Précis of How Ficta Follow Fiction

dialectica Vol. 63, N° 1 (2009), pp. 51–55 DOI: 10.1111/j.1746-8361.2009.01174.x Book Symposium Précis of How Ficta Follow Fiction Alberto Voltolini† Alberto Voltolini, How Ficta Follow Fiction. A Syncretistic Account of Fictional Entities, Springer: Dordrecht, 2006, xxiv + 280 pp., $129 (hb). ISBN: 978-1-40205146-3. How Ficta Follow Fiction (HFFF) attempts to deal with a familiar topic, fictional entities. It does so in the most fruitful way in which such a topic can be approached today: syncretistically. The main flaw of the various traditional doctrines on this topic is that they are incomplete. They “need to be integrated into a single theory that aims both to maintain their positive results and to overcome their defects” (p. xiii). The ambition of the book is to be syncretistic with respect to both the metaphysical question – what is the nature of fictional entities? – and the ontological question – are there any such things? On the metaphysical side, the main rival theories are (Neo-)Meinongian theories, according to which ficta are somehow constituted by the properties that are mobilized in the relevant narrations (by being sets or even set-correlates of those properties, or by being Platonic attributes), and artifactualist theories, according to which ficta are abstract artifacts, products of (human) thought that are kept alive by their occurring in (possibly successive) tales or, better, copies of these tales. These theories try to articulate different intuitions – that ficta constitutively have the properties interweaving the relevant narrations or that ficta are (human) creations – which many have regarded as incompatible. HFFF attempts to show that this is not the case. For the syncretist, ficta have a – admittedly unexpected – hybrid nature: a fictum is a compound both of a set of properties, roughly the properties mobilized in the relevant narration, and of a make-believe process type, the kind of process that is tokened whenever someone tells the relevant bits of a story by making believe that something is the case. The set-theoretical constituent † Department of Philosophy, University of Turin, via S. Ottavio 20, 10124 Turin, Italy; Email: alberto.voltolini@unito.it © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Editorial Board of dialectica. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA 52 Book Symposium accounts for the (Neo-)Meinongian side of the theory; the pretence-theoretical constituent accounts for its artifactualist side. On the one hand, unlike (Neo-) Meinongians, the syncretist holds that a fictum is a created (abstract) entity. On the other hand, unlike artifactualists, the syncretist holds that a fictum has a certain fixed nature, which is given in terms of the relevant property set. Moreover, the set-theoretical element may also account for why we take a fictum to be a constructed entity. Literary cycles allow for the character of a cycle, as distinct from the characters of single novels in the cycle – for example the King Arthur of the Breton cycle versus the King Arthur of Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart or the King Arthur of Mort Artu; the Roland of the Carolingian cycle versus the Roland of the Chanson de Roland or the Roland of Orlando Enraged – to transform itself: the general character becomes a different fictum insofar as more and more properties are added to a certain set. This way of conceiving what a fictum is has immediate bearings on the ontological side of the debate. For the commitment to a fictional entity is a commitment to an (abstract) entity that comes into (non-spatiotemporal) existence by means of the make-believe process type that partly constitutes its identity. More precisely, a fictum is created in virtue of the fact that a certain make-believe process type has been originally tokened. This move allows the syncretist to be a merely moderate creationist. For a make-believe process does not eo ipso generate a fictional entity, as creationists ordinarily claim. That creation requires a reflexive move: the make-believe process does not lead to the creation of a fictum until it is seen as affecting a certain set of properties, roughly the properties mobilized in the relevant narration. This seeing-as operation corresponds to taking the set as being make-believedly such that the properties mobilized in the relevant narration are instantiated by an individual, typically a concrete one. The result of so taking that set is a fictional individual. Thus, not only do ficta follow fiction, that is, follow make-believe processes for their coming into being, they also follow fiction in a particular way. Yet, as I said before, HFFF wants to be syncretist also on the ontological side. Here the main divide runs between antirealists, who believe that there are no fictional entities, and realists, who do. The syncretist agrees with the antirealists and the realists and argues that their conflicting ontological biases are directed towards different, appropriate bits of fiction-related language. The conniving use of language, in which one makes believe that something is the case, is entirely noncommittal as far as ficta are concerned. If I make believe that there is a chap named ‘Arthur’ who extracts a sword named ‘Excalibur’ from a rock, marries a girl named ‘Guinevere’ etc., I am committed to no fictional character. I simply pretend that the world is so made as to contain in its domain certain (concrete) individuals so named. As this is actually not the case, there simply are no such individuals. Yet over and above the conniving use there are non-conniving uses of language. First, © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Editorial Board of dialectica. Book Symposium 53 there is the external metafictional use, in which one speaks of a fictional character outside any story, the so-called hypostatizing use (Schiffer 2003). Second, there is the internal metafictional use, in which, from the perspective of reality, one says that a certain character does certain things in a story, the so-called characterizing use (Barbero 2005). Saying that a sentence ‘p’ is used in a characterizing way is actually tantamount to saying that in that use that sentence is equivalent to a sentence of the form ‘in the story S, p’, an internal metafictional sentence.1 These metafictional uses are indeed committal, for they attribute to a fictional entity properties that do not belong to its nature and properties that do belong to its nature. Realists are often prudent and say that only the hypostatizing use is committal. Yet this goes against a commonsensical reason to allow for fictional entities in ontology, that is, to give a target to the predication of ordinary properties over and above the predication of extraordinary properties. This reason is quite general. If we allow for numbers, we do so primarily because we want to conserve the apparent focus of predication of ordinarily numerical properties such as being prime or being rational, not simply because we want to retain the apparent focus of predication of extraordinary categorical properties such as being a number or being abstract. The same must be the case as far as ficta are concerned. Syncretism has a very interesting consequence, one that people engaged in this ontological debate, primarily creationists themselves, have rarely noted. Once sentences are connivingly used, they are fictionally made true by pseudo-states of affairs mainly composed of pseudo-individuals (i.e. what is make-believedly designated in such use). The so-called world in which the story told is set may be characterized as a given totality of such pseudo-states. Yet once sentences are employed in the characterizing use, their truth entails that there is a set of propositions some of which are constituted by fictional individuals. A term of the form ‘the story S’ precisely designates one such set in an internal metafictional sentence that makes explicit a certain characterizing use regarding the embedded sentence ‘p’. As a result, the phrase ‘the world of the story’ is actually ambiguous. Sometimes it designates the world in which the story told is set, a world mainly made up of pseudo-individuals; sometimes it designates a set of propositions partly constituted by fictional individuals. For a creationist, a fictional entity that comes into being in virtue of a certain make-believe process does not inhabit the world in which the story that is told in the conniving use of the relevant sentences is set. For in actual fact, if that world were inhabited by some individuals, these would be the typically concrete individuals one make-believedly designates in that use. So, if fictional entities are to be given an environment, this must be something else – plausibly, a set of propositions. 1 In point of fact, the equivalence holds between a sentence in its characterizing use and an internal metafictional sentence non-connivingly used. For there may even be conniving uses of those sentences, as stories-within-stories show. But let me put this complication aside. © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Editorial Board of dialectica. 54 Book Symposium To be sure, antirealists may acknowledge that as regards fiction-related language there are different uses, notably the conniving, the characterizing, and even the hypostatizing use; yet they will say that all of these uses are non-committal. Typically, they will provide paraphrases of sentences so used. These paraphrases purportedly show that the truth-conditions of the relevant tokens of the sentences involved when so used, or more generally what is asserted by uttering those tokens, entail no commitment to fictional entities. HFFF aims to show that these paraphrases are inadequate. It also provides a truth-conditional treatment of those tokens that is committal whenever the realist’s intuitions would take those truthconditions to involve fictional characters. That is, whenever directly referential terms occur in such tokens (‘King Arthur’, ‘Roland’), and in some (but not all!) cases in which indirectly referential terms occur (‘Excalibur’s master’, ‘Charlemagne’s best paladin’) in such tokens. From the semantical point of view, this account rightly avoids any ad hoc treatment for fiction-involving language. For instance, once one accepts that proper names are directly referential devices, no descriptivist treatment of proper names occurring in that part of language is required. As far as the conniving use of sentences is concerned, proper names such as ‘King Arthur’ and ‘Roland’ directly refer to individuals although only make-believedly. This is tantamount to saying that they contribute those individuals – actually, pseudo-individuals – only to the fictional truth-conditions of the relevant sentential tokens (along the lines proposed by Recanati 2000). As far as metafictional uses are concerned, these proper names directly refer to fictional entities, thereby providing genuine referents for the real truth-conditions of the relevant sentential tokens. Yet if the realist stance on ficta relied only on a semantically realist account of the metafictional uses, this would not be enough. For one may perhaps ultimately find exceptions to that account that support the antirealist stance; or perhaps new antirealist paraphrases of sentences in the above uses are simply lurking in the background. Thus, it would be better if the realist stance were ultimately justified on ontological grounds. HFFF tries to do this by means of a very simple argument. If we admit a certain kind of entity, we cannot but admit all the other kinds of entities that figure in the identity conditions of such an entity. We admit fictional works, so we must also admit fictional objects, which figure in their identity conditions. As to fictional works, the main premise of the argument is justified by means of the following thought experiment, which I here give in its simplest form. Suppose that, while intending to address her imaginary companion, a poet writes ‘You flood yourself with the light of the immense.’ She thus composes a onesentenced story, and hence she mobilizes a certain fictional work. Suppose moreover that another poet, completely unconnected to the previous one, in thinking of her imaginary companion simultaneously writes another token of the same sentence. We would be ready to say that the second poet has composed another poem, © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Editorial Board of dialectica. Book Symposium 55 and hence that she has mobilized another fictional work. Now, there is no way to account for this difference but to say that these two works differ in their fictional protagonists. As a matter of fact, this account grounds the intuition that in the case in question the two poets have created different fictional characters. This intuition is the starting point that led artifactualists to reject the (Neo-)Meinongian approach to ficta. If we followed (Neo-)Meinongians, we would indeed be counterintuitively forced to say that in the envisaged hypothetical situation there is only one fictum, the one constituted by the property flooding oneself with the light of the immense, which is the only property the two poems allegedly mobilize. But the syncretist is quite happy with that intuition. Although the property, and hence the relevant property set, is one and the same, the make-believe process types that are involved in that situation are different. For the two poets completely unconnectedly make believe that there is someone flooding herself with the light of the immense. Thus, there are two – admittedly very thin – fictional characters. References Barbero, C. 2005, Madame Bovary: Something Like a Melody, Milan: Alboversorio. Recanati, F. 2000, Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Schiffer, S. 2003, The Things We Mean, Oxford: Clarendon Press. © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Editorial Board of dialectica.