Abstract
In the philosophy of fiction, a majority view is continuism, i.e., the thesis that ordinary names, or genuine singular terms in general, directly refer to ordinary real individuals in fiction-involving sentences – e.g. “Napoleon” in the sentences that constitute the text of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. But there is also a minority view, exceptionalism, which is the thesis that such terms change their semantic value in such sentences, either by directly referring to fictional surrogates of those individuals – what we may call exceptional hyperrealism about fictional characters – or by acquiring a semantic value that turns them into nonreferential terms, involving no ontological commitment to such characters – exceptional irrealism about fictional characters. In this paper, first of all, I want to support hybrid exceptionalism, according to which both parties are partly right and partly wrong. In the fictional use of fiction-involving sentences, those terms directly refer to ordinary real individuals, as continuists claim, while both in the internal and the external metafictional use of fiction-involving sentences, such terms change their semantic value, as exceptionalists claim. (By contrast, for pure exceptionalists such terms either always refer to fictional surrogates or are nonreferring on all such uses.) Moreover, I will argue that hybrid exceptional hyperrealism must be preferred to hybrid exceptional irrealism: in the latter uses, I claim, such terms directly refer to fictional surrogates.
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Notes
This is the use I will immediately label the internal metafictional use.
A further argument in favour of exceptionalism is the argument from reference convergence (Motoarca 2014), according to which in fiction-involving sentences there is a use of different tokens of a name like “Napoleon” (or of different names, Garcia-Carpintero 2019) that could not be understood if those tokens (or those names) were taken to directly corefer to the same ordinary real individual, as they customarily do. For if this were the case, it would lead to contradictions in fiction. I will reprise that argument later as supporting my own intermediate position in this debate.
Bonomi (2008) claims that the relevant referential shift occurs between the internal and the external metafictional use of a fiction-involving sentence. For the reasons I appeal to below, I instead think that this shift has to be located earlier, as occurring between the fictional use and the two metafictional uses of a fiction-involving sentence.
For such examples, cf. e.g. Rakoczy and Tomasello (2006).
Incidentally, note that, since Hammurabi realises that the game is a PF game, in his fictional use of (4)–(5), by means of the two tokens of “this” he intends not to makebelievedly, but to really directly refer to such hypothetical distinct worldly items. Simply, reality does not collaborate with his intentions.
This point seems to be overlooked by Kroon (2001), who by my lights is too confident on the idea that in the relevant make-believe game, the players’ referential intentions make it the case that the relevant genuine ordinarily coreferential singular terms are not coreferential in the game.
Pace Motoarca 2014, the paradoxicality of a make-believe game does not prevent the demonstrative tokens / the names in it from directly (co)referring to an ordinary real individual.
Pace Kaplan 1989, Predelli (2008), Schlenker (2003), Bonomi (2008) and (partially at least) Recanati (2000) would have nothing to worry about the fact that in fiction-involving sentences internally metafictionally used, a referential shift may also hold of demonstratives. For they allow for context-shifting operators in paratextual sentences. Simply, they would say that such a shift also applies to fictional uses of fiction-involving sentences (see later).
Pace Recanati 2018, in general the referential context shift that make a genuine singular term directly refer to a fictional character does not occur between internally and externally metafictionally used fiction-involving sentences, but it occurs between fictionally used and metafictionally used (whether internally or externally) such sentences.
For the distinction between creative and conservative make-believe games, cf. Evans 1982.
As Friend (2014) has pointed out, the two main accounts of such name / real referent historical connection are the name-centric account, centered on the idea of a causal-intentional referential chain along the lines of Kripke 1980, and the info-centric account, centered on the idea of the dominant source of information along the lines of Evans 1973.
For a similar case, cf. Bonomi (2008), who says that in Rousseau’s La nouvelle Heloise, the fictional character of The Savoyard Priest corresponds both to Monsieur Gatier and to Monsieur Gaime, who were distinct ordinary real individuals.
As far as I know, nobody has defended this position yet. However, one may consider possible variants of irrealist exceptionalism as going in this direction.
For semantically-based arguments in favour of ficta, cf. e.g. Van Inwagen 1977, Castañeda 1989. For purely ontological arguments, cf. Thomasson 1999, Voltolini 2006. For the purposes of this paper, in defending the more radical version of realism on fictional characters hybrid hyperrealist exceptionalism amounts to, I want to endorse no particular metaphysical view (possibilism, Meinongianism, artefactualism …) on fictional characters. For if what I say is correct, it must hold for any such view.
Pace Motoarca 2014, the relationship in question is not a representational relation, in which the fictional surrogate is a representation of an ordinary real individual. For a representational relation is not a ‘many-many’ relation.
I owe this objection to Sandro Zucchi. See also Thomasson (2010:139).
See also Everett (2013:222).
One might remark that in order to remove the relevant contradiction, it is enough that the relevant singular terms no longer corefer when embedded in the relevant parafictional sentences, as Lewis (1978:38–9) claims in order to dispense with a similar paradox concerning whether in the Doyle stories, Holmes lives or not in the Abbey National Bank’s branch in Baker St. (i.e., Baker St. 221B). But Lewis’ solution is a hybrid exceptionalist solution that is also a hyperrealist one (given his commitment to ficta as possibilia).
I owe this objection to Graham Priest.
Cf. the authors quoted in fn.10.
People may say that the case of indeterminate dwarves differs from the case of indeterminacy between a and b, the former being a case of semantic indeterminacy, the latter being a case of metaphysical indeterminacy (I owe this remark to Elisa Paganini). Granted, it is questionable that the second case involves metaphysical rather than semantical indeterminacy (cf. Cameron 2012:191). But even if this were not the case (cf. Cohen 2017), it would remain that neither semantical nor metaphysical indeterminacy can be eo ipso transported from (imaginary) items in make-believe games to fictional characters in stories.
Of course, more should be said concerning the issue of ficta generation that may explain better why one is not forced to have a one-one correspondence between (imaginary) items in make-believe games and fictional characters in stories. Unfortunately, there is no space to look into the matter.
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Acknowledgements
This paper has been originally presented at the workshops Fiction, Its Instruments, Its Creatures and Their Friends, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, October 9-10 2017, Prague, and Fiction, Imagination, Experience, University of Parma, October 25, 2017, Parma, as well as at the Philosophy Programme Seminar, Victoria University Wellington, March 29, 2018, Wellington. I thank all participants for their stimulating questions. I warmly thank Fred Kroon for his many comments on previous versions of the paper. I also thank Manuel Garcia-Carpintero and Elisa Paganini from the insightful discussions had with them on the paper’s topic.
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Voltolini, A. Real Individuals in Fictions, Fictional Surrogates in Stories. Philosophia 48, 803–820 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00137-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00137-w