Fictionalism about Fictional Characters

Brock, Stuart

doi:10.1111/1468-0068.00358

Cited by 104 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…To use a phrase suggested by Deena Weisberg, a view of model systems as imagined concrete things which many scientists can simultaneously investigate is the ''folk ontology'' of model-based science, the ontology that is implicit in the practitioners' routine behaviors. Borrowing a label from philosophical discussions of literature, this folk ontology is a kind of ''fictional realism'' (Brock 2002;Everett 2005). And Giere's picture is the implicit model of the modeler.…”

Section: Fictions In Modeling Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Models and fictions in science

Godfrey‐Smith

2008

Philos Stud

179

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Non-actual model systems discussed in scientific theories are compared to fictions in literature. This comparison may help with the understanding of similarity relations between models and real-world target systems. The ontological problems surrounding fictions in science may be particularly difficult, however. A comparison is also made to ontological problems that arise in the philosophy of mathematics.

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Section: Fictions In Modeling Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Models and fictions in science

Godfrey‐Smith

2008

Philos Stud

179

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“…I leave aside consideration of this argument for another occasion. For one example of this approach, see Brock (2002). Other strategies might include denying FFR-2 or FFR-4.…”

Section: The Identification Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reference fiction, and omission

Murray

2016

Synthese

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In this paper, I argue that sentences that contain 'omission' tokens that appear to function as singular terms are meaningful while maintaining the view that omissions are nothing at all or mere absences. I take omissions to be fictional entities and claim that the way in which sentences about fictional characters are true parallels the way in which sentences about omissions are true. I develop a pragmatic account of fictional reference and argue that my fictionalist account of omissions implies a plausible account of the metaphysics of omissions.

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“…(One powerful technique for this is provided by Stuart Brock's fictionalism about fictional characters: see Brock 2002.) However, a creationist or other realist about fictional objects would have to tread very carefully when going this route, since theories that allow one to avoid some literal quantification over fictional objects can often be adopted to allow reinterpretation of all such quantification; a fictional realist who explains away apparent quantification over fictional entities in some cases has a harder task explaining why we should not explain away all such apparent quantification.…”

Section: Potential Creationist Responsesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creationism and cardinality

Nolan

Sandgren

2014

Analysis

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Creationism about fictional entities is the doctrine that fictional entities come into existence when the fictions about them are composed: it may be contrasted both with a more platonist view according to which all potential fictional entities have always existed, and eliminativist views according to which there are no merely fictional entities. Creationism is alleged to have a number of advantages over platonism.Three important ones are parsimony, since we do not need to postulate quite so many kinds of fictional entities; a more naturalistic flavour, since the created entities are plausibly thought to be dependent on concrete goings-on; and a better fit, at least in some respects, with ordinary talk, since we talk as if e.g. Conan Doyle is the creator of Sherlock Holmes, as well as the Sherlock Holmes stories.Creationism, however, suffers from paradox, and straightforward formulations of creationism lead to contradiction. Specifically, we will argue, straightforward creationist theories suffer from cardinality paradoxes, providing inconsistent answers to the question of how many fictional objects there are. This is not much of an advantage for platonism about fictional entities, since naive platonistic theories of abstract objects often face cardinality paradoxes, and naive platonistic theories of fictional entities are no exception. But one might have thought creationism, in avoiding the abundance of platonism, might avoid the over-generous principles that lead to paradox. Unfortunately, not so. After explaining how straightforward creationism is refuted, we will briefly discuss the prospects for avoiding this paradox 2 in a principled manner. Our main purpose in this paper is to point to the problem, since creationists to date may well not have avoided it. Among the creationist theories of fictional objects that do not have any explicit resources to avoid this problem are those of Salmon (1998, esp 293-296), Thomasson (1996Thomasson ( , 300-307, 1999, and Kripke (2013, 71-78). CreationismAccording to the creationist, fictional entities exist in virtue of being featured in fictions. Holmes exists in virtue of appearing in the Sherlock Holmes stories, and was brought into existence when the relevant fiction was composed. Fictional objects have properties according to the fiction. In the fiction Holmes lives in London. Holmes does not really live in London, he only fictionally lives in London. He is not clever, he is only fictionally clever and so on. They also have non-fictional properties. Holmes, the fictional entity, is more famous than any non-fictional detective; though these 'non-fictional' properties are not, in general, just derived from the content of the fictions in which such objects appear.

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Fictionalism about Fictional Characters

Cited by 104 publications

References 16 publications

Models and fictions in science

Models and fictions in science

Reference fiction, and omission

Creationism and cardinality

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