The Matter of Serial Fiction

Res Philosophica 93 (2):425-439 (2016)
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Abstract

Recent work on the problem of truth in serial fiction has focused on the semantics of certain sentences used to talk about serial fictions, as in Ross Cameron’s (2012) “How to Be a Nominalist and a Fictional Realist” and Andrew McGonigal’s (2013) “Truth, Relativism, and Serial Fiction,” or semantic properties of works themselves, as in Ben Caplan’s (2014) “Serial Fiction, Continued.” Here I argue that these proposed solutions are mistaken, and, more importantly, that the general approach to the problem is mistaken: the problem of truth in serial fiction is an instance of the problem of change. Fictions can undergo change, much like you and me in certain respects. As a result, what is true in or according to them changes as well.

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Chris Tillman
University of Manitoba

Citations of this work

Some Ideas about the Metaphysics of Stories.Wesley D. Cray - 2019 - British Journal of Aesthetics 59 (2):147-160.
Retroactive Continuity and Fictional Facts.Jeonggyu Lee - 2024 - British Journal of Aesthetics 64 (4):669-686.

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References found in this work

Relativism and Monadic Truth.Herman Cappelen & John Hawthorne - 2009 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK. Edited by John Hawthorne.
The structure of objects.Kathrin Koslicki - 2008 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time.Theodore Sider - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (3):642-647.

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