Abstract
In setting up his influential “constructive empiricist” project, Bas van Fraassen (1980, 12) characterizes realism about scientific theories by the following three claims: (i) Scientific theories should be interpreted “at face value”. If the theory includes the sentence “there are quarks”, it should be understood as making the same kind of claim we make when we say “there are cans of beer in the refrigerator”: there is no reinterpretation. (ii) Scientific theories purport to be true (iii). We may in principle have good reasons for believing that a scientific theory is true.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
No matter how they themselves reconstruct their own aims in their philosophical moments; this is not a psycho-sociological claim, but a philosophical one about the nature of scientific practice (cf. van Fraassen 1994).
- 2.
But only to the extent that we can so rely on such a neo-Fregean account of singular reference in indirect contexts. In my (2010) I argue that referentialist or neo-Russellian accounts, such as the one by Evans and Walton, cannot provide an acceptable semantics for the cases we are considering.
- 3.
- 4.
Friend (2007) helpfully summarizes the difficulties for realist accounts, among them the ones I am interested in, to be mentioned presently.
- 5.
As he himself emphasized, according to Quine the commitment to Aristotelian essentialism does not lie in that a proposition stating it is a theorem of the logical theory, but depends on its use. See Burgess (1998) and García-Carpintero and Pérez Otero (1999).
- 6.
A rigid designator is an expression that designates the same entity in all possible worlds in which it designates anything at all, unlike designators such as the description “the inventor of the zip”. Descriptions such as “the actual inventor of the zip” and “the even prime” are rigid designators, but, unlike proper names and indexicals, merely de facto, not de jure. Kripke does not define how he understands the latter distinction. In my view, the suggestion is that de jure rigid designators designate rigidly in virtue of the semantic category (proper name, indexical) to which they belong; de facto rigid designators are definite descriptions which, even though as such are non-rigid, designate rigidly by virtue of features of the properties signified by the NP that compose them.
- 7.
See Soames ( Chapter 14 ), for an excellent presentation of these issues, on which I draw.
- 8.
In my (2000, 2006a) I argue that this is not just “typically” so, but conceptually necessary, and I provide on this basis a descriptivist framework for capturing the Kripkean rigidity intuitions.
- 9.
Sainsbury (2005) also favors such an alternative. In Chapter 6 of his forthcoming book Fiction and Fictionalism, however, he adopts a more open view; the suggestion there that I find more congenial, to appeal to a relativized notion of truth on a presupposition, is, I take it, very close to the one I will be making, perhaps they are just notational variants.
- 10.
There is a problem here posed by Walton’s commitment to neo-Russellian referentialism, which I have mentioned in a previous footnote: “If there is no Gulliver and there are no Lilliputians, there are no propositions about them” (Walton 1990, 391). As Walton notes (1990, 400), the class of pretended assertions thus authorized by a given fiction should be characterized semantically, and it remains totally unclear how, under Walton’s referentialist assumption, this can be done. The account should allow that a Spanish speaker who reacted to CLC by uttering a Spanish translation of (1) would thereby be making an equally true claim. Thus, Walton’s account appeals to “kinds” of pretenses. But how can “Santiago” semantically contribute to characterizing any such kind of pretense, if it lacks semantic content? However, this could be solved by adopting a less radical form of referentialism, for instance one envisaging “gappy” singular propositions, as I suggest in my (2010).
- 11.
If metaphor is itself a form of fiction, as Walton (1993) contends, then reference to fictional character is itself a straightforward form of fiction. However, I find Walton’s assimilation of metaphor-making to fiction-making almost as much strained and ad hoc as his paraphrasing-away fictional characters, even if also illuminating.
- 12.
Speech acts such as assertions have contents, such as the asserted proposition, the proposition the belief of which the utterer expresses, or to whose knowledge he commits himself, depending on what the proper account of assertion is; reference, I take it following Searle’s views on speech acts, is an auxiliary act through which “components” of those contents such as objects and properties are specified.
- 13.
I also think that, relative to the speech-act of fiction making, Vargas Llosa merely pretends to refer to a newspaper called “La Crónica” and to an avenue called “Tacna”, even though there actually were entities answering to those descriptions in Lima at the time of the narrative and, if (1) were used literally in a relevantly corresponding context, those names would genuinely refer to them. Now, in the same way that a fiction-maker might well make genuine assertions indirectly, through his fiction-making, he can also make genuine references (in our case, to the newspaper and street)—but in my view only indirectly.
- 14.
I am here assuming Kripke’s (1977) Russellian view that definite descriptions, when literally used, are not referential but quantificational expressions.
- 15.
Currie (1990, 146–162) makes a similar proposal. The main difference with the one I elaborate upon elsewhere (2007, 2010) lies in that, where Currie’s account posits a fictional author who fictionally produced the token-discourse by whose production the relevant fiction was created, mine has the real author actually producing that token-text.
- 16.
It is easy to see that the point also applies to other entities that Schiffer takes to be introduced in that way, like properties, events, possible worlds or propositions.
- 17.
Schiffer (2003) contains a new proposal, still ontologically deflationary, which is not subject to these criticisms, but it has the problems discussed in the following paragraph.
- 18.
It is slightly misleading to speak of “metaphorical reference” as I will be doing henceforth. That expression is more frequently used for ordinary reference that involves a metaphorical characterization of the referent, as when we utter “That festering sore must go”, referring to a derelict house. See Bezuidenhout (2008), from where I take the example. I hope that the reader will be able to put aside the misleading associations.
- 19.
The mechanism brilliantly analyzed by Grice (1975), through which speakers utter sentences that, if taken with their literal meanings, would obviously flout “conversational maxims” (such as that requiring speakers not to say what they know is false, which Romeo appears to flout in saying “Juliet is the sun”) hoping to convey thereby a different meaning that their audiences will be able to derive given that from the literal meaning and context.
- 20.
See Romero and Soria (ms) for a helpful summary of those objections, and the responses open to its proponents.
- 21.
Glanzberg (2008) argues that functional categories differ from lexical ones in that they do not admit metaphorical interpretations. However, (i) Glanzberg does not provide any argument for his view, he just gives some examples of sentences which determiners do not appear to have a metaphorical interpretation; (ii) prepositions are usually regarded as functional categories, and there are whole books, such as Tyler and Evans (2003), to discuss the proper treatment of what, from the point of view I adopt here (see (iii)), are metaphorical meanings; and, last but not least, (iii) as I indicate later, the metaphorical meanings I envisage are not freshly baked literary metaphors, but deeply entrenched, conventionalized ones; and some remarks by Glanzberg about the case of prepositions (2008, 43 footnote 7) may suggest that his claim only concerns fresh metaphors.
- 22.
Or to any one to which such a speaker might attempt to refer by “La Crónica” or “Tacna Avenue”, respectively; this is the ultimate ground for the view put forward in footnote 10 above. See Bonomi (2008) for elaboration.
- 23.
The main difference lies in that he argues for polysemy, while I am arguing—following Yablo (2001)—for a figurative or metaphorical reading of apparent reference to, and quantification over, fictional characters, understood as pragmatically conveyed readings. But this apparent difference vanishes when it is acknowledged, as I will do presently, that the metaphors in question are deeply conventionalized; this is to posit a form of polysemy.
- 24.
Cf. Kripke (1976) for elaboration.
- 25.
Cf. Tyler and Evans (2003).
- 26.
Cf. Fillmore and Atkins (2000).
- 27.
- 28.
As Nunberg (2002, footnote 15) nicely puts it, “the fact that dictionaries assign the word crawl a sense ‘to act or behave in a servile manner’ doesn’t mean that people couldn’t come up with this use of the word in the absence of a convention”.
- 29.
One would also be entitled to the stipulation in a context in which the practice did not exist, but one could still count on the pragmatic rationality of one’s fellow speakers.
- 30.
Cf. Rosen (1994), Section IV, for elaboration on these objections.
- 31.
In his contribution to this volume, “Models and Make-Believe”, Toon makes a proposal that, precisely on account of this, I take to be only superficially similar to that of Frigg and Godfrey-Smith. He is concerned with the nature of the representation-relation which obtains between scientific models and their target systems, and contends that it is of the same kind as that obtaining, on Walton’s account, between a fiction and the real entities (such as Napoleon or Russia in the early nineteenth century, in the case of War and Peace) which it may be said to somehow represent. Following Walton, then, he contends that model-descriptions in science prescribe imaginings about their target systems. Unlike the two-stage proposals of Frigg and Godfrey-Smith, and unlike Walton’s own views about (2) and (3), which, as we have seen, admit that they are at least derivatively assertions, this proposal in my view fails to capture the essential component of truth-aptness that modeling in science involves. Fiction-making is evaluated only relative to the quality of the imaginings it prescribes; I do not think this applies at all to representation by means of scientific models.
- 32.
Cf. Toon (2010, 213–214) discussion of (7): “I think we may still analyze our theoretical hypotheses without commitment to any object that fits our prepared description and equation of motion. When we say ‘the period of oscillation of the bob in the model is within 10% of the period of the bob in the system’, we are simply comparing what our model asks us to imagine with what is true of the system. Specifically, we assert that the period of oscillation of the bob has some value T 0 and that it is fictional in our model that the bob oscillates with period T 1, where T 1 is within 10% of T 0”. This paraphrase is correct, and Toon is right that it does not commit us to any object beyond the real bob. But the example raises two worries about Toon’s views. The first applies equally to Frigg’s proposal: how is this paraphrase generated? On my alternative proposal, the paraphrase is just one way of stating a metaphorical meaning, and, as in other cases, there probably is no systematic theory of how those meanings are generated. The second question is specific to Toon’s own view, and it relates to the objection in the previous footnote. For it is clear, I think, that his paraphrase states a content to which the utterer of (7) is assertorically committed.
- 33.
Not, at least, on the assumption that Evans and Walton are mistaken in their radical referentialist assumption that no referent, no proposition expressed; see footnote 9.
- 34.
If Walton (1993) is right that metaphor-making is a form of make-believe, the extent of right and wrong here is exactly the extent to which “principles of generation” are sufficiently settled in fiction: truth-in-a-model, on the present proposal, would then exactly coincide with truth-in-fiction. I have already expressed doubts about this account, though (cf. footnote 10), but of course it is not in competition with the present proposal; to adopt it I would just have to rely on this account of metaphor, instead of relying on Kittay’s.
- 35.
“Carnap’s Paradox”, given at the LOGOS Metametaphysics Conference, June 19–21 2008, http://www.ub.es/grc_logos/mm/inicio.htm.
References
Bezuidenhout, A. (2008), “Metaphorical Singular Reference”, The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, at http://cognition.lu.lv/, 3: A Figure of Speech.
Bonomi, A. (2008), “Fictional Contexts”, in P. Bouquet, L. Serafini, and R. Thomason (eds.), Perspectives on Context. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 213–248.
Braun, D. (2005), “Empty Names, Fictional Names, Mythical Names”, Noûs 39, 596–631.
Burgess, J. P. (1998), “Quinus ab Omni Nævo Vindicatus”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Meaning and Reference, sup. vol. 23, A. Kazmi (ed.), 25–65.
Carnap, R. (1956), “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology”, supplement A in Meaning and Necessity. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 205–221.
Cartwright, N. (1983), How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Currie, G. (1990), The Nature of Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Evans, G. (1982), The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Everett, A. (2005), “Against Fictional Realism”, Journal of Philosophy 102: 624–649.
Everett, A. (2007), “Pretense, Existence, and Fictional Objects”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74: 56–80.
Field, H. (1980), Science without Numbers. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fillmore, C. and Atkins, B. T. S. (2000), “Describing Polysemy: The Case of ‘Crawl’”, in Y. Ravin and C. Leacock (eds.), Polysemy: Theoretical and Computational Approaches, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 91–110.
Friend, S. (2007), “Fictional Characters”, Philosophy Compass 2, 2: 141–156.
Frigg, R. (2010), “Models and Fictions”, Synthese, 251–268.
García-Carpintero, M. (2000), “A Presuppositional Account of Reference-Fixing”, Journal of Philosophy xcvii, 3: 109–147.
García-Carpintero, M. (2006a), “Two-Dimensionalism: A Neo-Fregean Interpretation”, in M. García-Carpintero and J. Macià (eds.), Two-Dimensional Semantics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 181–204.
García-Carpintero, M. (2006b), “Recanati on the Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction”, Crítica 38: 35–68.
García-Carpintero, M. (2007), “Fiction-making as an Illocutionary Act”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65: 203–216.
García-Carpintero, M. (2010), “Fictional Singular Imaginings”, in R. Jeshion (ed.), New Essays on Singular Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
García-Carpintero, M. and Pérez Otero, M. (1999), “The Ontological Commitments of Logical Theories”, European Review of Philosophy 4: 157–182.
García-Carpintero, M. and Pérez Otero, M. (2009), “The Conventional and the Analytic”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78: 239–274.
Giere, R. (1988), Explaining Science. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Glanzberg, M. (2008), “Metaphor and Lexical Semantics”, The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, at http://cognition.lu.lv/, 3: A Figure of Speech.
Godfrey-Smith, P. (2006), “The Strategy of Model-Based Science”, Biology and Philosophy 21: 725–740.
Grice, H. P. (1975), “Logic and Conversation”, in P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, New York: Academic Press.
Hofweber, T. (2005), “A Puzzle about Ontology”, Noûs 39: 256–283.
Johnston, M. (1988), “The End of the Theory of Meaning”, Mind and Language 3: 28–42.
Kalderon, M. (2005), “Introduction”, in M. Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kittay, E. F. (1987), Metaphor. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kripke, S. (1976), “Is There a Problem about Substitutional Quantification?”, in G. Evans and J. McDowell (eds.), Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 325–419.
Kripke, S. (1977), “Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference”, in French et al. (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 255–276.
Kripke, S. (1980), Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Lamarque, P. and Olsen, S. H. (1994), Truth, Fiction and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Lewis, D. (1978), “Truth in Fiction”, American Philosophical Quarterly 15: 37–46.
Nunberg, G. (2002), “The Pragmatics of Deferred Interpretation”, in L. Horn and G. Ward (eds.), Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Pragmatics, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Pagin, P. and Pelletier, J. (2007), “Content, Context and Composition”, in G. Peter and G. Preyer (eds.), Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 25–62.
Parsons, T. (1980), Nonexistent Objects. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Peacocke, C. (1989), “When Is a Grammar Psychologically Real?”, in A. George (ed.), Reflexions on Chomsky, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Perry, J. (1980), “A Problem about Continued Belief”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61: 317–332.
Quine, W. V. O. (1951), “On Carnap’s Views on Ontology”, Philosophical Studies ii: 65–72.
Quine, W. V. O. (1953), “Carnap and Logical Truth”, in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, La Salle, IL: Open Court.
Recanati, F. (2004), Literal Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Richard, M. (2000), “Semantic Pretence”, in A. Everett and T. Hofweber (eds.), Empty Names, Fiction and the Puzzles of Non-Existence, Stanford, CA: CSLI, 205–232.
Romero, E. and Soria, B. (ms), “Metaphor: What Is Said or What Is Implicated?”, talk at the 15th Annual Meeting of the ESSP, 2007, Geneva, at http://www.ugr.es/~eromero/draft1.htm.
Rosen, G. (1994), “Gideon Rosen on Constructive Empiricism”, Philosophical Studies 74: 143–178.
Sainsbury, M. (2005), Reference without Referents. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Salmon, N. (1998), “Nonexistence”, Noûs 32: 277–319.
Schiffer, S. (1996), “Language-Created Language-Independent Entities”, Philosophical Topics 24: 149–167.
Schiffer, S. (2003), The Things We Mean. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Searle, J. (1975), “The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse”, New Literary History 6: 319–332.
Stalnaker, R. (1978), “Assertion”, in P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, vol. 9, New York: Academic Press, 315–332.
Soames, S. (2003), Philosophical Analysis in the XXth Century, vol. 2: The Age of Meaning. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Thomasson, A. (1999), Fiction and Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomasson, A. (2001), “Ontological Minimalism”, American Philosophical Quarterly 38: 319–331.
Toon, A. (2010), “The Ontology of Theoretical Modeling: Models as Make-Believe”, Synthese, 301–315.
Tyler, A. and Evans, V. (2003), The Semantics of English Prepositions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
van Fraassen, B. (1980), The Scientific Image. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Fraassen, B. (1994), “Gideon Rosen on Constructive Empiricism”, Philosophical Studies 74: 179–192.
van Inwagen, P. (1977), “Creatures of Fiction”, American Philosophical Quarterly 14: 299–308.
van Inwagen, P. (2003), “Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities”, in M. Loux and D. Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 131–157.
Voltolini, A. (2006), How Ficta Follow Fiction. A Syncretistic Account of Fictional Entities. Dordrecht: Springer.
Walton, K. (1990), Mimesis and Make-Believe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Walton, K. (1993), “Metaphor and Prop Oriented Make-Believe”, European Journal of Philosophy 1: 39–56.
Wolterstorff, N. (1980), Works and Worlds of Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Wright, C. (2002), “What Could Antirealism about Ordinary Psychology Possibly Be?”, Philosophical Review cxi: 205–233.
Yablo, S. (2001), “Go Figure: A Path through Fictionalism”, in P. A. French and H. K. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy xxv, Oxford: Blackwell, 72–102.
Acknowledgments
Research for this paper has been funded by the Spanish Government’s MCYT research project HUM2006-08236, and a Distinció de Recerca de la Generalitat, Investigadors Reconeguts 2002-8. I am very grateful to Esther Romero for very detailed comments on a previous version of this paper. The co-editor of this volume, Roman Frigg, also provided extended comments on several versions, which have helped me to clarify my views and their presentation in many ways. Thanks finally to Michael Maudsley for his careful grammatical revision.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
García-Carpintero, M. (2010). Fictional Entities, Theoretical Models and Figurative Truth. In: Frigg, R., Hunter, M. (eds) Beyond Mimesis and Convention. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 262. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3851-7_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3851-7_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-3850-0
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-3851-7
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)