Abstract
Amie Thomasson is well known both for defending Creationism about fictional characters (see her 1999, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2015a, and 2016) and for endorsing easy ontology (2015b). My aim in this chapter is to argue that there’s a tension between these two views. Creationism commits one to the existence of fictional characters (as abstract objects). Easy ontology commits one to the existence of abundant properties. I will argue that anyone who endorses both the existence of fictional characters and property abundance is committed to an indeterminacy which violates classical logic. Since Creationists, including Thomasson, take Creationism to respect classical logic this is a surprising discovery (Thomasson 1999, van Inwagen 1977). If correct, my argument shows Thomasson must either (i) give up the property abundance which follows naturally from easy ontology, (ii) give up Creationism, or (iii) restrict classical logic.
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Notes
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Or by real people masquerading as fictional characters. Suppose my daughter writes a fictional story about me. The story is fiction, but the main character in it is me. Then we might want to say, e.g., Dana instantiates having blood type B and Dana instantiates having blood type A within the story. In fact, I have blood type B. But, of course, one can write anything one wants about me in a fictional story, including e.g., that my blood type is different than it really is. Some philosophers will argue that the real person, Dana, is the subject of the fiction. In this case, real people can have within the story properties. Other philosophers will argue that there are two objects—Dana the concrete person and Dana the abstract fictional character. In this case, it’s only the fictional character who has the within the story properties. If one takes the former route (i.e., claims concrete beings can have within the story properties), then the problem I’ll raise below for those that endorse both Creationism and property abundance would arise even for those who reject Creationism. Thanks to Kristie Miller and Dan Giberman for pressing me on this point.
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Some critics of realism about fictional characters (e.g., Everett, 2005) have tried to argue that indeterminacy in a story (e.g., regarding whether a=b or a=c, or whether a even exists at all) spills over to real world indeterminacy. This line of argument has effectively been refuted by Schnieder and von Solodkoff (2009) and is not the line of argument the new critic of Creationism is proposing. The new critic’s worry isn’t about indeterminacy ‘spilling over’ from the story into the real world. The indeterminacy comes from the existence of fictional characters and the existence of within the story properties—both of which exist in the real world, as does the indeterminacy which results from them.
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In order to keep my examples consistent, I’ve replaced Thomasson’s “Hamlet” with “Sherlock Holmes”.
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van Inwagen makes a similar claim: What is not true is that, for any property, that property is either ascribed to Sherlock Holmes or not ascribed to him. A(Sherlock Holmes has blood type B) v A(~Sherlock Holmes has blood type B). This disjunction is false simply because Doyle was noncommittal about Holmes’ blood type. It is these facts, I think, that the Meinongian perceives through a glass darkly when he says that a creature of fiction is an incomplete object (van Inwagen, 1977, 308).
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What about supervaluationism? Couldn’t we say, for example, that although it’s not the case that Bh (Holmes instantiates having blood type B within the story) and it’s not the case that ~Bh (Holmes fails to instantiate having blood type B within the story), it’s still the case that (Bh v ~Bh). There are good reasons why we cannot say this. Spelling them out is, however, beyond the scope of this paper. See Goswick (2021) and Tye (1989) for arguments as to why supervaluationism won’t work here.
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“Creatures of fiction … obey the laws of [classical] logic, just as everything else does” (van Inwagen, 1977, 307).
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See Goswick (2021) for arguments that violations of classical logic by odd objects (or odd properties) is no big deal.
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In order to avoid ad hocness, one would need a principled reason for rejecting within the story properties, i.e., one’s account of fiction would need to be embedded in a more general account of properties. Historically, Creationists have not tied their views on fiction to a sparse account of properties and it would be odd if one’s account of fiction dictated one’s ontology of properties. Karen Bennett (Eastern APA 2020, Q&A) suggests that we ought to be happy to deny within the story properties, as letting them in would let in a whole plethora of ‘according to’ properties, e.g., being beautiful according to Kate, being legitimate according to Trump, being unfair according to Tom. Do we really want to say that, in addition to the simple properties being beautiful, being legitimate, and being unfair, there are the restricted properties being beautiful according to … (one property for each person there is), being legitimate according to … (one property for each person there is), and being unfair according to … (one property for each person there is)? Allowing such properties will give us billions and billions more properties than there would be if there were only simple properties. There is no reason for an easy ontologist, such as Thomasson, to reject such an abundance of properties. But other Creationists may want to.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to my commentator at the Eastern APA 2020 Ned Markosian, to the members of my Metaphysics WIP group Scotty Dixon, Dan Giberman, David Kovacs, Kristie Miller, and Tuomas Tahko, and to Dan Korman for their very useful comments.
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Goswick, D. (2023). Creationism, Easy Ontology, and Indeterminacy. In: Garcia-Godinez, M. (eds) Thomasson on Ontology. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23672-3_12
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