Ontological Fictionalism

A fictionalist view about an area of discourse D says or implies that claims within D, like those of fiction, need not be literally true in order to make valuable contributions. Fictionalist views are often intended to show that their target discourse D does not really have (or need not have) the ontological commitments that it seems to have. So to the extent that an ontological debate revolves around what ontological commitments D has, a fictionalist view of D may contribute to its solution. The areas of discourse about which fictionalist views have been developed are many and varied: ordinary moral judgments, mathematics, talk about possible worlds, scientific models, mental states, God, fictional characters, composite material objects, and more. For the first four of these cases PhilPapers has dedicated categories, listed below at ‘see-also’. The present category, under the parent category ‘metaontology’, focuses on the general significance of fictionalism for ontological questions and debates, and on its metaontological implications. Special attention is also given to fictionalist views on notions that are central to ontological theorizing across different topics: existence, identity, grounding, truthmaking, etc. 

An early discussion of the metaontological implications of fictionalism is Yablo 1998, where he suggests that ontology in the Quinean tradition may rest on the mistake of relying on an elusive distinction between the literal and the non-literal. Others have emphasized the positive implications that fictionalism seems to have for the Quinean tradition in ontology. For instance, Eklund 2010 points out that fictionalism offers a way to resist the ‘easy inferences’ for realism on which some critics of ontology (e.g. Thomasson 2014) rely. And Dorr 2005 shows how, within an ontological debate about the existence of Fs, fictionalism could provide the antirealist about Fs with a way to make sense of their opponent's views. Fictionalism about existence talk itself has been defended by Kroon 2004  and Armour-Garb & Woodbridge 2015, developing suggestions of Evans 1982, Walton 1990 and Crimmins 1998.

Eklund 2010 offers a relatively short but very complete presentation of the different varieties of fictionalism, discussing some of its metaontological implications in the final section 5. Kroon et al 2018 is a very accessible, book-length introduction to fictionalism. The first chapter of  Armour-Garb & Woodbridge 2015 contains a very helpful discussion of several forms of fictionalist views.