Abstract
I advance an objection to Graham Priest’s account of fictional entities as nonexistent objects. According to Priest, fictional characters do not have, in our world, the properties they are represented as having; for example, the property of being a bank clerk is possessed by Joseph K. not in our world but in other worlds. Priest claims that, in this way, his theory can include an unrestricted principle of characterization for objects. Now, some representational properties attributed to fictional characters, a kind of fictional entities, involve a crucial reference to the world in which they are supposed to be instantiated. I argue that these representational properties are problematic for Priest’s theory and that he cannot accept an unrestricted version of the principle of characterization. Thus, while not refuting Priest’s theory, I show that it is no better off than other Meinongian theories.
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Notes
For an overview of Meinongian approaches to fiction, see Sainsbury (2010, pp. 44–67). I will understand the term Meinongian as Sainsbury does: “A Meinongian holds the following ontological thesis: MO Some things do not exist […] [and] the following semantic theses: MN Some proper names refer to things which do not exist, and can be used to state truths about such things. MQ Some quantifications range over things that do not exist, and can be used to state truths about such things” (Sainsbury 2010, p. 45).
I am aware of the subtle distinctions between different kinds of extra-nuclear properties advanced, for example, by Parsons (1980). The further specification of these distinctions is not necessary for my main point. What is important here is just that we count existence as being an extra-nuclear property. There may be other ways of drawing distinctions between properties to obtain the same intended result of not attributing existence-entailing properties to nonexistent objects. I will leave aside this further issue because, again, it is not directly relevant for what follows. Another distinction that is not supposed to be required by Priest’s account is between ways in which a property is instantiated. For example, we do not need to say that certain entities have a property (as in ‘Joseph K. is a fictional character’) and that these same entities encode other properties (‘Joseph K. is a bank clerk’). Usually this distinction is meant to show the difference between attributions of properties to entities from internal and external perspective to a fiction. See Van Inwagen (1977) for an early discussion of this distinction.
For vividness of exposition, I will talk exclusively about fictional characters, not fictional places, fictional events, etc.
Pace those actual bank clerks who think the contrary.
In this essay, I have abused of the preposition ‘at’, especially in relation to ‘worlds’, also where ‘in’ would sound more appropriate. This is meant to remind that ‘at a world’ should be understood in a technical sense.
By ‘particularised fictional character’ I mean a character who cannot be considered only as a mere instantiation of a literary stereotype or stock character, such as the Miles Gloriosus or the Senex Libidinosus in Plautus’ comedies.
The issue is orthogonal to debates related to Serious Actualism because the attribution of the property in question here is obviously related to the existence, in @, of the entity that instantiates it.
Provided we consider ‘existence’ as a property, another requirement of various Meinongian theories.
See Areces and ten Cate (2007) for more details.
Priest’s Noneism probably requires also a world-indexed notion of existence, but I will leave aside this issue here.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting this objection.
See Proudfoot (2006, p. 9) for further discussion of this case.
See Walton (1990) for an analysis of fiction in terms of prescriptions to imagine. My point can be re-phrased in terms of other theories of fiction.
In this paper, I have focused my attention on an internal problem for Priest’s account of fictional objects. However, the problems of this theory are not limited to the difficulties just outlined. See Sainsbury (2010) for other objections.
References
Areces, C., & ten Cate, B. (2007). Hybrid logics. In P. Blackburn, J. van Benthem, & F. Wolter (Eds.), Handbook of modal logic. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Parsons, T. (1980). Nonexistent objects. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Priest, G. (2005). Towards non-being. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Proudfoot, D. (2006). Possible worlds semantics and fiction. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 35, 9–40.
Sainsbury, M. (2010). Fiction and fictionalism. London and New York: Routledge.
Van Inwagen, P. (1977). Creatures of fiction. American Philosophical Quarterly, 14, 299–308.
Walton, K. (1990). Mimesis as make-believe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Paisley Livingston and Rafael De Clercq for comments and discussions that greatly improved the paper.
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Sauchelli, A. Fictional objects, non-existence, and the principle of characterization. Philos Stud 159, 139–146 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9694-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9694-x