respectively by Liu Cixin and Han Song constitute the feature of contemporary Chinese science fiction. The side characterized by the works of Liu Cixin is the close connection with world science fiction and the positive attitude and consistency with (...) technological innovation and industrialization in China while the other side has Han Song as its representative, whose works, with similarities to high literature of world canons and the mainstream Chinese literature, reflect on the development of technology and industrialization focusing on individuals and disasters in the shadow of modernization. These two sides join together in the illustration of the basic image of science fiction in contemporary Chinese literature. By absorbing the essence of world literature and echoing the concerns of the nation, contemporary Chinese science fiction surmounts the hierarchy of literary genres and make its way into the active center of world literature. (shrink)

This article will examine Jean Paul Sartre's Nausea from the perspectives of philosophical fiction and world literature. Philosophical fiction is a specific kind of literature that insists on its absolute modernity. However, the literary aspects of philosophical fiction place it within its political and historical context, thus threatening this pretense to universality. Our examination of Nausea will show the internal tension between philosophy and fiction and how the interplay of both of those elements informed the structure of the novel. The (...) formal, literary aspects help further the actual philosophical content that purports to be the central focus. The implications of that interplay will lead us to a new understanding of the inner logic of world literature. (shrink)

This paper considers the medium of videogames from a goodmanian standpoint. After some preliminary clarifications and definitions, I examine the ontological status of videogames. Against several existing accounts, I hold that what grounds their identity qua work types is code. The rest of the paper is dedicated to the epistemology of videogaming. Drawing on Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin's works, I suggest that the best model to defend videogame cognitivism appeals to the notion of understanding.

I discuss Gregory Currie’s taxonomy of explanations of the fictional. On the one hand, there is an important kind of relation between internal and external explanations of some fictional truths that Currie leaves out, where both are salient and yet in a relation of harmony with each other. On the other hand, I do not see that he has established that there is a genuine relation of tension between some pairs of internal and external explanations, and thus I (...) question the usefulness of the category of collapse. I also consider a further kind of explanation: the exterior explanation. (shrink)

The paper is an attempt to take Ingarden’s unfinished critique of idealism one step further. It puts forward a schematic solution to the external-world realist’sproblem of how to explain the fact that we can identify and re-identify fictions, entities that in one sense do not exist. The solution contains three proposals: to accept, with Husserl and Ingarden, that there are universals with intentionality (Husserl’s “intentional essences”), to accept, contra Husserl and Ingarden, an immanent realism for universals, and to accept Ingarden’s (...) view that there is a mode of being distinct from those put forward in traditional metaphysics, that of purely intentional being. Together, these views imply that all the instances of a specific intentional universal are directed towards the same intentional object; be this object a really existing object or a fiction, a purely intentional being. (shrink)

In what sense can aesthetic experience be considered an opportunity for the development of personal identity, cognitive abilities, and emotions? Theatre proves to be an important field of investigation to approach this question. During a theatrical experience, the connection between fiction and reality can take the form of active cooperation between author, actor, and spectator. A better understanding of this point can be drawn by pointing out three kinds of spectator: we can distinguish a critical spectator, an emotional spectator, and (...) an instinctual spectator, who respectively represent: the imaginative and hermeneutic attitude; empathy and fictional emotions; the unconscious satisfaction of drives. So far, a parallel can be established between literature and theatre. However, these two aesthetic experiences are profoundly different: the type of immersion provided by the theatrical experience differs from reading, because the presence of the characters is physical and actual. The pragmatic theatrical framework is the same as that which underlies childhood games. This means that the public too is to some extent called to play, i.e. to act. To appreciate the implications of this thesis, a preliminary analysis of the performance Reality (Deflorian and Tagliarini 2012) is offered, examining how its experience contributes to the development of the spectating subject. (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)