Fiction and Fictionalism – Page 2

An Inferential Semantics for Empty Names?

London Ed submits this for our evaluation:

While apparently conceding that empty proper names have an 'inferential role', rightly underscores the need for me to demonstrate that its meaning is just this role, i.e. to demonstrate that the 'inferential semantics' is a sufficient as well as a necessary explanation of (empty) proper names.

Here are some arguments to elucidate this inferential role, and to show that it is sufficient to explain everything we need to know about empty proper names (indeed, all proper names, but leave that aside for now).

Argument 1. Proper names are neither descriptive nor object-dependent.

Consider the meaning of the following two sentences:

There is a hobbit called 'Frodo'. Frodo has large feet.

I have argued that at least part of the semantics of the proper name 'Frodo' is to join the predicate 'hobbit' in the first sentence to the predicate 'has large feet' in the second. It allows us to infer 'some hobbit has large feet'. And by repeated use of this inference in successive propositions in a narrative, it allows us to connect an increasingly complex description to each character in the narrative. It tells us which character we are talking 'about' by telling us which description to increase. Does it have any further function than this? Is it descriptive? Does it mean something like "hobbit called 'Frodo'"? No, for consider

There is a hobbit called 'Frodo'. There is another hobbit called 'Frodo'.

Clearly if there can be two characters in a narrative with the same name (as sometimes there are), the indefinite description 'called N' is not sufficient to individuate the character. Or consider

There is a hobbit called 'Frodo'. Frodo might not have been called 'Frodo'

This implies 'some hobbit called Frodo might not have been called Frodo', which is not inconsistent, so long as 'some hobbit' is read with wide scope. I won't argue this at length here, but it is easy to show that all the arguments which Kripke levels at the description theory of names can be reused or reinterpreted in the case of empty names. But if an empty proper name is non-descriptive and if there is no object that it corresponds to (either real or intentional), the simplest explanation is that its meaning is its inferential properties.

BV Comment 1. I take it that your view is that no indefinite or definite description supplies the meaning (sense) of any empty name. You rely on Kripke-type arguments. But distinguish:

a. Reference is not routed through sense, but direct

and

b. Names lack sense entirely.

It might be that while the reference of a name is not routed through an associated sense, the name nevertheless has a sense. Your view, however, rules that out. And doesn't Kripke speak of a sense that "fixes the reference" of a name without being part of the mechanism by which reference is achieved? But let's not get sidetracked into Kripke exegesis!

If I understand you, you want to maintain that names and other singular referring devices such as indexicals and demonstratives are purely syntactical devices. I honestly don't see how that could be true. I gave the example earlier of the first-person singular pronoun. Assume that when Frodo says 'I am hungry' he refers directly to Frodo and not via a special reference-mediating I-sense. Still, any use of 'I' has as part of its meaning that a producer of such a linguistic token is a person or a (potentially) self-conscious being, a being that can speak or think.

In this connection, David Kaplan speaks of character as opposed to content. "The character of an expression is set by linguistic conventions and, in turn, determines the content of the expression in every context." (Themes from Kaplan, p. 505) The character of the pure indexical 'I' is given by the rule:

'I' refers to the speaker or writer. (505)

My criticism, then, is that if the semantics of singular referring devices reduces to the inferential roles these words play, then there is no accounting for Kaplanian content since that does not vary with context or inferential role.

Leaving aside idexicals and demonstratives, all or most names seem to have associated with them a semantic content which cannot be reduced to the purely syntactical. Consider the song Carmelita about an apparently purely fictional character named 'Carmelita.' That name carries the sense 'female.' And the same goes for the wicked Felina in Marty Robbins' El Paso. There are male names, female names, and unisex names. If Carl is married to Carla, then you know the marriage is not same-sex.

Argument 2. Referential insulation

Consider the first sentence above: "There is a hobbit called 'Frodo'". This is indefinite, i.e. it does not tell us which hobbit is called 'Frodo'. Specifically, even if hobbits are mentioned in some earlier part of the narrative, this sentence on its own does not generate any further inferences about hobbits. It is a 'referential insulator', it does not 'refer backwards' to any previous sentence.The second sentence "Frodo has large feet", by contrast, does refer back. But only to the first sentence. Any third sentence can refer back to this one, and a fourth sentence to the third, and we can construct a whole referential chain, each of which refers back to the previous link. But the chain stops at the first sentence, the insulating sentence. This suggests that the second definite sentence, or back-referring sentence, has meaning only insofar as it refers back. But its back-reference is exhausted by its inferential properties. Ergo etc.

BV Comment 2. Suppose I grant the the meaning of 'Frodo' in the second sentence is exhausted by its back reference to 'Frodo' in the first sentence. This back reference is entirely intralinguistic: it is a word-word relation, not a word-world relation. So far, so good. Consider this quantified sentence:

(Ex) (x is a hobbit called 'Frodo' & x has large feet).

'Frodo' in the second sentence — 'Frodo has large feet' — plays the role of the second bound variable in the above quantified sentence, and that role is purely syntactical. The second sentence is synonomous with 'He has large feet' in the context in question.

So perhaps what you are up to is this: You want to construe names as pronouns used anaphorically as opposed to demonstratively. You are of course aware of the ambiguity of a sentence like 'Feser inscribed his book.' That could mean that Feser inscribed Feser's book, in which case 'his' is being used anaphorically, or it could mean that Feser inscribed some other person's book, in which case 'his' is being used demonstratively. Suppose I say 'Feser inscribed his book' while pointing to Peter. Then 'his' refers to an extralingusitc item, Peter. On the first disambiguation, however, 'his' is syntactically bound to 'Feser' and the reference is an intralinguistic back reference.

Here is the problem. 'Frodo' in the first sentence cannot be construed as a pronoun used anaphorically. You cannot introduce 'Frodo' without packing some meaning into it. And that is exactly what you do when you say that Frodo is a hobbit. Surely you don't think that 'hobbit' is a purely syntactical device. We agree of course that 'hobbit' has a null extension, but it must have some intension, and that intension cannot be reduced to syntax. Hence 'Frodo' when first introduced has to have some meaning that is irreducible to syntax or inferential role.

Even if back reference is exhausted by inferential properties, and the meaning of a back-referring term reduces to its syntactic role, surely the meaning of a name — even if it is empty — cannot on its first introduction be reduced to its syntactic role.

In short, your "ergo, etc." is a non sequitur.

Argument 3. Definition not object-dependent.

The definition of the name 'Frodo' occurs in the first sentence ("There is a hobbit called 'Frodo'"). This tells us that any subsequent usage of 'Frodo' refers back to this sentence. But it is a general existential proposition. On the assumption that general existential propositions aren't object-dependent, it follows that we can define a proper name without requiring an object. Given that we can define its meaning without having an object, it follows that its meaning is not object-dependent.

BV Comment 3: This argument seems OK in relation to empty names. Do you mean it to apply to non-empty names as well?

Argument 4. Pronouns are not object-dependent.

Consider

There is a hobbit called 'Frodo'. He has large feet.

Clearly the pronoun 'he' refers back to the first sentence, not to any object. But the two sentences together do not signify any more than the two 'Frodo' sentences above. But if the two 'Frodo' sentences have the same meaning as two object-independent sentences, it follows that the two 'Frodo' sentences are object-independent also.

BV Comment 4. To be true, your thesis has to be modified: Pronouns used anaphorically are not object-dependent.

Suppose you don't know that prosciutto is called 'prosciutto.' But you want some anyway and you know what it looks like. You belly up to the deli counter, point to the delectable item, and say 'I want some of this!' Surely the meaning of the demonstrative pronoun 'this' in this context is object-dependent.

But the same goes for the pure indexical 'I.' The indexical reference is achieved without a demonstration — there is no need to point to oneself when saying 'I' — but 'I' is secure against reference failure. One cannot token 'I' without referring to something. So 'I' used indexically — not as a Roman numeral say — is object-dependent for its meaning.

Must Singular Thoughts be Object-Dependent?

What follows are some ideas from London Ed about a book he is writing. He solicits comments. Mine are in blue.

The logical form thing was entertaining but rather off-topic re the fictional names thing. On which, Peter requested some more.

Let’s step right back. I want to kick off the book with an observation about how illusion impedes the progress of science. It looks as though the sun is going round the earth, so early theories of the universe had the earth standing still. It seems as though objects are continuously solid, and so science rejected the atomists’ theory and adopted Aristotle’s theory for more than a millenium.

A final example from the psychology of perception: in 1638, Descartes takes a eye of a bull and shows how images are projected onto the retina. He finally disproves the ‘emissive theory of sight’. The emissive theory is the naturally occurring idea that eyesight is emitted from your eye and travels to and hits the distant object you are looking at. If you ask a young child why you can’t see when your eyes are shut, he replies (‘because the eyesight can’t get out’).

Scientific progress is [often] about rejecting theories based on what our cognitive and perceptual framework suggests to us, and adopting theories based on diligent observation and logic.

We reject ‘eyebeams’. We reject the natural idea that the mental or sensitive faculty can act at a distance. When we look at the moon, science rejects the idea that a little ethereal piece of us is travelling a quarter of a million miles into space. Yet – turning to the main subject of the book – some philosophers think that objects themselves somehow enter our thoughts. Russell writes to Frege, saying “I believe that in spite of all its snowfields Mont Blanc itself is a component part of what is actually asserted in the proposition ‘Mont Blanc is more than 4,000 metres high”. Kaplan mentions, with apparent approval, the idea that the proposition ‘John is tall’ has two components: the property expressed by the predicate ‘is tall’, and the individual John. “That’s right, John himself, right there, trapped in a proposition”. The dominant theory in modern philosophical logic is ‘direct reference’, or object-dependent theories of semantics: a proper name has no meaning except its bearer, and so the meaning of ‘John is tall’ has precisely the components that Kaplan describes.

BV: I too find the notion that there are Russellian (as opposed to Fregean) propositions very hard to swallow. If belief is a propositional attitude, and I believe that Peter is now doing his grades, it is surely not Peter himself, intestinal contents and all, who is a constituent of the proposition that is the accusative of my act of belief. The subject constituent of the proposition cannot be that infinitely propertied gnarly chunk of external reality, but must be a thinner sort of object, one manageable by a finite mind, something along the lines of a Fregean sense.

The purpose of the proposed book is to advance science by showing how such object-dependent theories are deeply mistaken, and also to explain why they are so compelling, because of their basis on a cognitive illusion as powerful as the illusions that underlie the geocentric theory, or the emissive theory of sight.

What is the illusion? The argument for object dependence is roughly as follows

(1) We can have so-called ‘singular thoughts’, such as when we think that John is tall, i.e. when we have thoughts expressable [expressible] by propositions [sentences, not propositions] whose subject term is a proper name or some other non-descriptive singular term.

(2) A singular term tells us which individual the proposition is about, without telling us anything about it. I.e. singular terms, proper names, demonstratives, etc. are non-descriptive. They are ‘bare individuators’.

BV: This is not quite right. Consider the the first-person singular pronoun, 'I.' This is an indexical expression. If BV says, 'I am hungry,' he refers to BV; if PL says 'I am hungry,' he refers to PL. Either way, something is conveyed about the nature of the referent, namely, that it is a person or a self. So what Ed said is false as it stands. A use of 'I' does tell us something about the individual the sentence containing 'I' is about.

Examples are easily multiplied. Apart from the innovations of the Pee Cee, 'she' tells us that the individual referred to is female. 'Here' tells us that the item denoted is a place, typically. 'Now' picks out times. And there are other examples.

There are no bare items. Hence there cannot be reference to bare items. All reference conveys some property of the thing referred to. But variables may be a counterexample. Consider 'For any x, x = x.' One could perhaps uses variables in such a way that there is no restriction on what they range over. But it might be best to stay away from this labyrinth.

One criticism, then, is that there are no bare individuators. A second is that it is not a singular term, but a use of a singular term that individuates. Thus 'I' individuates nothing. It is PL's use of 'I' that picks out PL.

(3) If a singular term is non-descriptive, its meaning is the individual it individuates. A singular term cannot tell us which individual the proposition is about, unless there exists such an individual.

The course of the book is then to show why we don’t have to be forced into assumption (3). There doesn’t have to be (or to exist) an individual that is individuated. The theory of non-descriptive singular terms is then developed in the way I suggested in my earlier posts. Consider the inference

Frodo is a hobbit
Frodo has large feet
——-
Some hobbit has large feet

I want to argue that the semantics of ‘Frodo’ is purely inferential. I.e. to understand the meaning of ‘Frodo’ in that argument, it is enough to understand the inference that it generates. That is all.

BV: 'Frodo' doesn't generate anything. What you want to say is that the meaning of 'Frodo' is exhausted by the inferential role this term plays in the (valid) argument depicted. Sorry to be such a linguistic prick.

What you are saying is that 'Frodo,' though empty, has a meaning, but this meaning is wholly reducible to the purely syntactical role it plays in the above argument. (So you are not an eliminativist about the meanings of empty names.) But if the role is purely syntactical, then the role of 'Frodo' is the same as the role of the arbitrary individual constant 'f' in the following valid schema:

Hf
Lf
——-
(Ex)(Hx & Lx).

But then what distinguishes the meaning of 'Frodo' from that of 'Gandalf'?

Meinongian nonentities are out. Fregean senses are out. There are no referents in the cases of empty names. And yet they have meaning. So the meaning is purely syntactical. Well, I don't see how you can squeeze meaning out of bare syntax. Again, what distinguishes the meaning of the empty names just cited? The obviously differ in meaning, despite lacking both Sinn and Bedeutung.

We don’t need an object-dependent semantics to explain such inferences, and hence we don’t need object-dependence to explain the semantics of proper names. If an inferential semantics is sufficient, then the Razor tells us it is necesssary: Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora.

BV: You should state explicitly that you intend your inferential semantics to hold both for empty and nonempty names.

And now we see the illusion. The proposition

John is thinking of Obama (or Frodo, or whomever)

has a relational form: “—is thinking of –”. But it does not express a relation. The illusion consists in the way that the relation of the language so strongly suggests a relation in reality. It is the illusion that causes us “to multiply the things principally signified by terms in accordance with the multiplication of the terms”.

That’s the main idea. Obviously a lot of middle terms have been left out. Have at it.

BV: So I suppose what you are saying is that belief in the intentionality of thought is as illusory as the belief in the emissive theory of sight. Just as the the eye does not emit an ethereal something that travels to the moon, e.g., the mind or the 'I' of the mind — all puns intended! — does not shoot out a ray of intentionality that gloms onto some Meinongian object, or some Thomistic merely intentional object, or some really existent object.

You face two main hurdles. The first I already mentioned. You have to explain how to squeeze semantics from mere syntax. The second is that there are theoretical alternatives to the view that intentionality is a relation other than yours. To mention just one: there are adverbial theories of intentionality that avoid an act-object analysis of mental reference.

Comments on London Ed’s “Towards a Positive Theory”

My comments are in blue.

1. Another claim which is nearly Moorean. I claim that the following argument is valid:

Frodo is a hobbit
Frodo has large feet
Some hobbit has large feet

I am not saying that the premisses are true. Clearly if there are no such things as hobbits, the first sentence has to be false. But it [the argument] is valid. The premisses can't be true and the conclusion false. If there were such a thing as Frodo, and if he was a hobbit, and if he had large feet, it has to be the cases that some hobbit (him) has large feet. So the argument is valid.

[. . .]

2. Assuming the argument above is valid, what fact makes it valid? I claim that it is a purely semantic property of the proper name 'Frodo'. I.e. it is in virtue of the meaning of 'Frodo' that the premisses cannot be true with the conclusion false. By 'purely semantic', I mean a feature of the term that it continues to possess even though it has no extension, i.e. there is nothing it refers to or denotes.

Stylistic comment: I would strike “continues to possess” and substitute “possesses.” After all it can't be your view that purely fictional names go from having extensions to not having them.

Substantive comment: What you say in #1 above seems correct. But now you take a turn that is reasonably resisted. You want to know what makes the Frodo argument valid. I say it is valid because it has a valid form:

a is F
a is G
ergo
Some F is G.

It is this form that makes it impossible for an argument having this form to have true premises and a false conclusion. It has nothing to do with any semantic property of a substituend of the arbitrary individual constant, 'a.' Whether the subject matter of an argument is fiction or fact makes no difference to its validity or to the explanation of its validity. Logic abstracts from content; hence it treats 'Frodo,' 'Noah,' 'Churchhill' and 'Obama' the same, as substituends of an arbitrary individual constant.

It is not clear what you are claiming. Are you saying that there is a semantic property that only (purely) fictional names have? And what is this semantic property? Does 'Noah' have it as well?

Here is one guess at what you might mean. Purely fictional names, as such, do not and cannot have existing referents. Otherwise they wouldn't be purely fictional. Given, as you believe, that (a) the only referents are existing referents, and that (b) there are no modes of existence/being, you seem to be saying that purely fictional names, qua purely fictional names, do not and cannot have referents, full stop. Now if every sentence in which such a name figures is false (as you seem to believe), then there is no argument featuring purely fictional names that has true premises and a false conclusion. Therefore every such argument is by default valid (given the technical definition of validity that we both accept).

Is that what you mean?

If yes, then perhaps the semantic property you are talking about is the propery of necessarily not having a referent. Call this property 'P.' Now is P an intrinsic property of a name like 'Frodo' or is it a relational property? But surely there is no intrinsic property of a name that makes it a purely fictional name, and thus a name necessarily extensionless. What makes a name purely fictional is primarily the intention of the author, and secondarily the intentions of the readers (listeners, etc) who are complicit with the author in the fictional enterprise.

This is not Moorean. Someone could claim that the argument is valid because 'Frodo', if meaningful, refers to a non-existing thing, and because it refers to the same non-existing thing in both premisses. Some arguments against:

Comment: Why do you ignore the simplest and most obvious explanation of validity, the one I gave above?

(i) The Razor: why posit non-existing things in order to explain a matter of logic, when a semantic explanation would suffice? E.g. we don't need weird entities to explain the validity of 'every bachelor is unmarried, some people are bachelors, some people are unmarried'.

Comment: One problem is that I don't understand what you mean by a semantic explanation of validity. I grant you that the Frodo argument is valid: anyone who argues in accordance with the pattern embodied in that argument argues correctly. But I don't see that this has anything to do with whether the terms in the argument have non-null extensions. A Meinongian will say that 'Frodo is a hobbit' is true. But I am prepared to grant you that the sentence is false. But it doesn't matter since we know from Logic 101 that a valid argument can have false premises and a false conclusion.

(ii) "Frodo is a hobbit, he has large feet, some hobbit has large feet" is also valid. Do we need strange entities to explain the validity of arguments containing pronouns?

(iii) "Frodo is a hobbit who has large feet, some hobbit has large feet" is also valid. Do we need strange entities to explain the validity of arguments containing the word 'who'?

(iv) "Frodo is a hobbit with large feet, some hobbit has large feet" is also valid. Do we need strange entities to explain this? (My hunch is that the Meinongian will give up on this point. The onus is then on him to explain the difference between this one and any of the previous ones).

Comment: The validity of each of the variant arguments can be explained in the manner I indicated.

3. Now for the radical claim: the inferential property above is both necessary and sufficient to explain fictional individuation. Necessary is obvious. If we don't accept the validity, we could suppose that each token of the term 'Frodo' referred to a different character, and thus no two sentences in LOTR was ever about the same character. Clearly no one could understand the story if that were so. Sufficient is not so obvious, I will not defend that here.

Comment: Now you have really lost me. First of all, what is the inferential property? Presumably you mean that empty names have a property that explains the validity of (all? Some?) of the arguments in which they figure. What property is that? The property of being necessarily extensionless? Then why don't you say that?

And what is fictional individuation? You don't think that Frodo is a genuine individual. If he were, he would be a nonexistent individual and you reject such individuals. So there is no individual, Frodo. But if there is no individual, then there is no question of individuation in either the epistemological or the ontological sense of this term. Presumably, you mean by 'individuate' pick out, single out, identify in a way that supports cross-referencing? You need to explain this.

If this is what you mean, then on your view there is no Frodo to pick out or single out in thought. On your nominalism, all there is is the name. And you can't eke by with that alone. When I think about Frodo, I am not thinking about 'Frodo.' In fact, I can think about Frodo even if I have temporarily forgotten what his name is. Suppose I am thinking about the corpulent side-kick of Don Quixote, but have forgotten his name. I am thinking about Sancho Panza despite my not remembering that his name is 'Sancho Panza.'

Any adequate theory has to distinguish among: empty names, tokenings thereof, and tokenings thereof with understanding. If a voice synthesizer makes the sound associated with 'Frodo,' then the name is tokened, but nothing semantic is going on.

4. The really really radical claim: the semantic feature that explains individuation in fiction also explains individuation 'in reality'. So radical I won't try to defend it here. The defence would be roughly on the lines of: the same phenomenon cannot have two different causes. Same effect = same cause, which is a well accepted principle of scientific explanation. Obviously this would require defending that the effect is the same: I won't go into that here. The main pillars of the theory are (1) and (2) above. Inferences involving fictional names are valid, even though the premisses are never true. And the explanation of their validity does not involve Meinongian objects.

Comment: Once again, you haven't told us what individuation is. That word is a piece of philosophical jargon, not of ordinary language. No sentence containing it could count as Moorean. So you have to explain the term. And you have to meet my objection that there cannot be individuation in either the epistemological/semantic or ontological sense if there is no individual. How do you avoid embracing this inconsistent triad:

There are no fictional individuals.
Questions about individuation makes sense only if there are individuals.
Fictional names individuate.

I should think that your “really really radical claim” is hopeless. There is a huge difference between a genuine individual such as Obama and Frodo. You won't be able to paper over this difference especially since you reject Meinongian individuals and Plantingian haecceity properties.

Fictional Names

London Ed writes,

I would like to bounce some of the central ideas [of a book] off you. The idea at the very centre is that fictional names, i.e. empty names, individuate.     A fictional name like 'Frodo', in the sense it is used in The Lord of the Rings, tells us which character Tolkien is talking about. For example, in chapter II of Book II ("The Council of Elrond"), it says that Frodo is the one chosen to carry the Ring to Mordor, out of the nine characters in the Fellowship of the Ring.    I.e. the name 'Frodo', as Tolkien uses it, tells us which character is chosen to carry the Ring.

Is that true? Can a fictional name, an empty name, a name that has no bearer, a name that refers to nothing, tell us which individual the writer is talking about? Can the writer even be said to be talking about anyone? In my view, he can. When Tolkien    writes (p. 264 of my edition) "'I will take the Ring', he said, 'though I do not know the way'", he is talking about Frodo.     That is, the sentence 'Tolkien is talking about Frodo' is true, and    'Tolkien is talking about Gandalf' is false.

So that's the central idea of the book, that fictional names    individuate. Does it even make sense?

1. You seem to think that all and only fictional names are empty names. 'Vulcan,' however, used to refer to a hypothetical planet in an orbit between Mercury and the Sun, is an empty name, but not a fictional name. (In the "Star Trek" series, however, 'Vulcan' is a fictional name since it n ames, not a hypothetical planet, but a fictional one.) So not every empty name is a fictional name. And I should think that not every fictional name is empty. Names of real people as they (the names) figure in historical novels, legends, songs, movies, and whatnot are non-empty but arguably fictional. Think of the Faust legends, or the many stories and books and movies about Doc Holliday.

2. But although it is not perfectly obvious, I grant that every purely fictional name is empty, at least in the sense that no purely fictional name has an existing bearer or referent.

3. You maintain that purely fictional names like 'Frodo' do not refer to anything. They don't refer to anything that exists, obviously, but they also do not refer to Meinongian nonexistent objects or to merely intentional objects.

4. So I take it you do not make the following distinction that I make between two senses of 'empty':

Empty₁: A name is empty₁ iff it has no existing referent.

Empty₂: A name is empty₂ iff it has no referent whatsoever, whether existing, subsisting, Meinongian, or merely intentional.

5. Here is a question for you. If 'Frodo' and 'Gandalf' do not refer to anything at all, and therefore are without referents of any sort, then they have the same extension, the null extension or null set. Does it follow that the names have the same meaning? Is meaning exhausted by reference? If yes, then the two names have the same meaning, which is wrong. Or do the names differ in sense? If yes, then what are senses? What is the sense of an empty proper name?

6. To talk about Frodo is not the same as to talk about Gandalf. But you don't admit that there is anything at all that these names refer to. So how can one talk about either character? Can a term be about something if there is nothing the term refers to? What is aboutness? How can it be the case that both (i) 'Frodo' does not refer to anything and (ii) one can use 'Frodo' to talk about Frodo? Is talk about Frodo talk about the sense of 'Frodo'? Surely talk about is talk about something.

7. You maintain that fictional names individuate. What would it be for them not to individuate? Which theory or theories are you opposing? And what exactly do you mean by 'individuate'? There are no fictional individuals on your view, so how could any name individuate one?

What Problem Does Literary Fiction Pose?

More than one. Here is one. And as old Chisholm used to say, you are not philosophizing unless you have a puzzle. So try on this aporetic triad for size:

1. Purely fictional objects do not exist.

2. There are true sentences about purely fictional objects, e.g., 'Sherlock Holmes is a detective' and 'Sherlock Holmes is purely fictional.'

3. If a sentence of the form Fa is true, then there exists an x such that 'a' refers to x.

The triad is logically inconsistent: any two limbs entail the negation of the remaining one. So the limbs cannot all be true despite the considerable plausibility of each. So one of the propositions must be rejected. But the first is nonnegotiable since it is true by definition. The leaves two options: reject (2) or reject (3).

Suppose we reject (2). One way to do this is by supplying a paraphrase in which the apparent reference to the nonexistent is replaced by real reference to the existent. For example, the apparent reference to Sherlock, who does not exist, is replaced by real reference to a story in which he figures, a story that, of course, exists. The elliptical approach is one way of implementing this paraphrastic strategy. Accordingly,

4. Sherlock Holmes is a detective

and

5. Sherlock Holmes is fictional

are elliptical for, respectively,

6. In the Conan Doyle stories, Sherlock Holmes is a detective

and

7. In the Conan Doyle stories, Sherlock Holmes is fictional.

But note that while (5) is plainly true, (7) is plainly false. So (7) cannot be taken as elliptical for (5) This is a serious problem for the 'story operator' approach. Or consider the true

8. Sherlock Holmes does not exist.

(8) is surely not short for the false

9. In the Conan Doyle stories, Sherlock Holmes does not exist.

The point can be made with other 'extranuclear' predicates such as 'merely possible' and 'mythological.' If I say that Pegasus is mythological, I don't mean that, according to legend, Pegasus is mythological. But the story operator approach also has trouble with 'nuclear' predicates such as 'detective.' But I'll save that for a subsequent post.

I'll end with a different challenge to the story operator approach. Consider

10. Pinocchio was less of a liar than Barack Obama.

Whether you consider (1) true or false, it is certainly not elliptical for

11. In Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883), Pinocchio was less of a liar than Barack Obama.

To put it vaguely, the the trouble with the story operator appoach is that it traps fictional characters within particular stories, songs, legends, tales, etc. so that (i) it becomes difficult to understand how they can show up in different different stories, songs, etc. as they obviously do in the cases of Faust and Pinocchio, and (ii) it becomes difficult to understand how they can show up in comparisons with nonfictional individuals.

Fiction and Alienans Adjectives

David Brightly comments:

As you use them, the terms 'fictional', 'intentional', 'possible', 'incomplete', and others like 'past' have a distinctive effect on the concept terms they qualify. Ordinary adjectives have the effect of narrowing the extension of the concept term they qualify: the red balls are a subset of the balls, the female prime ministers are a subset of the prime ministers, and so on. The terms in question have the opposite effect. They appear to widen, or indeed offset altogether, the extension of the qualified concept. They are thus potent alienating terms. So the question arises, What is the relation (if any) between the concepts 'fictional person' and 'person', between 'intentional object' and 'object', and 'possible X' and 'X'? Ordinary qualification can be uniformly understood in terms of set intersection. Is there a uniform explanation underlying these alienating qualifications?

1. First of all, contrary to what David says, there are plenty of ordinary adjectives that do not narrow the extension of the terms they qualify. There are redundant adjectives, alienans adjectives, and there is the construction known as the contradictio in adiecto. For example, 'decoy' in 'decoy duck' is an ordinary adjective despite its being an alienans adjective; it is just as ordinary as 'female' in 'female duck,' which I call a specifying adjective and which does narrow the extension of the noun 'duck.' I see no reason to say that specifying adjectives are the only ordinary ones.

2. We can agree on this: red balls are a proper subset of balls, and female prime ministers are a proper subset of prime ministers. We will also agree that round balls are a subset of balls, though not a proper subset, and that female girls are an improper subset of girls. We could say that the last two examples illustrate the null case of specification. We could make a distinction between properly specifying and improperly specifying adjectives corresponding to the distinction between proper and improper subsets.

3. We can also agree that specificatory qualification (but not all qualification) can be uniformly understood in terms of set intersection if the intersection is non-null. The set of cats and the set of dogs has an intersection, but it is the null set. Intersection is defined over all sets, disjoint or not, hence one cannot say that the set of dogs and the set of cats do not intersect. They intersect all right; it is just that their intersection is empty. 'Canine cat' is an example of a contradictio in adiecto which reflects the fact that the corresponding sets are disjoint. 'Canine' does not specify 'cat.' It does not divide the genus into two species, the canine cats and the non-canine cats.

4. I can't, pace David, think of an example in which an adjective widens the extension of the term it qualifies. Can you? For example, 'former' in 'former wife' does not widen the extension of 'wife.' It is not as if there are two kinds or species of wives, former and present. Tom's former wife is not his wife. 'Former' does not narrow the extension either. It is an alienans adjective. It is the same with 'artificial leather.' Alligator leather and cowshide are two kinds of leather, but artificial and real are not two kinds of leather.

5. We will agree that all or most the following constructions from ordinary, i.e., non-philosophical English feature alienans adjectives, adjectives that shift or 'alienate' or 'other' the sense of the term they qualify:

former wife
decoy duck
negative growth
faux marble
ex-priest
putative father
artificial leather
legally dead
male chauvinist (on one disambiguation of its syntactic ambiguity; see article below)
generational chauvinist (I am a generational chauvinist when it comes to popular music: that of my generation is superior to that of the immediately preceding and succeding American generations.)
quondam inamorata
socially contagious (see here)

6. Note that the adjective in 'alienans adjective' is not alienans! Note also that 'putative' and 'artificial' function a little differently. Exercise for the reader: explain the difference and formulate a general test for alienans adjectives.

7. Observe that 'artificial' in 'artificial insemination' is not an alienans adjective in that artificial insemination is indeed insemination, albeit by artificial means. Whatever the means, you are just as pregnant. So whether an adjective is alienans or not depends on the context. A false friend is not a friend, but false teeth are teeth.

8. We now come to more or less controversial examples:

same-sex marriage (Conservative position: same-sex marriage is not marriage)
relative truth (I have a post on this)
material implication (see here)
epistemically possible
derivative intentionality
fictional man
merely intentional object
merely possible animal ('The chimera is a merely possible animal.')
future individual
incomplete individual

Is a (purely) fictional man a man? You might be tempted to say yes: Hamlet is fictional and Hamlet is a man, so Hamlet is a fictional man. But the drift of what I have been arguing over the last few days is that a fictional man is not a man, and that therefore 'fictional' functions as an alienans adjective. But I am comfortable with the idea that a merely possible man is a man. What is the difference?

There might have been a man distinct from every man that exists. (Think of the actual world with all the human beings in it, n human beings. There could have been n + 1.) God is contemplating this extra man, and indeed the possible world or maximal consistent state of affairs in which he figures, but hasn't and will not ever actualize him or it. What God has before his mind is a completely determinate merely possible individual man. There is only one 'thing' this man lacks: actual existence. Property-wise, he is fully determinate in respect of essential properties, accidental properties, and relational properties. Property-wise the merely possible extra man and the actual extra man are exactly the same. Their quidditative content is identical. There is no difference in Sosein; the only difference is Sein, and Sosein is indifferent to Sein as Aquinas, Kant, and Meinong would all agree despite their differences. As Kant famously maintained, Sein is not a quidditative determination, or in his jargon 'reales Praedikat.'

For this reason a merely possible (complete) man is a man. They are identical in terms of essence or nature or quiddity or Sosein, these terms taken broadly. If God actualizes the extra man, his so doing does not alter the extra man in any quidditative respect. Otherwise, he ould not be the same man God had been contemplating.

9. Brightly hits upon a happy phrase, "alienating qualifications." In my first bullet list we have examples of alienating qualifications from ordinary English. I expect Brightly will agree with all or most of these examples. His questioin to me is:

Ordinary qualification can be uniformly understood in terms of set intersection. Is there a uniform explanation underlying these alienating qualifications?

If Brightly is looking for a test or criterion I suggest the following:

Let 'FG' be a phrase in which 'F' is an adjective and 'G' a noun. 'F' is alienans if and only if either an FG is not a G, or it does not follow from x's being an FG that x is a G. For example, your former wife is not your wife, a decoy duck is not a duck, artificial leather is not leather, and a relative truth is not a truth. Is an apparent heart attack a heart attack? It may or may not be. One cannot validly move from 'Jones had an apparent heart attack' to 'Jones had a heart attack.' So 'apparent' in 'apparent heart attack' is alienans.

Now it is obvious that a decoy duck is not a duck, and that a roasted turkey is not a turkey, but the cooked carcass of a turkey; but it is not so obvious that a fictional man is not a man, while a merely possible man is a man. To establish these controversial theses — if 'establish' is not too strong a word — requires philosophical inquiry which is of course very difficult and typically inconclusive. But once we have decided that a certain philosophical phrase is an alienating qualification, then my test above can be applied.

Imagining X as Real versus Imagining X as Unreal and a Puzzle of Actualization

Peter and I discussed the following over Sunday breakfast.

Suppose I want a table, but there is no existing table that I want: I want a table with special features that no existing table possesses. So I decide to build a table with these features. My planning involves imagining a table having certain properties. It is rectangular, but not square, etc. How does this differ from imagining a table that I describe in a work of fiction? Suppose the two tables have all the same properties. We also assume that the properties form a logically consistent set. What is the difference between imagining a table I intend to build and imagining a table that I do not intend to build but intend merely to describe as part of the fictional furniture in a short story?

In the first case I imagine the table as real; in the second as fictional. Note that to imagine a table as real is not the same as imagining a real table, though that too occurs. Suppose I remember seeing Peter's nondescript writing table. To remember a table is not to imagine one; nonetheless I can imagine refurbishing Peter's table by stripping it, sanding it, and refinishing it. The imagined result of those operations is not a purely imagined object, any more than a piece of fiction I write in which Peter's table makes an appearance features a purely fictional table.

The two tables I am concerned with, however are both nonexistent. In both cases there is a merely intentional object before my mind. And in both cases the constitutive properties are the same. Moreover, the two are categorially the same: both are physical objects, and more specifically artifacts. Obviously, when I imagine a table, I am not imagining a nonphysical object or a natural physical object like a tree. So there is a clear sense in which what I am imagining is in both cases a physical object, albeit a nonexistent/not-yet-existent physical object.

So what distinguishes the two objects? Roman Ingarden maintains that they differ in "ontic character." In the first case, the ontic character is intended as real. In the second, intended as fictional. (The Literary Work of Art, p. 119).

Now I have already argued that purely fictional objects are impossible objects: they cannot be actualized, even if the constitutive properties form a logically consistent set. We can now say that the broadly logical impossibility of purely fictional objects is grounded in their ontic character of being intended as fictional. The table imagined as real, however, is possible due to its ontic character of being intended as real despite being otherwise indistinguishable from the table imagined as fictional.

Now here is the puzzle of actualization formulated as an aporetic triad

a. Every incomplete object is impossible.

b. The table imagined as real is an incomplete object.

c. The table imagined as real is possible, i.e. actualizable.

The limbs are collectively inconsistent, but each is very plausible. At any impasse again.

More on Ficta and Impossibilia

As an ornery aporetician, I want ultimately to say that an equally strong case can be made both for and against the thesis that ficta are impossibilia. But here I only make (part of) the case for thinking that ficta are impossibilia.

Preliminaries

Every human being is either right-handed or not right-handed. (But if one is not right-handed, it doesn't follow that one is left-handed. One could be ambidexterous or ambisinistrous.) What about the fictional character Hamlet? Is he right-handed or not right-handed? I say he is neither: he is indeterminate with respect to the property of righthandedness. That makes him an incomplete object, one that violates the law of Excluded Middle (LEM), or rather one to which LEM does not apply.

Hamlet (the character, not the play) is incomplete because he has all and only the properties ascribed to him by the author of the play, and the author left Hamlet's handedness unspecified. It is worth noting that Hamlet the play is complete and this holds for each written token of the play, the type of which they are tokens, and each enactment of the play. This is because the play and its enactments are actualia.

But don't we say that Hamlet the play is fictional? We do, but what we mean is not that the play is an object of fiction, but that the people and events depicted therein are fictional. The play is not fictional but entirely real. Of course, there could be a play that is a mere object of fiction: a play within a play. The same holds for novels. My copies of Moby Dick are each of them complete and actual, hence full-fledged citizens of the real, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereunto; but Ishmael, Queequeg, and Ahab are not. They are objects of fiction; those books are not. And presumably the type of which they are tokens, though an abstract object, is also actual and complete. A person's reading or 'enactment' of the novel is typically a long, interrupted process; but it too is complete and actual and resident in the real order.

Back to the character Hamlet: he is an incomplete object, having all and only the properties ascribed to him in the play (together with, perhaps, entailments of these properties). London Ed balks at this:

I don't follow this at all. I don't agree with the second sentence "He has all and only ….". Of course Shakespeare said that there was a person called ‘Hamlet’ who had certain properties (e.g. he said that Hamlet was a prince of Denmark. It doesn’t follow that there is someone who has or had such a property. For example, legend says that there was a horse called ‘Pegasus’ that flew. It doesn’t follow that there are or were flying horses.

This objection shows misunderstanding. I did not say or imply that there exists in actuality, outside the mind, a man named 'Hamlet.' The point is rather that when I read the play there appears before my mind a merely intentional object, one that I know is fictional, and therefore, one that I know is merely intentional. If Ed denies this, then he denies what is phenomenologically evident. And, as a matter of method, we must begin with the phenomenology of the situation.

Suppose I write a two-sentence novel:

It was a dark and rainy night. Shakey Jake, life-long insomniac, deciding he needed a nightcap, grabbed his flashlight and his raincoat and headed for the Glass Crutch bar and grill, a local watering hole a half a mile from his house.

Now I couldn't have written that, and you can't understand it, without thinking about various intentional objects that do not exist. Am I saying that there exist objects that do not exist? No, that would be a contradiction. Nor am I committed to saying that there are objects that have mind-independent being but not existence. Furthermore, I am not committed to Meinong's doctrine of Aussersein.

All I am doing is holding fast to a phenomenological datum: when I create a fictional character as I just did when I created Shakey Jake the insomniac, I bring before my mind an intentional object. (The act-object schema strikes me as having pretty good phenomenological credentials, unlike the adverbial schema.) What can we say about this merely intentional object? First, it is no part of the acts through which I think it. My acts of thinking exist in reality, but Shakey Jake does not exist in reality. (This point goes back to Twardowski.) When I think about Hamlet or Don Quixote or Shakey Jake, I am not thinking about my own mind or any state of my mind. I am not thinking about anything real. But it doesn' t follow that I am not thinking of anything.

If Ed denies that there are merely intentional objects, then he is denying what is phenomenologically evident. I take my stand on the terra firma of phenomenological givenness. So for now, and to get on with it, I simply dismiss Ed's objection. To pursue it further would involve us a in a metaphilosophical discussion of the role of phenomenological appeals in philosophical inquiry.

Ficta are Impossibilia

Let us confine ourselves to purely fictional objects and leave out of consideration real individuals who are partially fictionalized in fables, legends, apocryphal stories, so-called historical novels that blend fact and fiction, and the like. One of my theses is that purely fictional objects cannot exist and thus are broadly logically impossible. They are necessarily nonexistent, where the modality in question is broadly logical. It does not follow, however, that pure ficta have no ontological status whatsoever. They have a mode of being that could be called existential heteronomy. On this point I agree with Roman Ingarden, a philosopher who deserves more attention in the Anglosphere than he receives here.

Earlier I gave an argument from incompleteness: the incomplete cannot exist and so are impossible. But now I take a different tack.

Purely fictional objects are most plausibly viewed as made up, or constructed, by novelists, playwrights, et al. It may be that they are constructed from elements that are not themselves constructed, elements such as properties or Castaneda's ontological guises. Or perhaps fictional objects are constructed ex nihilo. Either way, they have no being at all prior to their creation or construction. There was no Captain Ahab before Melville 'cooked him up.' But if Ahab were a merely possible individual, then one could not temporally index his coming to be; he would not come to be, but be before, during, and after Melvlle's writing down his description.

The issue could be framed as follows. Are novels, plays, etc. which feature logically consistent pure ficta, something like telescopes that allow us to peer from the realm of the actual into the realm of the merely possible, both realms being realms of the real? Or are novels, etc. more like mixing bowls or ovens in which ficta are 'cooked up'? I say the latter. If you want, you can say that Melville is describing something when he writes about Ahab, but what he is describing is something he has made up: a merely intentional object that cannot exist apart from the acts of mind trained upon it. He is not describing something that has ontological status apart from his mind and the minds of his readers. He is also not descrbing some real feature or part of himself as subject. So we could say that in describing Ahab he is describing an item that is objectively but not subjectvely mind-dependent.

Here is an Argument from Origin:

1. Pure ficta are made up or constructed via the mental acts and actions of novelists, playwrights, et al.

2. Ahab is a pure fictum.

Therefore

3. Ahab came into being via the mental activity of a novelist or playwright. (from 1,2)

4. No human being comes into being via the mental activity of novelists, et al., but via the uniting of human sperm and human egg.

5. Ahab is not a human being. (from 3, 4)

6. A merely possible human being is a human being, indeed a flesh-and-blood human being, though not an actual flesh-and-blood human being.

Therefore

7. Ahab is not a merely possible human being, but a fictional human being where 'fictional' unlike 'merely possible' functions as an alienans adjective.

This argument does not settle the matter, however, since it is not compelling. A Meinongian or quasi-Meinongian could, with no breach of logical propriety, run the argument in reverse, denying (7) and denying (1). One man's modus ponens, etc.

The Fictional and the Merely Possible

"To be or not to be, that is the question." Or at least that is one question. Another is whether Hamlet, that very individual, might have been actual.

It is a mistake to conflate the fictional and the merely possible. Hamlet, for example, is a fictional individual, the central character and eponym of the Shakespearean play. Being fictional, he does not actually exist. But one might be tempted to suppose that while there is no man Hamlet in actuality, there could have been, that Hamlet is a possible individual. But far from being possible, Hamlet is impossible. Or so I shall argue.

First we need to agree on some definitions.

D1. x is impossible =_df x cannot exist, i.e., x is necessarily nonexistent.

D2. x is incomplete =_df there is a property P such that x is indeterminate with respect to P, i.e., it is not the case that x instantiates P and it is not the case that x does not instantiate P.

The Main Argument

1. Hamlet is an incomplete object. He has all and only the properties ascribed to him in the play that bears his name. It is neither the case that he eats his eggs with hot sauce nor that he doesn't.

2. Necessarily, for any x, if x is an incomplete object, then x does not exist.

Therefore

3. Necessarily, Hamlet does not exist. (from 1, 2)

Therefore

4. Hamlet is an impossible object. (from 3, D1)

The reasoning is correct and premise (1) is surely true. If you are inclined to reject (2), claiming that it does not hold for quantum phenomena, I will simply sidestep that whole can of worms by inserting 'macroscopic' or 'mesoscopic' or some other suitable qualifier between 'an' and 'incomplete.'

Note that Hamlet is impossible even if the properties he is ascribed in the play are members of a logically consistent set. One could say, with a whiff of paradox, that Hamlet is impossible despite the fact that his properties are compossible. His impossibility follows from his incompleteness. What this shows is that not every impossible object harbors internal contradiction. So there there are at least two types of impossibilia, those whose impossibility derives from inconsistency and those whose impossibility derives from incompleteness. To be admitted to the elite corps of the actual, one must satisfy both LNC and LEM. That the impossible needn't be internally contradictory is an insight I owe to Daniel Novotny who kindly sent me a free copy of his excellent book on the scholasticism of the Baroque era entitled, Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel (Fordham 2013). I am indebted in particular to his discussion on p. 108.

Objection: "Hamlet is possible; it is just that his actualization would have to consist in his completion. Surely God could actualize Shakespeare's Hamlet (the prince, not the play) by appropriately supplementing his property set."

Reply: Suppose God were to try to actualize Hamlet, the very same individual encountered in the play. To do so, God would have to supplement Hamlet's property set, bringing it to completeness. For only that which is wholly determinate can exist in (macroscopic) actuality. But there is more than one way to effect this supplementation. For example, if the fictional Hamlet is indeterminate with respect to whether or not he takes his eggs with hot sauce, an actual Hamlet cannot be. He either eats egggs or he doesn't, and he either takes them with hot sauce or he doesn't.

Let AH1 be hot-sauce Hamlet and AH2 non-hot-sauce Hamlet. Both are complete. Let FH be the incomplete fictional individual in the play.

We may now argue as follows.

If God brings about the actuality of both AH1 and AH2, then, since they are numerically distinct, neither of them can be identical to FH. But God must actualize one or the other if FH is to become actual. If God actualizes one but not the other, then it is possible that he actualize the other but not the the one. But then the actualization of either is contingent. Thus if God actualizes FH as AH1, then, since he could just as well have actualized AH2 as FH, the identity of FH with AH1 is contingent. But identity cannot be contingent: if x = y, then necessarily x = y. Therefore, God can actualize neither and fictional Hamlet is impossibly actual, i.e., impossible.

Here is a third consideration. It seems to be part of the very sense of the phrase 'fictional individual' that such individuals be, well, fictional, that is, irreal or unreal. Now the real includes not only the actual and the necessary, but that which is really possible albeit unactual. Thus real possibilities cannot be made up by minds and so cannot be fictional. Therefore Hamlet, as a fictional being, is not a possible being.

According to Novotny, "Suarez and other Baroque scholastic authors seem to assume without question that consistent fictions, such as Hamlet, might become real beings. This implies that Hamlet is a possible being and that therefore he is a real being. [. . .] For several reasons I do not think that a consistent fiction as such is a real possible being." (108)

I agree, and the arguments above are my way of fleshing out Novotny's misgivings.

Addendum (21 November)

The original main argument above is invalid as a commenter points out. Here is

The Main Argument Repaired

0. Necessarily, for every x, if x is a fictum of a finite mind, then x is incomplete.

0*. Necessarily, Hamlet is a fictum of a finite mind, Shakespeare's. (That very fictional individual could not have been the fictum of any other mind.)

Therefore

1. Necessarily, Hamlet is an incomplete object. He has all and only the properties ascribed to him in the play that bears his name. It is neither the case that he eats his eggs with hot sauce nor that he doesn't. (from 0, 0*)

2. Necessarily, for any x, if x is an incomplete object, then x does not exist.

Therefore

3. Necessarily, Hamlet does not exist. (from 1, 2)

Therefore

4. Hamlet is an impossible object. (from 3, D1)

Fiction

A fictional character can be believed by some to be real, known by others to be fictional, and an object of uncertainty to still others. Some young children believe Santa Claus to be real; adults know him to be purely fictional; and some children are unsure whether he is real or fictional. It seems to follow that such sentences as 'Santa Claus is jolly' need not be understood as prefixed by a story operator to be understood. A child who asserts 'Santa Claus is jolly' needn't be asserting 'In the Santa Claus legend, Santa Claus is jolly.' For the child might be unsure whether S. C. is real or fictional.

Does this reflection give aid and comfort to Meinongians?

John Gardner on Fiction and Philosophy

John Gardner, On Writers and Writing, p. 225:

. . . at their best, both fiction and philosophy do the same thing, only fiction does it better — though slower. Philosophy by essence is abstract, a sequence of general argument controlled in its profluence by either logic (in old-fashioned systematic philosophy) or emotional coherence (in the intuitive philosophies of say, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard). We read the argument and it seems to flow along okay, make sense, but what we ask is, "Is this true of my mailman?" . . .

Fiction comes at questions from the other end. It traces or explores some general argument by examining a particular case in which the universal case seems implied; and in place of logic or emotional coherence — the philosopher's stepping stones — fictional argument is controlled by mimesis: we are persuaded that the characters would indeed do exactly what we are told they do and say . . . . If the mimesis convinces us, then the question we ask is opposite to that we ask of philosophical argument; that is, we ask, "Is this true in general?"

Continue reading “John Gardner on Fiction and Philosophy”

Fiction and Philosophy: Does Fiction Do it Better?

John Gardner, On Writers and Writing, p. 225:

. . . at their best, both fiction and philosophy do the same thing, only fiction does it better — though slower. Philosophy by essence is abstract, a sequence of general argument controlled in its profluence by either logic (in old-fashioned systematic philosophy) or emotional coherence (in the intuitive philosophies of say, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard). We read the argument and it seems to flow along okay, make sense, but what we ask is, "Is this true of my mailman?" . . .

Fiction comes at questions from the other end. It traces or explores some general argument by examining a particular case in which the universal case seems implied; and in place of logic or emotional coherence — the philosopher's stepping stones — fictional argument is controlled by mimesis: we are persuaded that the characters would indeed do exactly what we are told they do and say . . . . If the mimesis convinces us, then the question we ask is opposite to that we ask of philosophical argument; that is, we ask, "Is this true in general?"

Continue reading “Fiction and Philosophy: Does Fiction Do it Better?”