Fiction and Fictionalism

Fiction and Fictionalism
Author: R. M. Sainsbury
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2009-09-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1135278342

Are fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes real? Fiction and Fictionalism is an excellent introduction to this central topic in philosophy and includes chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary of technical terms.

Fictionalism in Philosophy

Fictionalism in Philosophy
Author: Bradley Armour-Garb
Publisher:
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2020
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0190689609

This volume collects some of the most up-to-date work on philosophical fictionalism-the idea that a notion of pretense or fiction can help resolve certain puzzles or problems in philosophy. After a detailed discussion in the book's introductory chapter of how philosophers should think of fictionalism and its connection to metaontology more generally, the remaining chapters provide readers with arguments for and against this view from leading scholars in the fields of epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and others.

Moral Fictionalism

Moral Fictionalism
Author: Mark Eli Kalderon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2005-04-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199275971

Moral realists maintain that morality has a distinctive subject matter. Specifically, realists maintain that moral discourse is representational, that moral sentences express moral propositions - propositions that attribute moral properties to things. Noncognitivists, in contrast, maintain that the realist imagery associated with morality is a fiction, a reification of our noncognitive attitudes. The thought that there is a distinctively moral subject matter is regarded as somethingto be debunked by philosophical reflection on the way moral discourse mediates and makes public our noncognitive attitudes. The realist fiction might be understood as a philosophical misconception of a discourse that is not fundamentally representational but whose intent is rather practical.There is, however, another way to understand the realist fiction. Perhaps the subject matter of morality is a fiction that stands in no need of debunking, but is rather the means by which our attitudes are conveyed. Perhaps moral sentences express moral propositions, just as the realist maintains, but in accepting a moral sentence competent speakers do not believe the moral proposition expressed but rather adopt the relevant non-cognitive attitudes. Noncognitivism, in its primary sense, is aclaim about moral acceptance: the acceptance of a moral sentence is not moral belief but is some other attitude. Standardly, non-cognitivism has been linked to non-factualism - the claim that the content of a moral sentence does not consist in its expressing a moral proposition. Indeed, the terms'noncognitivism' and 'nonfactualism' have been used interchangeably. But this misses an important possibility, since moral content may be representational but the acceptance of moral sentences might not be belief in the moral proposition expressed. This possibility constitutes a novel form of noncognitivism, moral fictionalism. Whereas nonfactualists seek to debunk the realist fiction of a moral subject matter, the moral fictionalist claims that that fiction stands in no need of debunking butis the means by which the noncognitive attitudes involved in moral acceptance are conveyed by moral utterance. Moral fictionalism is noncognitivism without a non-representational semantics.

Fictionalism in Metaphysics

Fictionalism in Metaphysics
Author: Mark Eli Kalderon
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2005-07-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191557757

Fictionalism is the view that a serious intellectual inquiry need not aim at truth. It came to prominence in philosophy in 1980, when Hartry Field argued that mathematics does not have to be true to be good, and Bas van Fraassen argued that the aim of science is not truth but empirical adequacy. Both suggested that the acceptance of a mathematical or scientific theory need not involve belief in its content. Thus the distinctive commitment of fictionalism is that acceptance in a given domain of inquiry need not be truth-normed, and that the acceptance of a sentence from the associated region of discourse need not involve belief in its content. In metaphysics fictionalism is now widely regarded as an option worthy of serious consideration. This volume represents a major benchmark in the debate: it brings together an impressive international team of contributors, whose essays (all but one of them appearing here for the first time) represent the state of the art in various areas of metaphysical controversy, relating to language, mathematics, modality, truth, belief, ontology, and morality.

Fictional Discourse

Fictional Discourse
Author: Stefano Predelli
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2020-01-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192595962

Fictional Discourse: A Radical Fictionalist Semantics combines the insight of linguistic and philosophical semantics with the study of fictional language. Its central idea is familiar to anyone exposed to the ways of narrative fiction, namely the notion of a fictional teller. Starting with premises having to do with fictional names such as 'Holmes' or 'Emma', Stefano Predelli develops Radical Fictionalism, a theory that is subsequently applied to central themes in the analysis of fiction. Among other things, he discusses the distinction between storyworlds and narrative peripheries, the relationships between homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narrative, narrative time, unreliability, and closure. The final chapters extend Radical Fictionalism to critical discourse, as Predelli introduces the ideas of critical and biased retelling, and pauses on the relationships between Radical Fictionalism and talk about literary characters.

Mental Fictionalism

Mental Fictionalism
Author: Tamás Demeter
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2022-04-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000584003

What are mental states? When we talk about people’s beliefs or desires, are we talking about what is happening inside their heads? If so, might cognitive science show that we are wrong? Might it turn out that mental states do not exist? Mental fictionalism offers a new approach to these longstanding questions about the mind. Its core idea is that mental states are useful fictions. When we talk about mental states, we are not formulating hypotheses about people’s inner machinery. Instead, we simply talk "as if" people had certain inner states, such as beliefs or desires, in order to make sense of their behaviour. This is the first book dedicated to exploring mental fictionalism. Featuring contributions from established authors as well as up-and-coming scholars in this burgeoning field, the book reveals the exciting potential of a fictionalist approach to the mind, as well as the challenges it faces. In doing so, it offers a fresh perspective on foundational debates in the philosophy of mind, such as the nature of mental states and folk psychology, as well as hot topics in the field, such as embodied cognition and mental representation. Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and professionals alike.

Mathematics and Reality

Mathematics and Reality
Author: Mary Leng
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2010-04-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191576247

Mary Leng offers a defense of mathematical fictionalism, according to which we have no reason to believe that there are any mathematical objects. Perhaps the most pressing challenge to mathematical fictionalism is the indispensability argument for the truth of our mathematical theories (and therefore for the existence of the mathematical objects posited by those theories). According to this argument, if we have reason to believe anything, we have reason to believe that the claims of our best empirical theories are (at least approximately) true. But since claims whose truth would require the existence of mathematical objects are indispensable in formulating our best empirical theories, it follows that we have good reason to believe in the mathematical objects posited by those mathematical theories used in empirical science, and therefore to believe that the mathematical theories utilized in empirical science are true. Previous responses to the indispensability argument have focussed on arguing that mathematical assumptions can be dispensed with in formulating our empirical theories. Leng, by contrast, offers an account of the role of mathematics in empirical science according to which the successful use of mathematics in formulating our empirical theories need not rely on the truth of the mathematics utilized.

War over Lemuria

War over Lemuria
Author: Richard Toronto
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2013-05-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 078647307X

Life magazine described the Shaver Mystery as "the most celebrated rumpus that rocked the science fiction world." Its creators said it was a "new wave in science fiction." Critics called it "dangerous nonsense" and labeled its fans the lunatic fringe. Whatever else the Shaver Mystery was, it became a worldwide sensation between 1945 and 1948, one of the greatest controversies to hit the science fiction genre. Today these stories of the remnants of a sinister ancient civilization living in caverns under the Earth are an all but forgotten sidebar to the historical record. The Shaver Mystery began as a series of science fiction yarns in Amazing Stories nearly 70 years ago. The men behind it, Ray Palmer and Richard Shaver, were derided and seldom understood by a fandom that did its best to sweep them under the carpet of history. Though Ray Palmer was one of the earliest and biggest names in SF fandom, credited with many firsts in his field, his fannish brethren have roundly ignored him, thanks to the Shaver Mystery. What is the truth behind these men and their "mystery"? This is the question writers and editors that promoted the Shaver Mystery try to answer as they reveal the behind-the-scenes story of the phenomenon known as "Shaverism."

Fiction and Metaphysics

Fiction and Metaphysics
Author: Amie L. Thomasson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1999
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521640800

Amie Thomasson argues that fiction has far-reaching implications for central problems of metaphysics.

The Myth of Morality

The Myth of Morality
Author: Richard Joyce
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2001-11-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1139430939

In The Myth of Morality, Richard Joyce argues that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed. At the heart of ordinary moral judgements is a notion of moral inescapability, or practical authority, which, upon investigation, cannot be reasonably defended. Joyce argues that natural selection is to blame, in that it has provided us with a tendency to invest the world with values that it does not contain, and demands that it does not make. Should we therefore do away with morality, as we did away with other faulty notions such as witches? Possibly not. We may be able to carry on with morality as a 'useful fiction' - allowing it to have a regulative influence on our lives and decisions, perhaps even playing a central role - while not committing ourselves to believing or asserting falsehoods, and thus not being subject to accusations of 'error'.