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Fiction: Impossible!

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Abstract

I argue that modal realism is unable to account for fictional discourse. My starting point is an overview of modal realism. I then present a dilemma for modal realism regarding fictional characters. Finally, I provide responses to both horns of the dilemma, one motivating modal dimensionalism, the other motivating a disjunctive analysis of modality.

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Notes

  1. As Lewis writes: ‘I am right, other-worldly things exist simpliciter, though often it is very sensible to ignore them and quantify restrictedly over our worldmates’ (Lewis 1986, p. 3, my italics).

  2. see also Vacek (2017).

References

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to members of the Department of Analytic Philosophy of Slovak Academy of Sciences, and audiences at the University of Olomouc and the Hokkaido University for helpful feedback. This paper was written as a part of VEGA No. 2/0049/16 project: Fictionalism in Philosophy and Science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Klemensova 19, 811 09, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Martin Vacek

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  1. Martin Vacek
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Correspondence to Martin Vacek.

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Vacek, M. Fiction: Impossible!. Axiomathes 28, 247–252 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-017-9353-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-017-9353-3

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