A review of U. Mäki (ed.). Fact and Fiction in Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp. xvi 384. ISBN 0521 00957. As people interested mainly in theory, methodologists and philos...

Why are we deeply moved by the misfortune of Anna Karenina if we are fully aware that she is simply a fictional character who does not exist in our world?But what does it mean that fictional characters do not exist? The present article is concerned with the ontology of fictional characters. The author concludes thatsuccessful fictional characters become paramount examples of the ‘real’ human condition because they live in an incomplete world what we have cognitive access to but cannot (...) influence in any way and where no deeds can be undone. Unlike all the other semiotic objects, which are culturally subject to revisions, and perhaps only similar to mathematical entities, the fictual characters will never change and will remain the actors of what they did once and forever. (shrink)

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)

In the camp of the believers in fictional entities, two main paradigms nowadays face each other: the neo-Meinongian and the artifactualist.1 Both parties agree on the idea that ficta are abstract entities, i.e. things that exist (at least in the actual world) even though in a non-spatiotemporal way. Yet according to the former paradigm, ficta are entities of a Platonic sort: either sets of properties (or at least ‘one-one’ correlates of such sets) or generic objects. According to the latter paradigm (...) instead, fictional beings are abstract artifacts, in the sense that they are cultural constructions like games, laws and institutions. Traditionally, these paradigms conceive themselves as mutually exclusive. In what follows, however, I will try to show that this conception is ungrounded. For a fictional entity is a compound entity made both of a property set and of the cultural practice-type that makes its own existence possible. This makes a fictum at least a ‘many-one’ correlate of a set, insofar as different practice-types may turn the same set of properties into different fictional individuals. In this sense, the present proposal is ontologically syncretistic, for it attempts at combining the neo-Meinongian and the artifactualist paradigm. Yet it is even more conciliatory than that. Recent disbelievers in ficta have maintained that as far as fiction is concerned, there is nothing more than fictional discourse itself, which consists in nothing but make-believe linguistic acts in which we pretend that there are things like fictional beings. Yet I take this make-believe practice precisely as the cultural practice such that a fictum not only depends on it but also is partially constituted by it. (shrink)

A basic form of iconicity in literature is the correspondence between basic conceptual schemata in literary semantics on the one hand and in factual treatments on the other. The semantics of a subject like espionage is argued to be dependent on the ontology of the field in question, with reference to the English philosopher Barry Smith’s “fallibilistic apriorism”. This article outlines such an ontology, on the basis of A. J. Greimas’s semiotics and Carl Schmitt’s philosophy of state, claiming (...) that the semantics of espionage involves politology and narratology on an equal footing. The spy’s “positional” character is analyzed on this basis. A structural difference between police and military espionage is outlined with reference to Georges Dumézil’s theory of the three functions in Indo-European thought. A number of ontological socalled “insecurities” inherent in espionage and its literary representation are outlined. Finally, some hypotheses are stated concerning the connection between espionage and literature, and some central allegorical objects — love, theology — of the spy novel are sketched, and a conclusion on the iconicity of literature is made. (shrink)

What kind of thing, as it were, is power and how does it fit into our understanding of the social world? I approach this question by exploring the pragmatic character of power ascriptions, arguing that they involve fictional expectations directed at an open future. When we take an agent to be powerful, we act as if that agent had a robust capacity to make a difference to the actions of others. While this pretense can never fully live up to a (...) social reality whose future is open, acting on such expectations helps constitute social order. Fictional expectations are thus built into the material practices that constitute power. This account, I argue, helps us make sense of some of the deep disagreements about the nature of power. I develop the account by drawing on Thomas Hobbes’s myth of an original institution of sovereign power before expanding it to other forms of power. (shrink)

This paper explores the view that there are such things as (nonexistent) fictional objects, and that we refer to such objects when we say things like "Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective", or "Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes". A theory of such objects is developed as a special application of a Meinongian Ontology.

This paper explores the view that there are such things as (nonexistent) fictional objects, and that we refer to such objects when we say things like "Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective", or "Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes". A theory of such objects is developed as a special application of a Meinongian Ontology.

The paper provides an opinionated survey of recent contributions – roughly, in the last decade – to our understanding of how names and other referring expressions work in fictional discourse and addresses well-known philosophical worries that they raise. Views about the semantics of referring expressions in fictional discourse are usually accompanied by metaphysical views on the ontology of fictional characters, so this will also come under our focus.

The challenge of handling fictional discourse is to find the best way to resolve the apparent inconsistencies in our ways of speaking about fiction. A promising approach is to take at least some such discourse to involve pretense, but does all fictional discourse involve pretense? I will argue that a better, less revisionary, solution is to take internal and fictionalizing discourse to involve pretense, while allowing that in external critical discourse, fictional names are used seriously to refer to fictional (...) characters. I then address two objections to such realist theories of fiction: One, that they can’t adequately account for the truth of singular nonexistence claims involving fictional names, and two, that accepting that there are fictional characters to which we refer is implausible or ontologically profligate. (shrink)

The challenge of handling fictional discourse is to find the best way to resolve the apparent inconsistencies in our ways of speaking about fiction. A promising approach is to take at least some such discourse to involve pretense, but does all fictional discourse involve pretense? I will argue that a better, less revisionary, solution is to take internal and fictionalizing discourse to involve pretense, while allowing that in external critical discourse, fictional names are used seriously to refer to fictional (...) characters. I then address two objections to such realist theories of fiction: One, that they can't adequately account for the truth of singular nonexistence claims involving fictional names, and two, that accepting that there are fictional characters to which we refer is implausible or ontologically profligate. (shrink)

Comix Zone (Sega Technical Institute, 1995) is a two-dimensional scrolling beat ‘em up videogame released in 1995 for the Sega Mega Drive (known as Sega Genesis in North America). Comix Zone has two peculiarities which makes it even today an easily distinguishable videogame. These peculiarities are interrelated. First, Comix Zone imitates the aesthetics and visual settings peculiar to comic books, the aim of which is to join the experience of playing a videogame with that of reading a comic; and second, (...) Comix Zone is ultimately grounded on the philosophical claim that fictional characters are actually existing entities, distinct from, and even colliding with, their creator(s). It is pointed out that this claim on the nature of fictional characters was seriously argued for, and put it into literary practice, by the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936). (shrink)

This work looks at the ontology of personalism in his major fiction and opens a door to a fresh understanding of Dostoevsky's version of the origin of human evil. In his philosophical novels, Dostoevski's view of original conflict and inevitable evil goes far beyond Augustine, Pelagius, and Luther. The authors are the first to build a case for viewing Dostoevsky as a philosophical personalist whose approach to nature provides insight to ecologists. They offer a radically new analysis of (...) the themes of suffering, incarnation, and atonement that will appeal to both psychologists and students of religion and theology. The section on atonement and its relation to the classical theory of tragedy breaks new ground. (shrink)

Words are indispensable linguistic tools for beings like us. However, there is not much philosophical work done about what words really are. In this paper, I develop a new ontology for words. I argue that words are abstract artifacts that are created to fulfill various kinds of purposes, and words are abstract in the sense that they are not located in space but they have a beginning and may have an end in time given that certain conditions are met. (...) What follows from this two-fold argument is that words, from an ontological point of view, are more like musical works, fictional characters or computer programs, than numbers or sets. (shrink)

L'A. presenta un'analisi della Lettera sull'anima, in cui Avicenna affronta il tema delle idee di esseri fittizi, come la fenice, ed in particolare la permanenza di tali idee nell'anima dopo la sua separazione dal corpo. Nella parte centrale dello studio l'A. esamina il rapporto fra la risposta avicenniana al problema ed alcuni elementi dottrinali caratterizzanti il pensiero del filosofo: il tema degli universali, della quidditas, o natura comune, e la distinzione fra essenza ed esistenza.

Abstract: We propose a dichotomy between object-entities and meaning-entities. The former are entities such as molecules, cells, organisms, organizations, numbers, shapes, and so forth. The latter are entities such as concepts, propositions, and theories belonging to the realm of logic. Frege distinguished analogously between a ‘realm of reference’ and a ‘realm of sense’, which he presented in some passages as mutually exclusive. This however contradicts his assumption elsewhere that every entity is a referent (even Fregean senses can be referred to (...) by means of suitably constructed expressions). We apply the meaning/object dichotomy to mathematical and fictional entities, and develop a view of mathematical and other abstract objects as the results of certain types of demarcation – as for example the North Sea is the result of demarcations built into naval charts. Such demarcations reflect demarcatory acts, which presuppose complex cognitive and social structures enabling the creation of maps, of theories (of mathematics, of natural science), and of novels. (shrink)

Biologists explain organisms’ behavior not only as having been programmed by genes and shaped by natural selection, but also as the result of an organism’s agency: the capacity to react to environmental changes in goal-driven ways. The use of such ‘agential explanations’ reopens old questions about how justified it is to ascribe agency to entities like bacteria or plants that obviously lack rationality and even a nervous system. Is organismic agency genuinely ‘real’ or is it just a useful fiction? (...) In this paper we focus on two questions: whether agential explanations are to be interpreted ontically, and whether they can be reduced to non-agential explanations (thereby dispensing with agency). The Kantian approach we identify interprets agential explanations non-ontically, yet holds agency to be indispensable. Attributing agency to organisms is not to be taken literally in the way we attribute physical properties such as mass or acceleration, but nor is it a mere heuristic or predictive tool. Rather, it is an inevitable consequence of our own rational capacity: as long as we are rational agents ourselves, we cannot avoid seeing agency in organisms. (shrink)

Thinking About Stories is a fun and thought-provoking introduction to philosophical questions about narrative fiction in its many forms, from highbrow literature to pulp fiction to the latest shows on Netflix. Written by philosophers Samuel Lebens and Tatjana von Solodkoff, it engages with fundamental questions about fiction, like: What is it? What does it give us? Does a story need a narrator? And why do sad stories make us cry if we know they aren’t real? The format (...) of the book emulates a lively, verbal exchange: each chapter has only one author while the other appears spontaneously in pop-up boxes in the text along the way, raising questions and voicing criticisms, and inviting responses from their co-author. This unique format allows readers to feel like they are a part of the conversation about the philosophical foundations of some of the fictions in their own lives. (shrink)

The descriptions and theoretical laws scientists write down when they model a system are often false of any real system. And yet we commonly talk as if there were objects that satisfy the scientists’ assumptions and as if we may learn about their properties. Many attempt to make sense of this by taking the scientists’ descriptions and theoretical laws to define abstract or fictional entities. In this paper, I propose an alternative account of theoretical modelling that draws upon Kendall Walton’s (...) ‘make-believe’ theory of representation in art. I argue that this account allows us to understand theoretical modelling without positing any object of which scientists’ modelling assumptions are true. (shrink)

I first ask what it is to make up a story. In order to answer that question, I give existence and identity conditions for stories. I argue that a story exists whenever there is some narrative content that has intentionally been made accessible. I argue that stories are abstract types, individuated by the conditions that must be met by something in order to be a properly formed token of the type. However, I also argue that the truth of our story (...) identity attributions---sentences like, "Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings is the same story as JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings''---are relative to their context of use, so that the same attribution of identity might be true in one context or false in another because of a change in what's being said about the works in the differing contexts. From those existence and identity conditions, I draw the conclusions that story is best understood to be a phase sortal of some abstract types, and that what it is to make up a story is to identify a type of narrative representation and its content, such that the content is neither based on actual events nor on the content of other stories to an objectionable degree. In chapter 2, I ask what it is for a story to be complete. I argue for the general meta-thesis I call "Completion Pluralism", viz. that there are many kinds of artwork completeness, many corresponding senses of 'complete', and no kind of artwork completeness is objectively more important than any other. I give a pair of arguments against those who would deny Completion Pluralism, endorsing Completion Monism instead. First, I show how Monistic analyses of the one (or one most important) kind of artwork completeness fail. I also show that each Monistic theory's failure is contingent on the assumption of Completion Monism: the denial of Completion Monism dissolves each argument against the extensional adequacy of extant theories of artwork completeness. I argue that this is all best explained by the idea that Completion Pluralism is true. Second, I argue that Completion Pluralism fits best with the variety of interests that we bring to questions about artwork completeness: there is no single or overriding concern we have when we want to know whether an artwork is complete. We shouldn't expect completeness to be a single sort of thing, then. I show how to put Completion Pluralism to work by identifying different kinds of artwork completeness in artworks. Finally, I introduce a new kind of completeness particular to stories, what I call "narrative completion", and show how it's distinct from other kinds of completeness discussed. In chapter 3, I argue that the distinction between fictional and non-fictional stories is the degree to which stories are made-up. In short, a fictional story is a made-up story. I first provide a couple desiderata for thinking about theories of fiction, then show how the two most popular extant theories of fiction---the prop theory and the genre theory---fall short in meeting one or more of those desiderata to some extent. I then show how the theory that fictions are made-up stories better meets the desiderata, using my account of what it is to make up a story from chapter 1. I turn to explicitly ontological matters in chapter 4. Addressing the question of what stories are, I show that both the theses that they are eternal and immutable and that they are created and historical seem plausible for independent reasons. I discuss a schema of an argument some philosophers who hold to the latter view (those I call "Creationists") attempt to give for their view. However, I show how those who hold to the view that stories are eternal and immutable ("Platonists") can account for all the same appearances as the Creationists, usually at least as well and sometimes with a better accounting. Similar, deductive arguments for Platonism will give rise to similar responses from the Creationist, however. In the end, then, the style of argument in particular is unlikely to advance the discussion much. Finally, I attempt to advance the discussion by building an abductive case for Platonism. First, I vindicate a particular metaontological methodology for the debate at hand, a methodology that allows for "revisionary" outcomes in our ontologies of art objects. Second, I build a case for Platonism by arguing that it best explains a number of features of stories discussed in the previous chapters. Moreover, I argue that Creationism is committed to an implausible account of how some abstract objects come into existence. Given the combination of those facts, I argue that we should prefer Platonism to Creationism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against the theory--popular among theorists of narrative artworks--that we must posit a fictional narrative agent in every narrative artwork in order to explain our imaginative engagement with such works. I accept that every narrative must have a narrator, but I argue that in some central literary cases the narrator is not a fictional agent, but rather the actual author of the work. My criticisms focus on the strongest argument for the ubiquity of fictional narrators, Jerrold (...) Levinson's ontological-gap argument. Finally, I outline an alternative "minimal theory" of narrators, and some consequences thereof. (shrink)

This paper discusses a puzzle, the heart of which is this question: How is it that real individuals can resemble fictional individuals? It seems that any answer given by one who has taken a stand on the ontology of fictional individuals will come with significant drawbacks. An Anti-Realist will have to explain, or explain away, the apparent truth of our positive assertions of resemblance, while a Realist will have to explain how we are to understand resemblance in light of (...) either the further claim that fictional characters are not associated with properties in the same way real individuals are, or that fictional characters are nonexistent or nonactual. I here survey the different Realist and Anti-Realist strategies in hopes that reflection on (mainly the drawbacks of) each will aid those who are curious about ontologies which may include fictionalia. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to present and defend an inferentialist account of the meaning of fictional names on the basis of Sellars-Brandom’s inferentialist semantics and a Brandomian anaphoric theory of reference. On this inferentialist account, the meaning of a fictional name is constituted by the relevant language norms which provide the correctness conditions for its use. In addition, the Brandomian anaphoric theory of reference allows us to understand reference in terms of anaphoric word-word relations, rather than substantial word-world (...) relations. In this paper I argue that this inferentialist account has many important merits over its rival theories. One important merit is that it explains why we can use fictional names to make true statements, even if they lack bearers. As a consequence, this theory allows us to use fictional names without committing ourselves to an implausible ontology of fictional entities. Another important merit is that it provides a uniform semantic account of fictional names across different types of statements in which fictional names are involved. (shrink)

For Meinong, familiarly, fictional entities are not created, but rather merely discovered (or picked out) from the inexhaustible realm of Aussersein (beyond being and non-being). The phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, in contrast, offers in his Literary Work of Art of 1931 a constructive ontology of fiction, which views fictional objects as entities which are created by the acts of an author (as laws, for example, are created by acts of parliament). We outline the logic of fiction which is (...) implied by Ingarden’s approach, showing how it distinguishes the properties possessed by fictional objects (for instance of having been created by such and such an author in such and such a work) from characteristics (for instance of smoking a pipe, of living in Baker Street) which are merely associated with such objects. (shrink)

The prevalence of dementia is increasing worldwide but there is still no hope of a cure. Huge resources go into biomedical research, whose reductive ‘enactment’ has severe consequences for women, who are predominantly affected by dementia. To challenge such tragic enactment, this article considers ‘multiple ontologies’ of the most common type of dementia – Alzheimer’s disease – in the popular fictional film adaptations Still Alice and A Song for Martin. Using a post-humanist account of feminist visual studies of technoscience, this (...) comparative film analysis reveals how gender supersedes AD oversteering the hierarchical dualisms between health and pathology, human and nonhuman, and biomedical and artistic modes of knowing about Alzheimer’s. The author argues that these films stress the potential of the arts, as a multisensorial post-humanist embodied state of becoming with AD, to challenge hierarchical dualisms and innovatively contribute to dementia care. (shrink)

What happens us emotionally when we read a work of fiction? According to some philosophers our emotional engagement with fiction gives rise to a paradox and involves either irrationality or participation in a game of make believe. I argue that an Object Theory in a meinongian style, by supporting a realistic perspective on fictional emotions, is able to dissolve the paradox of fiction by providing a positive ontological account of fictional entities (and the properties characterizing them).

The question of fiction is omnipresent within the work of Paul Ricoeur throughout his prolific career. However, Ricoeur raises the questions of fiction in relation to other issues such the symbol, metaphor and narrative. This article sets out to foreground a traditional problem of fiction and logic, which is termed the existence of non-existent objects, in relation to the Paul Ricoeur’s work on narrative. Ricoeur’s understanding of fiction takes place within his overall philosophical anthropology where the (...) fictions and histories make up the very nature of identity both personal and collective. The existence of non-existent objects demonstrates a dichotomy between fiction and history, non-existent objects can exist as fictional objects. The very possibility of the existence of fictional objects entails ontological status considerations. What ontological status do fictional objects have? Ricoeur develops a concept of narrative configuration which is akin to the Kantian productive imagination and configuration frames the question historical narrative and fictional narrative. It is demonstrated that the ontological status of fictional objects can be best understood in a model of possible worlds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:JOSEPH MARGOLIS THE LOGIC AND STRUCTURES OF FICTIONAL NARRATIVE The fascination of fiction and narrative is plainly immense, sind current analyses are notably fresh and ingenious. But ifone were to venture a compendious account of die most strategic conceptual claims bearing on those notions, they might well be captured by the following three theses: (i) that fiction and narrative are logically quite distinct, without necessarily excluding one (...) anodier; (ii) that fictional worlds are no worlds at all; they are merely imagined to exist; and (iii) that events, whether actual or imagined, cannot be specified independently of the categories by which we identify them as the events they are, categories subject to change over time. What is intriguing about mese three claims is that they strike the ear as utterly commonplace and obvious. But that is dieir strength. For it would be a great convenience if the relevant puzzles generated by analytic philosophy, hermeneutics, the new narratology, semiotics and the like could be resolved, convincingly, by appeal to die implications of these diree homely trudis. In addition, diey affect one another in a rather complicated way, and, taken joindy, easily expose certain influential false starts. The import of (iii), for example, is notably ignored in die otherwise powerful analysis of narrative afforded by Gérard Genette. Its bearing on (i) utterly undermines the explicit dualism favored by Seymour Chatman, who is clearly influenced by Genette himself. The failure to mark die force of (i) and its analogue regarding poetry is most obvious in I. A. Richards's contrast between poetry and science, the work of the Prague circle, Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, and such recent speech-act theories of poetry and fiction as those proposed by Richard Ohmann, Monroe Beardsley, and Mary Louise Pratt. The corresponding failure widi respect to (ii) is clear in John Searle's theory of reference and in die ontological claims made by Nicholas Wolterstorff. The connection between (i) and (ii) is muddled most famously by G. E. Moore. These charges suggest die quarrelsome promise of the intended economy. But, as we shall see, they also lead in the direction of a more constructive theory of texts and their interpretation and of die constraints of narrative and style diat affect fiction. 162 Joseph Margolis163 Fiction, we say, differs from reality as well as from legend. But in speaking thus, we betray an understandable confidence that these three kinds of"world"— or, these three worlds — are conceptually well-behaved and open to straightforward demarcation. Once more, we slip altogether too easily between talking about certain worlds and about the narrative accounts by which we do so. What distinguishes fictional reference? we ask, and what is a fictional world? The best way to proceed here is to begin with strong intuitions and to trace dieir systematic consequences in order to test how far they are unassailable — or whether and where they must yield to others that are more accommodating. One particularly promising equivocation is the following. We speak of fictional worlds as possible (but not actual) worlds; but even if what is possible in a fictional world corresponds (in some sense) to what is possible in the actual world, it is not, as such, a possibility of or at the actual world. The "possible worlds" idiom is fundamentally and doubly equivocal. For, a "possible world" signifies either what is merely logically or conceptually compossible, or what (under suitably referential, predicative, causal, and similar constraints) is compossible specifically with respect to the actual world (or some part of it). Certainly, Balzac's La Cousine Bette "presents" an imaginary world that is internally coherent and compossible. One might even say, ignoring its fictive nature, diat such a world — or events very much like those of the story — is compossible with a certain portion of the actual world of nineteenth-century France. But Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderfond, though it scrupulously presents a coherent world of compossible events, does not present a world compossible with the actual world. And, on certain views at least, Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads presents a possible world that is a conceptual impossibility. There is, however, no need to quarrel about particular cases... (shrink)

This book is both an introduction to and a research work on Meinongianism. “Meinongianism” is taken here, in accordance with the common philosophical jargon, as a general label for a set of theories of existence – probably the most basic notion of ontology. As an introduction, the book provides the first comprehensive survey and guide to Meinongianism and non-standard theories of existence in all their main forms. As a research work, the book exposes and develops the most up-to-date Meinongian (...) theory (called modal Meinongianism), applies it to specific fields, and discusses its open problems. Part I of the book provides a historical introduction to, and critical discussion of, the dominant philosophical view of existence: the “Kantian-Fregean-Quinean” perspective. Part II is the full-fledged introduction to the Meinongian theories of existence as a real property of individuals: after starting with the so-called naïve Meinongian conception and its problems, it provides a self-contained presentation of the main neo-Meinongian proposals, and a detailed discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. Part III develops a specific neo-Meinongian theory of existence employing a model-theoretic semantic framework. It discusses its application to the ontology and semantics of fictional objects, and its open problems. The methodology of the book follows the most recent trends in analytic ontology. In particular, the meta-ontological point of view is largely privileged. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognised the interest of the Stoics' thought on geometrical limits, both as a specific topic in their physics and within the context of the school's ontological taxonomy. Unfortunately, insufficient textual evidence remains for us to reconstruct their discussion fully. The sources we do have on Stoic geometrical themes are highly polemical, tending to reveal a disagreement as to whether limit is to be understood as a mere concept, as a body or as an incorporeal. In my view, (...) this disagreement held among the historical Stoics, rather than simply reflecting a doxographical divergence in transmission. This apparently Stoic disagreement has generated extensive debate, in which there is still no consensus as to a standard Stoic doctrine of limit. The evidence is thin, and little of it refers in detail to specific texts, especially from the school's founders. But in its overall features the evidence suggests that Posidonius and Cleomedes differed from their Stoic precursors on this topic. There are also grounds for believing that some degree of disagreement obtained between the early Stoics over the metaphysical status of shape. Assuming the Stoics did so disagree, the principal question in the scholarship on Stoic ontology is whether there were actually positions that might be called "standard" within Stoicism on the topic of limit. In attempting to answer this question, my discussion initially sets out to illuminate certain features of early Stoic thinking about limit, and then takes stock of the views offered by late Stoics, notably Posidonius and Cleomedes. Attention to Stoic arguments suggests that the school's founders developed two accounts of shape: on the one hand, as a thought-construct, and, on the other, as a body. In an attempt to resolve the crux bequeathed to them, the school's successors suggested that limits are incorporeal. While the authorship of this last notion cannot be securely identified on account of the absence of direct evidence, it may be traced back to Posidonius, and it went on to have subsequent influence on Stoic thinking, namely in Cleomedes' astronomy. (shrink)

This book presents a novel theory of fictional entities which is syncretistic insofar as it integrates the work of previous authors. It puts forward a new metaphysical conception of the nature of these This This book presents a novel theory of fictional entities which is syncretistic insofar as it integrates the work of previous authors. It puts forward a new metaphysical conception of the nature of these entities, according to which a fictional entity is a compound entity built up from (...) both a make-believe theoretical element and a set-theoretical element. The fictional entity is constructed by imagining the existence of an individual with certain properties and adding a set-theoretical element consisting of the set of properties corresponding to the properties of the imagined entity. Moreover, the book advances a new combined semantic and ontological defence of the existence of fictional entities. (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)

In her book Fiction and Metaphysics (1999) Amie Thomasson, influenced by the work of Roman Ingarden, develops a phenomenological approach to fictional entities in order to explain how non-fictional entities can be referred to intrafictionally and transfictionally, for example in the context of literary interpretation. As our starting point we take Thomasson’s realist theory of literary fictional objects, according to which such objects actually exist, albeit as abstract and artifactual entities. Thomasson’s approach relies heavily on the notion of ontological (...) dependence, but its precise semantics has not yet been developed. Moreover, the modal approach to the notion of ontological dependence underlying the Artifactual Theory has recently been contested by several scholars. The main aims of this paper are (i) to develop a semantic approach to the notion of ontological dependence in the context of the Artifactual Theory of fiction, and in so doing bridge a number of philosophical and logical gaps; (ii) to generalize Thomasson’s categorial theory of ontological dependence by reconstructing ontological categories of entities purely in terms of different structures of ontological dependence, rather than in terms of the basic kinds of entities the categorical entities depend on. (shrink)

À travers l’ouvrage Le Successeur de pierre par Jean-Michel Truong et à la lumière des théories de Félix Guattari, de Mark B. N. Hansen et de Brian Rotman relatives aux multiples virtualités de l’être humain, cet article étudiera la narration romanesque de l’imbrication des nouvelles technologies de l’information et de la communication dans les processus de matérialisation et d’agentivité du posthumain. Dans son roman, Truong nous invite en effet à repenser la contextualité du corps et de l’identité humaine en substituant (...) un point de vue anthropocentrique et dualiste à une ontologie de l’émergence. This paper investigates Jean-Michel Truong’s book Le Successeur de pierre with Felix Guattari’s, Mark B. N. Hansen’s and Brian Rotman’s theories related to the multiple potentialities of human beings. It focuses more precisely on the fictional narrative of the new information and communication imbrication of technologies into the processes of posthuman’s materialisation and agency. In his novel, Truong indeed invites us to think over the contextuality of the body and the human identity by substituting an anthropocentric and dualistic point of view with an ontology of emergence. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the performative character of fictional language. While assuming that all speaking is a form of acting, it aims to shed light on the nature of fictional, and particularly literary, speech acts. To this aim, relevant input can be found in the discussion of the ontological status of fictional entities and of their constitution and in the inquiry into the interaction between author and receiver of a fictional work. Based on the critical assessment of different approaches in (...) the debate on speech-act theory and literary fiction, the article first clarifies why the study of the performative character of fictional language cannot be reduced to either the discussion of the status of singular speech acts in the fiction or the inquiry into the pretend or unserious nature of fictional speech acts formulated by an author. While referring to Roman Ingarden’s, Jean-Paul Sartre’s, and Wolfgang Iser’s work, it subsequently argues that such a performative character should be understood as a specific serious affordance—or appeal—to imagine and thus to participate in the constitution of the fictional world. (shrink)

This chapter introduces a structural account of representation through partial structures and examines its ontological commitments. It is pointed out that structural approaches to scientific representation emphasize the crucial role played by structures in representing salient features of the world. It is common to present and, in some cases, even to reify such structures as abstract entities, in particular as set-theoretic constructs. Against this view, it is argued that no such reification is called for and that several strategies can be (...) articulated to avoid commitment to set-theoretic structures in the defense of structural representation. In the end, one can favor the latter without being platonist about the former. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to consider an answer to the question whether Searle’s idea of sentence in a literary text is still relevant. Understanding literary utterances as specific speech acts, pretended illocutions, is inherent in the process of considering the sentence in a literary text in broader terms. Accordingly, it appears necessary to outline it. Reference to other ideas formulated both in the theory of literature as a speech act [R. Ohmann, S. Levin] as well as in logic, (...) ontology and the theory of literature [J. Pelc, H. Markiewicz, R. Ingarden] will render it possible to adequately place and assess Searle’s theory. Confronting Searle’s theory with the order in a literary work (the relation between the text and the literary work, the status of the presented world, the issue of reference and fiction) will in turn render it possible to determine how empirically adequate Searle’s theory is. (shrink)

In my paper, I establish an Ingardenian phenomenological ontology of virtualized ficta, i.e., fictional entities introduced to virtual gaming. The first Section of my paper provides an ontology of virtualized ficta, focusing primarily on their ‘‘existential moments’’. But in order to have a firm grasp of the ontological aspects grounding the virtual work, it’s important to engage its strata. This is what I attempt to do in Section 1.2. Virtualized ficta’s intentional dependencies are strongly manifest in what I (...) call the ‘‘strata of the virtual work’’. That is, I repurpose Ingarden’s strata of the literary work, the picture, and the film to showcase that virtualized ficta, from the bottom up (i.e., from their pure ontology to aesthetics) are purely intentional entities. In short, I argue for a purely intentional account of virtualized ficta as ficta-made-virtualia, whose ontological status is determined by the creative acts of game developers and gamers. (shrink)

In this paper I outline an alternative to hermeneutic fictionalism, an alternative I call indifferentism, with the same advantages as hermeneutic fictionalism with respect to ontological issues but avoiding some of the problems that face fictionalism. The difference between indifferentism and fictionalism is this. The fictionalist about ordinary utterances of a sentence S holds, with more orthodox views, that the speaker in some sense commits herself to the truth of S. It is only that for the fictionalist this is truth (...) in the relevant fiction. According to the indifferentist, by contrast, we are simply non-committal – or indifferent – with respect to some aspects of what is literally said in our assertive utterances. (shrink)

This paper presents and discusses Simon Evnine’s hylomorphic account of fictional characters and proposes some amendments to it with the aim of explaining the functioning of fictional characters. The paper does so by relying on a case study, viz. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story Berenice. The amended hylomorphic account of fictional characters will also be capable of explaining the malfunctioning of fictional characters.

If science fiction is a genre, then attempts to think about the nature of science fiction will be affected by one’s understanding of what genres are. I shall examine two approaches to genre, one dominant but inadequate, the other better, but only occasionally making itself seen. I shall then discuss several important, interrelated issues, focusing particularly on science fiction : what it is for a work to belong to a genre, the semantics of genre names, the validity (...) of attempts to define genres, and the connections between genre and normativity. One important but neglected clue to the nature of genres lies in the kinds of disagreements they generate over the assignment of works to genres. I conclude by explaining why these disagreements tell us something about the nature of genres, and discussing in some detail two famous cases of disagreement about whether some work or works are science fiction. (shrink)

We humans tend to believe that things are only real in as much as we perceive them, an idea reinforced by modern philosophy, which privileges us as special, radically different in kind from all other objects. But as Graham Harman, one of the theory's leading exponents, shows, Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) rejects the idea of human specialness: the world, he states, is clearly not the world as manifest to humans. "To think a reality beyond our thinking is not nonsense, but (...) obligatory." At OOO's heart is the idea that objects--whether real, fictional, natural, artificial, human, or non-human--are mutually autonomous. This core idea has significance for nearly every field of inquiry which is concerned in some way with the systematic interaction of objects, and the degree to which individual objects resist full participation in such systems. In this brilliant new introduction, Graham Harman lays out OOO's history, ideas, and impact, taking in art and literature, politics and natural science along the way. From Sherlock Holmes, unicorns, and videogames to Dadaism, Voltaire, and string theory, this book will change the way you understand everything. (shrink)

What might become of anthropology if it were to suspend its sometime claims to be a social science? What if it were to turn instead to exploring its affinities with art and literature as a mode of engaged creative practice carried forward in a world heterogeneously composed of humans and other than humans? Stuart McLean claims that anthropology stands to learn most from art and literature not as "evidence" to support explanations based on an appeal to social context or history (...) but as modes of engagement with the materiality of expressive media--including language--that always retain the capacity to disrupt or exceed the human projects enacted through them. At once comparative in scope and ethnographically informed, Fictionalizing Anthropology draws on an eclectic range of sources, including ancient Mesopotamian myth, Norse saga literature, Hesiod, Lucretius, Joyce, Artaud, and Lispector, as well as film, multimedia, and performance art, along with the concept of "fabulation" (the making of fictions capable of intervening in and transforming reality) developed in the writings of Bergson and Deleuze. Sharing with proponents of anthropology's recent "ontological turn," McLean insists that experiments with language and form are a performative means of exploring alternative possibilities of collective existence, new ways of being human and other than human, and that such experiments must therefore be indispensable to anthropology's engagement with the contemporary world. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Unamuno was conceiving of God (and ordinary, non-religious fictional characters more generally) in realist, though non-evidentially grounded, terms. I will point out that this way of conceiving of God allowed Unamuno to claim the actual existence of God (though as a fictional, purely humanly created character) and, with this, the possibility of there being an actual relationship between the concrete religious person and God without having to dispense with his own core claim that (...) religious faith is just a subjective, though natural and thus inevitable, human reaction. (shrink)

The usual question, “Are models fictions?” is replaced by the question, “Should scientific models be regarded as works of fiction?” This makes it clear that the issue is not one of definition but of interpretation. First one must distinguish between the ontology of scientific models and their function in the practice of science. Theoretical models and works of fiction are ontologically on a par, their both being creations of human imagination. It is their differing functions in practice (...) that makes it inappropriate to regard scientific models as works of fiction. Three reasons for thinking scientific models should be regarded as works of fiction are rejected. First, scientists themselves sometimes invoke the idea of fictions in their discussions of specific models. Second, many scientific models are physically impossible to realize in the real world. Third, regarding scientific models as works of fiction supports a general fictionalist understanding of scientific theories. It is concluded that promoting the general idea that scientific models are works of fiction unnecessarily supports attacks on the legitimacy of science itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:META-ONTOLOGY AND META-FICTION by Denis E. B. Pollard Peter van inwagen's attempt to explain the nature of fiction makes use of Quine's program in meta-ontology.1 This program comprises four basic theses: (i) that being is the same as existence, (ii) that being is univocal, (iii) that this univocal sense is best captured, for the purposes of formalization, by die existential quantifier, and (iv) that deciding (...) what to believe about what there is comes to a decision about what theories we should accept. As the aim of formalization is explicitness, then theories should be rendered into canonicalese and their commitments identified through those sentences which are prefaced with the existential quantifier. For Inwagen, as for his mentor Quine, acceptance of theory expressed in this canonical form entails acceptance of the ontology expressed in those quantified sentences. Bringing these considerations to bear on fiction, Inwagen asks, "What are theories about fiction?" and replies that they are "theories that treat stories as having an internal structure" (p. 72). The upshot of this is that such theories contain sentences which, when formally rendered, revead commitments to fictional objects. It is further claimed that such sentences can be vehicles of objective truth. Thus Inwagen finds he cannot wholeheartedly dismiss Sarah Gamp as a nonentity. In this respect, his view contrasts with two contemporary accounts, the "reductivist" one which denies Sarah Gamp's existence and her possession of any properties whatever, and the more recent "Meinongian" view which would agree that Sarah Gamp does not exist, but would nonetheless strenuously maintain that she is a nurse, fat, old, and decidedly the worse for drink. Inwagen's Sarah is neither ofthese: pace both these positions, she exists all right, but with properties such as being a theoretical entity of criticism, being a satiric villainess, not being a woman, and not being fond of gin. Inwagen's attempt to steer what seems to be a middle course has yielded, if anything, a more counterintuitive result than either ofthe other views. What is die explanation for this? 244 Denis E. B. Pollard245 To begin with, it is important to note a distinction, which Inwagen himself accepts, between two kinds of sentences. Let us take the following elementary examples: (1) "Sarah Gamp is a nurse," and (2) "Sarah Gamp is a character in a nineteenth-century novel." With specimens like (1), Inwagen sides with the reductivist: such sentences asefalse, and are not about anything. But it is with examples like (2) that ontology becomes a real issue, since sentences of this kind belong to literary theory. Neither authors nor critics who make use of sentences of the first kind are committed to the existence of fictional entities. So far, so good. But what is it that compels such commitment in the second case? Inwagen is sceptical about reductivist analyses which seek to paraphrase such sentences in order to remove any "misleading" implications. Such paraphrases he would regard as at best "messy," and more seriously, unlikely to preserve intuitive meaning without appearing to say that there are fictional characters. Unfortunately, he brushes this aside as a "narrow technical issue" at the very point where rather more argument is needed. However, on the issue of preservation of intuitive meaning, it might well be argued that his contention is somewhat question-begging, suggesting a rather literal reading of (2) above as a straightforward predication superficially akin to (3) "McEnroe is a seeded player in this year's Wimbledon tournament." So by a strange alchemy, the expression "Sarah Gamp" in (2) is accorded a referential status denied to it in (1). It is at this point that the notion of"theoretical entity" is introduced to supply the need for a referent dictated by the Quinean program. Inwagen's Sarah Gamp, in this theoretical disguise, can now literally satisfy predicates like "... is a character in a nineteenth-century novel," but not predicates like "... is a nurse." The parallel being exploited here is that with scientific theory. An ideal gas can satisfy Boyle's Law, but cannot literally be ignited, put into containers, or have an offensive smell. But there is more than a suspicion of equivocation over the term... (shrink)

Preliminary words One important feature of Poincaré's conventionalism of geometry is linked to the relation between the abstract notion of space geometry and the representations of the free mobility of our bodies. In this sense «the group of rigid motions» identified by Helmholtz and Lie as the foundation of geometries of constant curvature is, according to Poincaré, an idealization of the primitive experience that acquaints us with the properties of space in the first place. 2 Furthermore, since Poincaré thinks that (...) the only adequate candidates for physical geometry – the geometries of constant curvature – are equivalent from a mathematical point of view (they are homeomorphic), we can choose any one of these. Actually, according to Poincaré, the idealization involved in passing from our own local motions to the group of motions makes use of temporal intuition: our notion of the large-space structure of space assumes that our displacements are infinitely iterables and this assumes temporal intuition. 3 Thus, it looks as Poincaré's notion of convention assumes some kind of idealization process. Indeed, the notion of convention involved in this cases seems to assume that in relation to a target system the choice between two idealizations is determined by some kind of equivalence relation, which in our case is displayed 1. (shrink)

What are scientific models? Philosophers of science have been trying to answer this question during the last three decades by putting forward a number of different proposals. Some say that models are best understood as abstract Platonic objects or fictional entities akin to Sherlock Holmes, while others focus on their mathematical nature and see them as set theoretical structures. Although each account has its own strengths in offering various insights on the nature of models, several objections have been raised against (...) these views which still remain unanswered, making the debate on the ontology of models seem unresolvable. The primary aim of this paper is to show that a large part of these difficulties stems from an inappropriate reading of the main question on the ontology of models as a purely metaphysical question. Building on Carnap, it is argued that the question of the ontology of scientific models is either an internal theoretical question within an already accepted linguistic framework or an external practical question regarding the choice of the most appropriate form of language in order to describe and explain the practice of scientific modelling. The main implication of this view is that the question of the ontology of models becomes a means of probing other related questions regarding the overall practice of scientific modelling, such as questions on the capacity of models to provide knowledge and the relation of models with background theories. (shrink)