Fictional Realist Research Articles

Speaking of Godot: Fiction, Reference, and Indeterminate Identities

Abstract Everett (2005) has argued that fictional realism runs into insuperable difficulties when faced with fictional stories in which there are indeterminate identities. By appeal to a principle linking the individuation of characters within stories and without, Everett argues that such stories entail that there are indeterminate identities outside of fiction on the fictional realist picture. And although indeterminate identities are perfectly acceptable within fiction, they are intolerable in the (nonfictional) world itself. In this paper, I develop the “extended-game” model of fiction according to which fictional characters are props—and, hence, potential objects of reference—in authorized games of make-believe for fictional works in which they appear but do not originate but are neither props nor potential objects of reference in authorized games for works in which they do originate. And I argue that this entails that Everett’s linking principle, on which his argument depends, simply fails to apply.

Against the Precisificational Approach to Fictional Inconsistencies

Fictional realists claim that fictional characters like Spiderman exist in reality. Against this view, Anthony Everett (2005; 2013) argues that fictional realists cannot determine whether characters α and β are identical if the relevant fiction states that α and β are identical and distinct at the same time. Some fictional realists, such as Ross Cameron (2013) and Richard Woodward (2017), respond to this objection by saying that the sense in which α and β are identical differs from the sense in which they are distinct. In this paper, I argue that Cameron and Woodward cannot handle all cases without undermining the theoretical foundation of their approach, namely, the thesis that the identity of fictional characters must be determined by the content of the relevant fiction.

Fiction and indeterminate identity

Abstract In ‘Against fictional realism’ Anthony Everett argues that fictional realism leads to indeterminate identity. He concludes that we should reject fictional realism. Everett’s paper and much of the ensuing literature does not discuss what exactly fictional characters are. This is a mistake. I argue that some versions of abstract creationism about fictional characters lead to indeterminate identity, and that some versions of Platonism about fictional characters lead only to indeterminate reference. In doing so I show that Everett’s argument poses a more pressing problem for abstract creationism than for Platonism. The general lesson is that fictional realists should think more about the ontology of fictional characters in order to discern whether they are committed to indeterminate identity.

On the Systematic Inadequacy of Fictionalism about Fictional Characters

Critical statements, if true, bear ontological commitments to fictional entities. A well-known version of fictionalism about fictional characters tries to eliminate these ontological commitments by proposing that we understand critical statements as prefixed by a special sentential operator, such as ‘according to a fictional realist theory’. The aim of the present paper is to show that fictionalism about fictional characters is underdeveloped as it stands because it can be shown to be systematically inadequate. Because the fictionalist’s paraphrases of critical statements suggest that fictional realists affirm the propositions expressed by critical statements, the fictionalist mistakenly attributes to fictional realists an expertise in matters that pertain to literary criticism. Importantly, this problem of misattributed expertise paves the way to other issues that might be much more devastating to the fictionalist project. It can be shown that, because she wrongly attributes expertise to fictional realists, the fictionalist unintentionally portrays fictional realist theories in a way that renders them inconsistent and self-defeating. This undermines fictionalism about fictional characters because it leaves no workable fictional realist account in which to ground a fictionalist explanation. This is why the fictionalist about fictional characters should try to eliminate the problem of misattributed expertise and its related issues. At the end of the paper, I sketch some of the available options in this regard.

Counting Again

The authors consider a recurring objection to fictional realism, the view that (broadly speaking) fictional characters are objects. The authors call this the counting objection. Russell presses a version of the objection against Meinong’s view. Everett presses a version of the objection against contemporary fictional realist views, as (in effect) do Nolan and Sandgren. As the authors see it, the objection assumes that the fictional realist must provide criteria of identity for fictional characters, so its force depends on the plausibility of that assumption. Rather than coming up with such criteria, a fictional realist might argue that the demand is misplaced.

Narrative Form and Facts, Facts, Facts: Elizabeth Gaskell'sLife of Charlotte Brontë

This essay places Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë in the context of responses it provoked from contemporaries, including their retrospective rereadings of Jane Eyre. By 1857, the novel form had come a long way from its eighteenth-century origins in the roman à clef, but some parts of Gaskell's Life return to and invert that tradition, reading almost like a clef to Jane Eyre—so much so as to force a printed retraction and substantial revisions. Gaskell wrote the Life well after fictionality emerged as a concept distinct from history and journalism. Nevertheless, in its intersection with Jane Eyre, the Life reveals the traces of fictional realist convention in factual accounts and, conversely, shows how far the novel, fictional form par excellence, retained an aura of facticity.

Are Fictional Characters and Literary Works Ontologically on a Par?

AbstractThis article is a reaction to the following argument that has been offered in favor of abstract realism about fictional characters: fictional characters do not impose any extra ontological cost on our ontology, because they belong to the same ontological kind as literary works, which we already accept. I address arguments that have been adduced by Jeffrey Goodman in defense of this argument, and I show that there is no relevant parallelism between fictional entities and literary works that the abstract fictional realist can use to bolster her theory.

Identity in Fiction

Anthony Everett () argues that those who embrace the reality of fictional entities run into trouble when it comes to specifying criteria of character identity. More specifically, he argues that realists must reject natural principles governing the identity and distinctness of fictional characters due to the existence of fictions which leave it indeterminate whether certain characters are identical and the existence of fictions which say inconsistent things about the identities of their characters. Everett's critique has deservedly drawn much attention and a number of defensive moves have been made by, or on the behalf of, fictional realists. My goal in this paper is to move this debate on a further step. I have three goals: (i) to clarify the importance of Everett's discussion of identity criteria within the context of fictional realism, (ii) to reassess Everett's objections to realism in light of the resultant literature, and (iii) to develop a novel strategy for responding to Everett's concerns. On the approach to be developed, the problems emerge due to an indeterminacy inherent in the concept of a fictional character itself.

CAROLYN DEVER and LISA NILES (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope.

TROLLOPE readers in search of empirical information have been well served by R. C. Terry’s An Oxford Reader’s Companion to Trollope (1999). But a collection of discursive essays by leading scholars is a valuable addition to the resources assisting readers of this major mid-Victorian novelist. It is easy to categorize Trollope on the basis of a few texts and The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope is right to take as its starting point a sense of what the Introduction calls the ‘dialectic’ (2) of Trollope’s art: familiar but also experimental; a fictional realist responsive to sensational plots; a writer whose novels frequently end apparently tidily with marriage who is persistently aware of the unresolved, the loose ends, the threatening potential of the unsaid. The Trollope presented here, as the editors rightly say in their Introduction, is one ‘both known and unsettling’ (2). It is in opening up and contextualizing the less familiar Trollope, indeed, that this volume’s best qualities are to be found. Readers not familiar with the substantial body of Trollope’s short stories, for instance, will find in Lisa Niles’ essay on ‘Trollope’s Short Fiction’ a valuable over-view of the freedom Trollope found—as did others—in the genre, with its invitation to the quirky, the partial, the glimpsed. Part of this freedom and surprise is simply to do with geographical settings. But it is also to do with the daring nature of the topics—the violence of ‘Aaron Trow’ (set in Bermuda); the libertinism of ‘Mrs General Talboys’; the amusing confusions of classes that result from nude bathing together in ‘The Turkish Bath’ (a valuable example of a flawed narrator).

Against a Defense of Fictional Realism

According to fictional realism, the realm of objects includes fictional characters. In ‘Against Fictional Realism’, Anthony Everett argues against fictional realism, in part on the grounds that it is committed to the claim that fictional characters can be indeterminately identical. In ‘In Defence of Fictional Realism’, Benjamin Schnieder and Tatjana von Solodkoff defend fictional realism by denying that it is committed to that claim. In this paper, we argue that their view is arbitrary, since there is no reason to prefer their principles to alternative ones. As a result, fictional realists who deny that fictional characters can be indeterminately identical need another response to Everett’s argument.

Just My Imagination? – Creation for Creationists

AbstractIn the debate on the ontology of fictional entities realists claim that fictional characters exist. Some fictional realists are Platonists. They claim that fictional characters are abstract entities that exist necessarily and are non-spatial and timeless. It seems that the author’s job is just to discover these entities. Other realists claim that fictional characters are abstract artefacts. Obviously these abstract artefacts do not have much in common with platonic entities. »Abstract« means, according to this creationistic account, that these artefacts are non-spatial entities. But as artefacts they are created and thus depend on someone who creates them and on the act of creation. Surprisingly, those realists do not say much about this process of creation. This article proposes an addition to the realist account at this point, focusing on the question of how fictional characters are created. However, my proposal is only concerned with the creation of fictional characters within the framework of fictional stories told by means of linguistic utterances. Therefore my question is: how can authors create fictional entities by telling fictional stories? I will begin by discussing whether an utterance act or a mere mental action, namely someone’s imagining something, is necessary or sufficient for the successful creation of fictional entities. I will distinguish two different interpretations of the claim that a person creates entities by imaging something and I will argue that realists should reject both versions of this claim. Constructively, I will go on to emphasize similarities between fictional entities and social entities like contracts and marriages. This is important because realists in the debate about social entities provide more detailed descriptions of the creation of social entities, details which can be adapted in order to describe the process by which fictional entities are created. I emphasize that this process, namely the fictional story telling, is a social practice. The social character of this practice will be shown in mainly two aspects: Firstly, I will argue that similar to the creation of other social entities for the creation of fictional characters there has to be a collectively recognised institution, namely the institution of fictional story telling. Thus, collective intentionality plays a crucial role in the process of this creation. As such an institution plays a decisive role I will go on to claim that the creation of an abstract artefact requires the performance not only of a mere utterance act, but of a successfully executed illocutionary act. By following Austin and Searle I will finally argue that only utterance tokens which in the specific situation are necessary to realize the illocutionary point or purpose can count as performances of illocutionary acts. In order to perform an illocutionary act successfully, the utterance must bring about an illocutionary uptake in the recipient/hearer, i. e. she must understand the utterance. Therefore, illocutionary acts can in general not be performed successfully without a hearer/recipient. Thus, to understand fictional story telling and the creation of fictional characters as a social practice means that the creative process cannot be explained exclusively in terms of imaginings. This does not mean that imagination does not play any role in producing or reading fiction. But creationists need more than imagination to explain how fictional characters are created. The aim of this paper is to take a step forward towards an explanation of the creation of fictional characters and thus to rendering the creationist’s account more plausible in (1) naming necessary conditions for successfully telling a fictional story, (2) describing it as a social praxis and (3) explaining the role collective intentionality plays in this practice, we have.

Talking about Something

In Talking about Nothing Azzouni defends a unified nominalist treatment of hallucinated objects, fictional objects and mathematical objects. I focus on his views about fictional objects, in particular, his objections to fictional realism. Azzouni's view is that fictional characters do not exist, i.e., ‘that the characters and events depicted aren't real; they correspond to nothing at all’ (Azzouni 2010: 3). However, he rejects any account of fictional discourse that replaces the ‘empty’ names of fictional characters with descriptions, or that in any other way seeks to make fictional discourse meaningful by reinterpreting it. He argues that when we use the ‘empty’ names of fictional characters to ‘refer’, our discourse has all the essential hallmarks of singular, object-directed speech. I will argue that Azzouni's arguments have an unintended consequence: they clear away many of the obstacles to commonsense realism about fictional objects. In fact, a fictional realist of a certain stripe can agree with almost everything Azzouni says, except for the bit about there being no fictional objects. The fictional realism I suggest denies that, in order to qualify as existent, fictional objects should be judged against non-fictional objects. Fictional entities are very different sorts of creatures from non-fictional entities, but they exist in a quite ordinary way.

On being a fictional character

Summary Reference, names and truth in fictional contexts are philosophically puzzling because unlike the case in ordinary situations, there are no such things as fictional characters to which we can refer, about which we can make truth claims and which can be named, and yet, the language we use about fictional characters seems to be meaningful in the same way as the language we use to talk about actual existent people and events. Although fictional realism, in claiming that fictional characters and events are (ike real ones in that they have properties, has the advantage that it can accommodate reference, truth and names for fictional characters it does so at the cost of ontological expansion. Furthermore, since the differences between radical and nonradical completeness are ignored by fictional realists, the Law of Excluded Middle is breached. This article, after examining a paradigm example of fictional realism and exposing its weaknesses, argues that if fictional characters are explained, not as having their properties but as being the total of their properties, ontological expansion is avoided, the Law of Excluded Middle can be retained and reference, truth and names in fictional contexts maintained.