Abstract
Gideon Rosen’s [1990 Modal fictionalism. Mind, 99, 327–354] Modal Fictionalist aims to secure the benefits of realism about possible-worlds, whilst avoiding commitment to the existence of any world other than our own. Rosen [1993 A problem for fictionalism about possible worlds. Analysis, 53, 71–81] and Stuart Brock [1993 Modal fictionalism: A response to Rosen. Mind, 102, 147–150] both argue that fictionalism is self-defeating since the fictionalist is tacitly committed to the existence of a plurality of worlds. In this paper, I develop a new strategy for the fictionalist to pursue in response to the Brock–Rosen objection. I begin by arguing that modal fictionalism is best understood as a paraphrase strategy that concerns the propositions that are expressed, in a given context, by modal sentences. I go on to argue that what is interesting about paraphrastic fictionalism is that it allows the fictionalist to accept that the sentence ‘there is a plurality of worlds’ is true without thereby committing her to the existence of a plurality of worlds. I then argue that the paraphrastic fictionalist can appeal to a form of semantic contextualism in order to communicate her status as an anti-realist. Finally, I generalise my conception of fictionalism and argue that Daniel Nolan and John O’Leary-Hawthorne [1996 Reflexive fictionalisms. Analysis, 56, 26–32] are wrong to suggest that the Brock-Rosen objection reveals a structural flaw with all species of fictionalism.
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Notes
The original statement of modal fictionalism is that of Rosen [1990].
GR is here associated (broadly) with the theory outlined and defended in Lewis [1986].
In this paper, I will not be rigorous in specifying perspicuously the counterpart-theoretic translation of a modal claim since I wish to be neutral on the matter of which translation scheme is the most attractive. The intention, of course, is that where ‘A*’ is the counterpart-theoretic translation of ‘A’, the fictionalist’s translation of ‘A’ is ‘According to GR, A*’.
An operator, O, is non-factive just in case the form of inference from ‘O(p)’ to ‘p’ is invalid.
T: □A → A.
Note that whether a theorist counts as an anti-realist, and a fortiori as a paraphrase strategist, is a matter of intent. Hence, the success of the Brock–Rosen objection would not imply that the modal fictionalist was a realist, merely that the fictionalist cannot deliver what she hopes.
Indeed, the modal fictionalist hopes to alleviate commitment to possible-worlds by interpreting such claims in an analogous way to Lewis’s [1978] proposal to paraphrase claims that apparently quantify over fictional characters in terms of claims regarding the content of works of fiction.
This criterion raises at least two issues. Firstly, there is a question about whether a speaker must also believe that the proposition expressed in a given context does not entail the existence of Fs. Such a clause may be needed in order to avoid the result that the ancient Greeks were ontologically committed to hydrogen merely because they assented to water-sentences. Secondly, there is a question about the nature of the entailment relation. For instance, we need to know whether the entailment is semantic, syntactic or modal. However, such issues need not detain us now since the crucial element is that ontological commitment is not incurred at the level of sentences, but rather at the level of propositions.
Such fictionalists are sometimes called ‘timid’ fictionalists, as opposed to ‘strong’ fictionalists (see Nolan 1997). However, my own view is this the distinction between strong and timid strands of fictionalism is best viewed as a distinction between those fictionalists whose analytic ambitions include offering a reductive account of modality, and those fictionalists who are less ambitious.
See Alston [1958].
That the fictionalist requires the right-hand sides of instances of her biconditionals to carry semantic priority is a point that has recently been highlighted by Liggins [2007]. Liggins, however, just stipulates that the right-hand sides carry such priority; the metalinguistic proposal canvassed here is one way of going beyond that stipulation. Of course, the metalinguistic move may not be the only way for the fictionalist to ensure that the right-hand sides have semantic priority over the left-hand sides. Hence, if the specific details of the metalinguistic proposal bring trouble, the general spirit of the strategy may well be untouched.
The language of counterpart theory is simply that of first-order predicate calculus.
In Sect. 4 below, I argue that even if we add modal operators to her metalanguage, the paraphrastic fictionalist is still untroubled by the Brock–Rosen objection.
Whether the fictionalist should accept such a version of fictionalism is an independent question that I intend to remain neutral on in this paper. See n3 above.
The fictionalist might prefer to hold that ‘There is a plurality of worlds’ expresses <According to GR, at α, There is a plurality of worlds>. Nothing important turns on this for my purposes here.
See Divers [2004] for a development of an agnostic (and face-value) interpretation of possible-worlds talk.
Indeed, two of the main attractions of going metalinguistic are (i) to highlight that we need to focus on the propositions that are expressed, in context, by sentences such as ‘there is a plurality of worlds’ and (ii) to subsequently avoid the danger of equivocating between ‘there is a plurality of worlds’ as uttered in ordinary contexts and ‘there is a plurality of worlds’ as uttered in more ‘metaphysically serious’ contexts. But, as intimated in n11 above, there may well be other ways of ensuring these attractions that avoid the need to go metalinguistic. I thank an anonymous referee for pointing this out to me.
I put vexed issues about the reference-failure of fictional names to one side. Clearly, such problems do not arise in the case of the modal fictionalist.
Yablo [2001: §8] appeals to a form of semantic contextualism in order to solve an analogous problem with his ‘figuralist’ interpretation of mathematical talk.
A point pressed on me by Kit Fine.
All the objection requires is that metalanguage sentences featuring modal operators are syntactically well-formed. I remain neutral on the semantic content of such expressions in the metalanguage. It is perfectly consistent for the fictionalist to hold that occurrences of modal operators in the metalanguage are semantically redundant (cf. Divers [1999]).
(BR1) follows from (BR1M) and (MC1) by the transitivity of the biconditional.
Field [1989] labels his type of mathematical anti-realism ‘fictionalist’. However, Field is not a fictionalist in our sense of that term, since he does not offer a paraphrase strategy.
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Acknowledgements
I thank John Divers, Dominic Gregory, David Liggins and Joseph Morrison for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this material. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Arche Conference on the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Modality (St. Andrews, June 2006) and I thank my audience on that occasion, especially Kit Fine and Daniel Nolan, for their valuable comments and suggestions. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the support of the AHRC, who provided me with PhD funding during the time in which this paper was written.
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Woodward, R. Why modal fictionalism is not self-defeating. Philos Stud 139, 273–288 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9117-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9117-9