Abstract
In this paper, I want to show that Moderate Creationism (MC), a variant among realist doctrines concerning fictional entities (ficta), is the only form of Fictional Creationism that may rescue it from both the ontological and the metaphysical criticisms that have been recently raised against this position in general. According to MC, what is distinctively required in order for a fictum to come into existence qua abstract mind-dependent entity is that a certain reflexive stance applies to the non- ontologically committal make-believe practice that there is a certain (nonactual yet typically concrete) individual. In this stance, the practice is taken as involving a certain set of properties, the properties the storyteller mobilises in the relevant bit of her narration. So taken, the practice amounts to the fact that that very set of properties is make-believedly identical with a certain (nonactual yet typically concrete) individual. In particular, I appeal to a strong version of MC, according to which, once it is so taken, the practice counts as a certain fictum, in virtue of a constitutive rule for its generation. For this version may account for the special sense in which ficta may be created entities.
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Notes
- 1.
Thesis b) is mostly explicitly defended in Thomasson (1999), but it traces back to the seminal work of Ingarden (1973) as well as to van Inwagen (1977) and Kripke (2013). For other defenders of the thesis cf. Searle (1979), Salmon (1998), Schiffer (1996, 2003), Predelli (2002), Goodman (2004), Braun (2005).
- 2.
- 3.
Voltolini (2006, 2015b). One normally believes that Kripke (2011, 2013) is a defender of RC. Yet there are reasons to call this belief into question. First, Kripke says that the make-believe practice in which one pretends that there is an individual that does such and such things is not ontologically committed to ficta (2013: 81, 148); ficta rather come into existence in virtue of certain human activities. Kripke gives, as examples of such activities, telling stories, writing plays, writing novels (2011:63–4), (2013: 73, 76). Second, he says that fictional works are sufficient conditions for ficta (2013: 71–2). Thus, one may suspect that within such activities there also is the sort of reflection that is manifested in what he labels a derivative or extended use of language that is committed to ficta (ibid.: 81, 103, 148–50). Schiffer (1996, 2003) called this use the hypostatising use, which is for Kripke the condition for further ascribing ficta also story-relative properties (2011: 65), (2013: 74–5, 83). All this suggests that Kripke is rather a forerunner of MC.
- 4.
For Sainsbury (2010: 61–3, 82–5), who is an antirealist, Creationism is the only realist doctrine that manages to face the socalled selection problem: how is it that an author manages to select one rather than another fictum candidate among countless candidates? For Zvolenszky (2015a), who is a realist, Creationism is the only realist doctrine that manages to face the epistemological problem Kripke (1980) raised consisting in finding both a historical connection and a suitable mode of introduction for a name to refer to a fictum.
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Cf. Yagisawa (2001).
- 7.
Curiously enough, Meinong himself seemingly was of this idea in the first 1902 edition of his (1983). At the time of the second 1910 edition, however, he had probably changed his mind, by holding a supervenience claim that makes an assuming (or make-believe) practice to be ontologically generative. Cf. Kroon (1992).
- 8.
- 9.
For an attempt at going in this direction, cf. Zvolenszky (2015b: 182).
- 10.
For a similar move aimed at blocking the inference from Fictional Creationism to Mythical Creationism, the theory according to which in the overall ontological domain there also are mythological entities often not recognised as such even by their creators, cf. Goodman (2014).
- 11.
Certainly, on this respect things might change. We would then have an oneiric entity. If we had something like oneiric works, just as we have fictional works, this would be a sign that a public reflexive stance in favour of oneiric entities has occurred.
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- 13.
Notoriously, the easiest way for a realist to solve the problem of indeterminate ficta, namely, appealing to groups as fictional characters such that according to the relevant fiction it is indeterminate how many individuals they comprise (cf. Parsons 1980:191), does not work. For suppose that the following sentence (7) continued by saying “…yet just some of such dwarves appear in many other battles LOTR focuses on”. It is unclear how appealing to groups would enable a realist to deal with this continuation. For it is unclear whether it would involve the same subgroup or different ones. Analogous problems may be raised by a creationist appeal to similar plural entities like pluralities or sets.
- 14.
This specification helps Kroon in ruling out a possible creationist reply (that may however be affected by the problem raised in fn. 13) that the relevant existentially quantified sentences are ontologically committal, since they concern either pluralities or sets to which properties are predicated collectively.
- 15.
In this case, which for some involves a mere semantic indeterminacy (the description of the make-believe world is conceptually indeterminate) the make-believe practice undetermines the creation of different indeterminate ficta (one and the same set of properties may not be make-believedly identical with just one individual). In other perhaps more radical cases, which involve a metaphysical indeterminacy (the make-believe world is indeterminate as to whether one individual is the same as another individual) the practice has not even a start, for in the make-believe world there is no (typically concrete) individual the set may be makebelievedly identical with. Cf. a version of Robert Stevenson’s tale according to which it were indeterminate whether Dr. Jekyll is identical with Mr. Hyde.
- 16.
Cf. Kroon (2015: 166).
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
Either in a semantic or in a metaphysical sense. Cf. fn.15.
- 20.
- 21.
For this idea cf. Voltolini 2006.
- 22.
Cf. Kroon (2015: 170fn.29).
- 23.
- 24.
As Zalta (1988: 4, 127–8) suggested.
- 25.
Cf. Frege (1997: 370–3).
- 26.
Cf. Brock et al. (2013).
- 27.
Clearly enough, this conceptual truth must not be transparent to people involved with make-believe practices. But this is not particularly astonishing. As Wittgenstein (2009)4 stressed, grammatical propositions, i.e., what fix the rule of use of certain expressions hence their meanings viz. the concepts they express, are to be shown to the community members that abide by them.
- 28.
Pace Everett (2013: 131–2), that our notion of a fictum involves the fact that a fictum does not exist is clearly accountable by creationists as meaning that a fictum is not spatiotemporal.
- 29.
In this respect, my account bears some similarities with Manning’s approach, which claims that “we must correlate fictional objects with the specific features through which their native works represent them” (2014: 21). Yet Manning frames this claim within traditional creationist accounts of ficta generation, which, as he admits, explain our realist intuitions about ficta that however occur independently of whether a realist or antirealist theory about ficta is correct (2014: 21–2).
- 30.
For Fara Graff (2011), this amounts to the difference between being called N and being called ‘N’.
- 31.
- 32.
Cf. Brock (2010: 355–62). I have deliberately changed Brock’s examples in order not to get into the controversy involving the number of immigrant ficta, as Brock instead does. For that controversy may be accounted for differently according to one’s theory on crossfictional identity. For a rejection of Brock’s use of his own examples cf. Friedell (2016).
- 33.
Cf. again Brock (2010: 355–62). On the last point see also Zvolenszky (2015b: 181–3) and Brock himself (2018); for a moderate view that distinguishes between intentional creation and nonintentional production of a fictum. cf. Cray (2017). Again, I have changed Brock’s example, for it implausibly appeals to a storyteller antirealist philosophical beliefs, which may be inert as regards a nonphilosophical practice of storytelling.
- 34.
- 35.
Cf. Brock et al. (2013: 72).
- 36.
- 37.
This paper has been presented at the conferences The Roots of Fiction, University of Macau, December 5–6 2015, Macau; BSA Conference on Fictional Characters, University of Southampton, December 15–16, 2015 Southampton; Political Communities. Normativity and the Metaphysics of politics July 2–3, 2019, University of Udine, Udine. I thank all the participants for their useful remarks. I also thank Catherine Abell, Fred Kroon and Elisa Paganini for their insightful comments to previous version of the paper.
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Acknowledgments
This paper has been presented at the conferences The Roots of Fiction, University of Macau, December 5–6 2015, Macau; BSA Conference on Fictional Characters, University of Southampton, December 15–16, 2015 Southampton; Political Communities. Normativity and the Metaphysics of politics July 2–3, 2019, University of Udine, Udine. I thank all the participants for their useful remarks. I also thank Catherine Abell, Fred Kroon and Elisa Paganini for their insightful comments to previous version of the paper.
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Voltolini, A. (2020). How to Vindicate (Fictional) Creationism. In: Falguera, J.L., Martínez-Vidal, C. (eds) Abstract Objects. Synthese Library, vol 422. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38242-1_14
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