The Road Between Pretense Theory and Abstract Object Theory
Author
Edward N. Zalta
Reference
in Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles
of Non-Existence, A.~Everett and T.~Hofweber (eds.), Stanford:
CSLI Publications, 2000, pp. 117-147
Abstract
In its approach to fiction and fictional discourse, pretense theory
focuses on the behaviors that we engage in once we pretend that
something is true. These may include pretending to name, pretending
to refer, pretending to admire, and various other kinds of
make-believe. Ordinary discourse about fictions is analyzed as a kind
of institutionalized manner of speaking. Pretense, make-believe, and
manners of speaking are all accepted as complex patterns of behavior
that prove to be systematic in various ways.
In this paper, I attempt to show: (1) that this
systematicity is captured in the basic distinctions and
representations that are central to the formal theory of
abstract objects, and (2) that this formal theory need
not be interpreted platonistically, but may instead
have an interpretation on which the `objects' of the
theory are things that pretense theorists already
accept, namely, complex patterns of linguistic
behavior. The surprising conclusion, then, is that a
certain Wittgensteinian approach to meaning (e.g., the
meaning of a term like `Holmes' is constituted by its
pattern of use) bears an interesting relationship to a
formal metaphysical theory and the semantic analyses of
discourse constructed in terms of that theory---the
former offers a naturalized interpretation of the
latter, yet the latter makes the former more precise.
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