Modal Fictionalism

Rosen, Gideon

doi:10.1093/mind/xcix.395.327

Cited by 333 publications

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“…Following Rosen (1990), modal fictionalists want to exploit the benefits of the realists' possible-world language without incurring ontological commitment to any possible worlds other than the actual one. To do so, they replace the realists' schema (R-Mod) with the following schema:…”

Section: Modal Fictionalism and The Incompleteness Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fictionalism and the incompleteness problem

Skiba

2016

Synthese

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Modal fictionalists face a problem that arises due to their possible-world story being incomplete in the sense that certain relevant claims are neither true nor false according to it. It has recently been suggested that this incompleteness problem generalises to other brands of fictionalism, such as fictionalism about composite or mathematical objects. In this paper, I argue that these fictionalist positions are particularly threatened by a generalised incompleteness problem since they cannot emulate the modal fictionalists' most attractive response. I then defend mathematical and compositional fictionalism by showing that the reasons for which the incompleteness problem has been thought to affect them are mistaken. This leads to the question of whether there are other fictionalist positions to which the problem does in fact generalise. I give a general account of the features of a fictionalist position that generate the incompleteness problem and argue that whenever a fictionalist position does exemplify these features then the problem can be addressed in analogy to the modal fictionalists' preferred response. B Lukas Skiba Keywords

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Section: Modal Fictionalism and The Incompleteness Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fictionalism and the incompleteness problem

Skiba

2016

Synthese

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“… Contractarianism, whose most prominent recent defender is Gauthier (1986), now faces what many consider to be a serious problem known as the outlier problem (Silvers and Francis 2005).  Modal fictionalism, as articulated by Rosen (1990), now faces what many consider to be serious objections, such as the Brock/Rosen objection (Brock 1993) and the Hale dilemma (1995).…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Problem of Unconceived Objections

Mizrahi

2013

Argumentation

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Abstract:In this paper, I argue that, just as the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives (PUA) provides a basis for a New Induction on the History of Science to the effect that a realist view of science is unwarranted, the Problem of Unconceived Objections (PUO) provides a basis for a New Induction on the History of Philosophy to the effect that a realist view of philosophy is unwarranted. I raise this problem not only for skepticism's sake but also for the sake of making a point about philosophical argumentation, namely, that anticipating objections to one's claim is not the same as supporting one's claim. In other words, defending p from objections does not amount to support or evidence for p. This, in turn, presents dialectical and pragma-dialectical approaches to argumentation with the following question: does proper argumentation require that arguers anticipate and respond to unconceived objections?

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“…Consequently, based on our common sense doubts and the fact that we need the possible world discourse, our commitment to modal fictionalism is well-motivated (see e.g. Rosen 1990, Nolan 2011. Accepting for example the metafictionalist version of it, we could say that "According to the fiction of possible worlds, there exists a possible world where Garri Kasparov is a composer."…”

Section: The Main Motivation For Fictionalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental Fictionalism As an Undermotivated Theory

Márton

Tőzsér

2013

Monist

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Mental Fictionalism as an Undermotivated TheoryOur paper consists of three parts. In the first part we explain the concept of mental fictionalism. In the second part, we present the various versions of fictionalism and their main sources of motivation. We do this because in the third part we argue that mental fictionalism, as opposed to other versions of fictionalism, is a highly undermotivated theory. What is mental fictionalism?We can distinguish between realist and antirealist approaches regarding each type of entity. You are a realist if you think that the entities of the type in question exist, and you are an antirealist if you think that they do not. You can be a realist about universals, physical objects, abstract entities and so on, while you remain an antirealist for example about God, scattered objects or finkish dispositions.However, we need to distinguish how the realist or the antirealist approaches the ontologicalmetaphysical issues from how he approaches discourse. The focus of this latter distinction is not on the existence or non-existence of some entities, but on the features of our mode of speech about these entities.According to Kalderon (2005, 95-113.), three distinct conditions have to be satisfied in order to be a realist about a discourse. (1) The sentences of the discourse express propositions about the putative subject matter of the discourse. (2) In uttering these sentences, we assert the truthconditions of the appropriate propositions. (3) At least most of these propositions are trueyou are justified in accepting them.In accordance with orthodoxy, we call the discourse about the mental 'folk psychology'. So, the three conditions of discourse about folk psychology are the following: (1) Sentences of folk psychology express propositions about mental facts. (2) In uttering sentences of folk psychology, we assert the truth-conditions of the appropriate propositions, namely the obtaining of mental facts. (3) Most of these propositions represent mental facts correctly, so they are mostly true.

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Modal Fictionalism

Cited by 333 publications

References 0 publications

Fictionalism and the incompleteness problem

Fictionalism and the incompleteness problem

The Problem of Unconceived Objections

Mental Fictionalism As an Undermotivated Theory

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