Alberto Voltolini

Creationism with respect to fictional entities, i.e., the position according to which ficta are creations of human practices, has recently become the most popular realist account of fictional entities. For it allows one to hold that there are fictional entities while simultaneously giving such entities a respectable metaphysical status, that of abstract artifacts. In this paper, I will draw what are the ontological and semantical consequences of this position, or at least of all its forms that are genuinely creationist. For some people, these consequences will sound as plagues against the position; for some others, especially realists on ficta, they are welcome results. Although I hold that all forms of genuine creationism have these consequences, I will conclude by explaining why I take moderate creationism, according to which ficta are created by means of a reflexive stance on the make-believe practice grounding them, to be the best of these forms

Insofar as the so-called new theory of reference has come to be acknowleged as the leading theoretical paradigm in semantic research, it has been widely accepted that proper names directly refer to their designation. In advancing some of the most convincing arguments in favour of this view of names, S. Kripke has however left somehow undecided what the role of context is in determining which is the direct referent for a name. According to one interpretation of his thought, context has only an external task in allowing one to simultaneously select a name and a given referent for it. Although this interpretation is the most faithful to Kripke's own intentions, there is another possible interpretation of what he says, according to which context more significantly permits one to determine a given referent at a time for one and the same name1. This different interpretation of the role of context is not marginal for the purpose of semantics, since it generates two distinct theoretical conceptions of what a proper name is. According to the former, the 'idiosyncratic' conception, proper names are individuated (at least) by their form and bearer. According to the latter, the 'linguistic' conception, they are individuated by their morphology only: i.e., by their being (syntactically) unstructured strings of letters. The two conceptions prove to be substantially different when homonyms are called into play. Insofar as both the Greek philosopher and the famous shipowner are called "Aristotle", we have two distinct, albeit homonymous, names for the idiosyncratic conception but only one name (as applied to two distinct individuals) for the linguistic conception2. In what follows, I will first sketch one of the most recent attempts to support for the idiosyncratic view, namely the one which traces back to Kaplan [1990] theory of words, and recall its merits over its cognate idiosyncratic theories. I will then try to give an argument in favour of the linguistic conception, by pointing out how the latter....

On various occasions, Kendall Walton has put forward a theory of depiction based on the notion of make-believe: P depicts something only if in virtue of having a perception of P, one makes believe that that very experience is the perception of P’s subject. As a consequence, if an individual is not able to make believe, whatever they face in their perception does not count as a depiction for her. Yet there are many evidences from developmental psychology that show that very little children still unable to make believe can grasp a picture’s figurative value. As a result, Walton’s theory of depiction seems to be inadequate from an empirical point of view. Moreover, it also appears to be inadequate from a conceptual point of view. Walton’s ambition is to account in pretence-theoretical terms of what the twofold experience of seeing-in, which Wollheim took to be a necessary condition of depiction, amounts to. Yet relying on make-believe, hence on imagination, does not account for the genuinely perceptual character of the “seeing-in” experience. No treatment of imagination in terms of visualization seems to achieve such a purpose.

This book presents a novel theory of fictional entities which is syncretistic insofar as it integrates the work of previous authors. It puts forward a new metaphysical conception of the nature of these This This book presents a novel theory of fictional entities which is syncretistic insofar as it integrates the work of previous authors. It puts forward a new metaphysical conception of the nature of these entities, according to which a fictional entity is a compound entity built up from both a make-believe theoretical element and a set-theoretical element. The fictional entity is constructed by imagining the existence of an individual with certain properties and adding a set-theoretical element consisting of the set of properties corresponding to the properties of the imagined entity. Moreover, the book advances a new combined semantic and ontological defence of the existence of fictional entities.

An attempt is first made to clarify why Stephen Schiffer may legitimately claim that his noncompositional account of meaning differs from other non-compositional semantic doctrines such as the hidden-indexical theory of propositional attitudes. Subsequently, however, doubt is cast upon Schiffer's main contention that, as far as language of thought is concerned, a compositional supervenience theory can adequately satisfy all the desiderata a compositional meaning theory is traditionally called upon for. This doubt basically depends on the fact that, once a physical property is assigned by the compositional supervenience theory to the relevant nominal constituent of a Mentalese attitude report as the basic element on which the physical property assigned to the whole report depends, such a property precisely plays the role of a mode of presentation of the referent of that constituent. Finally, the following dilemma is arisen: in order to account for the meaning of attitude reports either the dismissal of modes of presentation or the rejection of compositionality is to be given up.

There is definitely a family resemblance between what contemporary contextualism maintains in philosophy of language and some of the claims about meaning put forward by the later Wittgenstein. Yet the main contextualist thesis, namely that linguistic meaning undermines truth-conditions, was not defended by Wittgenstein. If a claim in this regard can be retrieved in Wittgenstein despite his manifest antitheoretical attitude, it is instead that truth-conditions trivially supervene on linguistic meaning. There is, however, another Wittgensteinian claim that truly has a contextualist flavour, namely that linguistic meaning is itself wide-contextual. To be sure, this claim does not lead to the eliminativist/intentionalist conception of linguistic meaning that radical contextualists have recently developed. Rather, it goes together with a robust conception of linguistic meaning as intrinsically normative. Yet it may explain why Wittgenstein is taken to be a forerunner of contemporary contextualism.