Online research in philosophy

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

This paper examines the logic of fictions within fictions. I argue that consistently nested consistent fictions must have certain formal characteristics. The most important is that they form a tree structure. Depending on one’s theory of fictional objects, additional constraints may apply regarding the appearance of a fictional object in two or more fictional universes. The background motivation for the paper is to use iterated fiction operators as a tool for making sense of iterated modal operators; I conclude by noting briefly where the results about nested fictions can, and where they cannot, be extended to nested possible worlds.

Philosophers of literature direct their studies to the moral, cognitive, and emotional aspects of our involvement with fiction. In spite of this, they rarely engage works of popular fiction. In this paper I use The Da Vinci Code as a case study of the impact of popular fiction on readers in terms of these three areas. Although this book will never be considered good literature, its impact is far reaching. l address concerns dealing with the fiction/non-fiction distinction as weIl as issues with history, accuracy, and falsehoods. I flesh out the issues The Da Vinci Code brings up and argue that it, along with other works of popular fiction (Oprah’s book club for example), might be taken more seriously by philosophers of literature.

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.

Introduction -- What is fiction? -- Realism about fictional objects -- Fictional objects are nonexistents -- Worlds and truth : fictional worlds, possible worlds, and impossible worlds -- Fictional entities are abstract artifacts -- Irrealism : fiction and intentionality -- Some fictionalists -- Fictionalism about possible worlds -- Moral fictionalism -- Retrospect.

In this paper, I shall sketch a preliminary ground for a cognitivist theory of fiction and argue that theories which align fiction-making with (aesthetically valuable) story-telling consider the act of fiction-making too narrowly. As a paradigmatic example of such anti-cognitivist theories, I shall examine Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen’s influential theory of fiction, which suggests that recognizing the author’s fictive and literary intentions manifested in the text would lead to dismissing her aims to make genuine claims and suggestions. I shall illustrate my argument concerning the act of fiction-making by showing that there are sub-genres of fiction, for instance, so-called philosophical fiction, in which the author’s intention to advance genuine points and to invite the reader to entertain the beliefs expressed can reasonably be argued to be as important for understanding the work as is her aim to create an aesthetically valuable and/or entertaining fictional narrative. Leaning on Noël Carroll’s theory of literary thought experiments, I shall suggest that philosophical fictions convey assertions or suggestions in a way similar to philosophers’ fictional thought experiments and are aimed to be understood as such.

Abstract Some fictions, it seems, represent the future as closed, in the sense that some future-tensed propositions are true in those fictions. Yet it is surprisingly difficult to accommodate this plausible thesis within an account of truth in fiction. A number of putative examples of closed fictional futures are discussed (Macbeth, Oedipus, Time and the Conways, The Time Machine) and the problems encountered in reconciling them with various accounts of truth in fiction (David Lewis', Gregory Currie's, Alex Byrne's) elaborated. Connections are drawn between metaphysical views on time and theories of fiction, and an attempt is made to show how the tenseless theory of time (roughly, the denial that time flows) can illuminate accounts of fictional truth, and in particular the issue of how there can be true beliefs about what will happen in a fiction.

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.

Fiction is often characterized by way of a contrast with truth, as, for example, in the familiar couplet “Truth is always strange/ Stranger than fiction" (Byron 1824). And yet, those who would maintain that “we will always learn more about human life and human personality from novels than from scientific psychology” (Chomsky 1988: 159) hold that some truth is best encountered via fiction. The scrupulous novelist points out that her work depicts no actual person, either living or dead; nonetheless, we use names from fiction in ways that suggest that we take these names to refer. Philosophers who investigate fiction aim to reconcile such apparently incompatible phenomena, and, in general, to account for the myriad ways that we talk, think, and feel about fiction.

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