Emily Caddick Bourne

Close attention to the nature of fiction reveals a number of issues which bear on mental fictionalism, here understood as a view that proposes a fictionalist treatment of folk psychology. After sketching a few such issues, the chapter unearths difficulties for a figurative fictionalist approach, concentrating on Adam Toon’s recent attempt to understand folk psychology in terms of Kendall Walton’s notion of prop-oriented make-believe and its relationship to metaphor. But while attention to the nature of fiction creates obstacles for those sympathetic to mental fictionalism, it also suggests opportunities. Utilizing a distinction between being _true in a fiction_ and being _true to a story_, the chapter sketches the beginnings of a brand of mental “storyism” that departs from mental fictionalism but may do justice to some fictionalist ambitions. Finally, it is suggested that attention to the nature of fiction offers a potential new solution to the so-called “fictionalist suicide” problem.

Incompleteness in fictional time series is considered. A fiction might leave it indefinite how long a certain event lasts, or which other fictional events it is simultaneous with (as in C. S. Lewis’s _The Chronicles of Narnia_, where it is not established which events within Narnia are simultaneous with which events outside Narnia). The surface similarities between _indefiniteness_ over temporal order and duration, and order and duration as represented in the special theory of relativity, are noted. In exploring the comparison, it is shown that the two are very different, which further helps to illuminate the notion of indefiniteness and the incompleteness of the time series represented. The discussion is extended to include fictions where many metrics are involved, using _Inception_ (2010, dir. C. Nolan) as an illustration. The chapter ends by showing what it is in general for a fiction to describe a world with an incomplete time series.

Fictions can leave certain features of their fictional worlds _indefinite_. For instance, a novel, film, play, or painting which does not declare whether a certain character is right-handed or left-handed leaves his handedness indefinite. The view that indefiniteness is a consequence of _incompleteness_ in a fictional world is presented. A logic for indefiniteness is developed—articulated using a third truth value, _indeterminate_—in which a disjunction can be true without having a true disjunct. Whether incompleteness is not just a feature of fictional worlds but also of the actual world is considered, taking superposition (found in quantum mechanics) as an example of incompleteness. It is shown that there is nothing objectionable in this (and thus nothing objectionable in taking fictional worlds to be incomplete either). Finally, the preferred account is compared with an alternative which treats indefiniteness in terms of the representation of more than one world.

_Truth in a fiction_ is distinguished from being _true to a story_. This allows for articulating in a sentence S what one _takes_ to be an accurate report of a story without S _being_ an accurate description of any possible world (i.e. without S stating anything which is true in a fiction). Explanation is given of how sentences with no content (because impossible) can be (mis)taken to have content. To do this, the notion of ‘Ely change’ (as opposed to genuine change, and so-called ‘Cambridge’ change), which involves taking one type of change for another, is introduced. The account is applied to Priest’s ‘Sylvan’s Box’, showing how an impression of impossibility is generated without having to say an impossible world is described. In the process, it is shown that apparent reasoning with counterlogicals can be understood in terms of genuine counterfactual reasoning together with what is true to the story.

How to understand the appearance of actual objects and times in fiction is shown by extending the notion of counterpart so that it can apply to times as much as to, e.g., persons. The chapter focuses on Orwell’s _1984_ in exploring the notion of counterpart times, and poses what it calls the ‘paradox of fictional times’: how can a fiction set in the past be set in the future? The account given of what it is for a fiction to be _set in_ a particular period captures uncontentious cases of fictions set in the past, and shows what it means to use locutions like ‘Once upon a time…’. It also suggests significant differences between setting a fiction in the past and setting it in the future, and it allows the paradox of fictional times to be resolved. Finally, it shows how _1984_ manages to deliver an enduring message.

What to make of the persistence and identity of characters in cases of radical transformations, sequels, and series is considered. The account given of this—utilizing counterparts—is used to answer the question of what makes something the same character _across_ different fictions, such as adaptations. The changes a character seems to undergo when being formed by a fiction-maker are also considered. It is argued that this appearance of change is a special case of the kind of change which explains the illusions of persistence in the stories analysed in previous chapters, where the impression of change in a single thing is generated by a change of one representation for another. (Chapter 12 calls this ‘Ely change’.) In the final part of the chapter, these resources are used to explain how fictional truth itself sometimes appears to undergo genuine change over actual time.

The representation of duration and of motion in visual fictions is considered. A _norm of duration_ is introduced, which leads to a characterization of what it takes to represent motion as continuous or discrete. Various examples of stop-motion animation are considered, to show that the judgement of whether continuous or discrete motion has been represented enriches the interpretative process and thus is of aesthetic as well as metaphysical importance. Consideration is then given to static images, such as paintings, and it is argued that a central principle concerning truth in fiction helps to explain the capacity of such images to represent different times. In most cases, however, static images represent their events as happening simultaneously. An explanation of this is offered in terms of a _norm of simultaneity_ arising from the visual nature of pictorial representation.

What counts as time travel and whether it is possible is discussed. The difficulties in establishing that genuine time travel has been represented by a fiction are shown. Whilst it leaves open whether time travel to the past is itself possible, the chapter shows how someone who takes it to be impossible can nevertheless accommodate such stories within the book’s possible-worlds framework. Discussion then focuses on _Back to the Future_ (1985, dir. R. Zemeckis), showing how to explain it in terms of possible worlds despite its seeming to involve an impossibility, namely changing the past. To show how the film creates an appearance of certain events being genuinely explained by the past having been changed, the argument draws on ideas from Chapter 7 concerning the status of fictional hypotheses and fictional explanations, and supplements this with an account of how audience members reason with counterfactuals.

Apparent cases of recurring time are considered, such as _Groundhog Day_ (1993, dir. H. Ramis) and _Repeaters_ (2010, dir. C. Bessai), which give the impression of characters being trapped in a recurring day. The resources of possible worlds and counterparts are utilized to show how the impression is created of a single character’s persistence through the ‘resetting’ of the same day. It is argued that this treatment not only obviates the need to posit impossible content but also facilitates an understanding of the stories’ morals. Consideration is given to the status of fictional hypotheses concerning apparent recurrence, and what becomes of their apparent explanatory force once one denies that the fictional day ‘resets’, something which is particularly well illustrated by using the film _Edge of Tomorrow_ (2014, dir. D. Liman). There is also a discussion of how the view proposed has potential applications for actual-world scientific hypotheses.

Apparent cases of pausing and rewinding time are considered. Explanation is given of how some fictions, such as _Cashback_ (2005, dir. S. Ellis), generate the appearance of paused time, despite not representing a world where time has stopped. Detailed analysis is given of _Funny Games_ (1997, dir. M. Haneke), in which it appears that time is rewound. It is shown how the film provides further support for the account of anachrony from Chapter 5, and how a possible-worlds analysis illuminates the film’s elements of metafiction. Finally, an account is given of an extreme kind of rewind found in Roald Dahl’s _Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator_. It is argued that not only does the book’s possible-worlds account give a neat analysis of these cases, showing that fiction provides no reason to posit impossible worlds, but the possible-worlds framework also succeeds in bringing out the so-called ‘point’ of such stories.

Apparent cases of branching time are considered. Some stories present two alternative courses of events which appear to ‘branch’ from a single point in time (whether as a ‘fission’ or a ‘fusion’). These cases give the impression of representing a branching time series, where events along one branch are temporally related to each other, but not to events along the other branch. This is argued to be an illusion. Rather than a representation of two branches of _time_ which join in a common trunk, what we have here is two _representations_ which share some of their parts. An explanation is given of how this can account for the appearance of causality between the events along the ‘trunk’ and those along the ‘branches’. Dealing with such cases employs resources which continue to be important in later chapters, such as quasi-memories and a distinction between fictions and stories.

The question of whether there are any future-tensed fictional truths is considered. Le Poidevin takes some fictions to be ones in which the future is fixed. Shakespeare’s _Macbeth_, for example, is, according to Le Poidevin, a fiction in which it is true at the time the weird sisters first speak to Macbeth that _Macbeth will be king_. By looking closely at _Macbeth_ and its themes of foreknowledge and prophecy, it is argued that there is an _appearance_ of fixity in _Macbeth_ (and similar cases) but that this is not generated by the fictional future itself being fixed. The chapter shows how the notion of a _quasi-miracle_ helps in a full explanation of how the appearance of fixity is generated. Further, it is argued that this gives a better account of how audiences should approach the play.

The chapter explores the implications of the fact that our engagement with actual time series is _perspectival_: we occupy a certain position in time (the _present_) and classify events as _past_ and _future_ from that point of view. Since we do not occupy a position within the world of a fiction, we do not have a temporal perspective on fictional events and cannot ascribe to them locations in the past, present, or future. The apparent consequence of this—drawn by Le Poidevin—that fictional time series form B-series and not A-series, is shown to be mistaken. In the process, consideration is given to the fictional present and our imaginative location in fictional worlds. The chapter also argues that anachrony poses no problems for thinking of fictional time as forming an A-series, and shows how to modify an otherwise plausible definition of anachrony which fails to distinguish anachrony from disunified time.

Some existing philosophical theories of time and tense are surveyed. Some of the features of time which a theory must account for, such as time’s flow, are introduced. It is explained how theories of time can be distinguished by whether they take time to form an A-series (which orders events in terms of their relation to a continually changing present moment, i.e. in terms of their being past, present, or future), or whether they take time to form a B-series only (which orders events in terms of their being earlier than, later than, or simultaneous with each other). It is explained how tensed language might be construed as indicating objective features of time or subjective perspectives within time. Understanding theories of actual time series sets up the investigation into the nature of fictional time series.

The book’s framework for thinking about fiction is introduced. It treats fictions as describing fictional worlds. It takes fictional worlds to be possible worlds. And it takes possible worlds to be just like ours in the sense of containing objects and events which are spatio-temporally related to each other. Where to situate this account of fiction amongst competing theories of fiction is explained. The position is compared with various types of realism and anti-realism in the philosophy of fiction. How the position deals with some core examples of discourse about fiction, such as sentences involving a fiction operator, is explained. An explanation is also given of some of the important distinctions to be made between our position and two neighbouring theories, those of David Lewis and Graham Priest.

A summary is given of the topics of the book, which fall under four main themes: (1) tense in fiction, (2) temporal structures and the structures of representations, (3) identity and persistence, and (4) the nature of worlds and their representation. Some of the important features of the book’s account are introduced, such as the possible-worlds framework it employs for understanding the representation of time in fiction and the nature of fictional time series, and the argument that this framework can account for ‘impossible’ fictions whilst denying that fictions genuinely represent impossibilities. Some of the central features of the methodology employed in the book are also introduced, including distinguishing carefully between features of a representation and features of what is represented, and giving detailed analyses of particular worked examples.

What do we make of someone who claims not to believe something, and yet whose behaviours suggest belief – such as someone who claims not to believe in ghosts, yet refuses to walk through the graveyard at night, or someone who claims to know that they have switched off the oven, yet feels the need to go and check? Some have proposed treating cases like these in terms of states of ‘half belief’ or ‘in-between’ belief. We propose that sometimes these cases are best understood not as an epistemic matter concerning such compromised belief states, but rather as an aesthetic matter concerning imaginative states and what they enable us to appreciate about the actual world. Anxiety over the graveyard, or over the oven, can be characterised in terms of the explanatory structures the person is disposed to imagine – explanatory structures which the person knows are non-actual, but which would explain were the world to work differently. Overactive imagination is where one’s preoccupation with imagining a non-actual explanatory structure takes priority over things that it should not. Underactive imagination is where a person is insensitive to how aspects of the world support the imagining of non-actual explanatory structures.

Adam Toon’s Mind as Metaphor ends with an epilogue on the ghost in the machine. For Toon, the story of the mind is a ghost story told for good reason. His account of how a disbelieved story can be worth telling attempts to combine appeals to fiction and to metaphor. We start by raising concerns about the cogency of the elements Toon has selected to articulate such a view, which draws on Kendall Walton’s treatment of metaphor as prop-oriented make-believe. We then develop David Lewis’s notion of a quasi-miracle to suggest an alternative which retains the spirit of Toon’s fictionalism, but which better accommodates how agents’ behaviors are recognized as being suited to (untrue) folk-psychological explanations. This reveals something new about why ghost stories are a telling reference point: recognizing agents’ behaviors as things that would be explained by inner representations parallels the aesthetic experience of the uncanny. Our alternative also offers fictionalists a neat way to address an aspect of mind that Toon does not tackle: the hard problem of consciousness.

Nikk Effingham and Huw Price argue that in certain cases of Newcomb problems involving time travel and foreknowledge, being given information about the future makes it rational to choose as an evidential decision theorist would choose. Although the cases they consider have some intuitive pull, and so appear to aid in answering the question of what it is rational to do, we argue that their respective positions are not compelling. Newcomb problems are structured such that whichever way one chooses, one might be led by one’s preferred decision theory to miss out on some riches (riches which others obtain whilst employing their preferred decision theory). According to the novel aesthetic diagnosis we shall offer of the Newcomb dialectic, missing out in this way does not render one irrational but, rather, subject to being seen as absurd. This is a different kind of cost but not one that undermines one’s rationality.

We argue that some fictional truths are fictionally true by default. We also argue that these fictional truths are subject to being undermined. We propose that the context within which we are to evaluate what is fictionally true changes when a possibility which was previously ignorable is brought to attention. We argue that these cases support a model of fictional truth which makes the conversational dynamics of determining truth in fiction structurally akin to the conversational dynamics of knowledge-ascription, as this is understood by David Lewis’s contextualist approach to knowledge. We show how a number of the rules which Lewis proposes for the case of knowledge-ascription can be employed to develop a novel and powerful framework for the case of truth in fiction.

Is there any difference between playing video games in which the player’s character commits murder and video games in which the player’s character commits pedophilic acts? Morgan Luck’s “Gamer’s Dilemma” has established this question as a puzzle concerning notions of permissibility and harm. We propose that a fruitful alternative way to approach the question is through an account of aesthetic engagement. We develop an alternative to the dominant account of the relationship between players and the actions of their characters, and argue that the ethical difference between so-called “virtual murder” and “virtual pedophilia” is to be understood in terms of the fiction-making resources available to players. We propose that the relevant considerations for potential players to navigate concern (1) attempting to make certain characters intelligible, and (2) using aspects of oneself as resources for homomorphic representation.

Kathleen Stock’s engaging and careful book demonstrates that ‘extreme intentionalism’ – the view that a fiction’s content is determined by what its author actually intended – has for too long been held back by a set of familiar objections.1 1 It is often thought to have implausible consequences involving disregarding conventional meaning, permitting undetectable fictional content, denying that authorial intentions can be unsuccessful, or giving too much importance to extraneous indications of intention and too little to the work itself. All these objections, Stock argues, are overplayed, all are answerable, and several ultimately favour extreme intentionalism over its rivals. Stock’s defence of extreme intentionalism grounds a view of imaginative resistance, an account of the fiction/non-fiction distinction and of what an individual fiction is, and a characterization of propositional imagining and of the nature of supposition.

Personification has received little philosophical attention, but Daniel Nolan has recently argued that it has important ramifications for the relationship between fictional representation and possibility. Nolan argues that personification involves the representation of metaphysically impossible identities, which is problematic for anyone who denies that fictions can have impossible content. We develop an account of personification which illuminates how personification enhances engagement with fiction, without need of impossible content. Rather than representing an identity, personification is something that is done with representations—a matter of use rather than content—and involves only a comparison of possibilities. We illustrate our account using the personification of death in the film Meet Joe Black, and show that there are no grounds for taking it to be fictionally true that there is a metaphysically impossible identity between Death and death.

David Lewis introduced the idea of a quasi-miracle to overcome a problem in his initial account of counterfactuals. Here we put the notion of a quasi-miracle to a different and new use, showing that it offers a novel account of the phenomenon of poetic justice, where characters in a narrative get their due by happy accident. The key to understanding poetic justice is to see what makes poetically just events remarkable coincidences. We argue that remarkable coincidence is to be understood in terms of a distinctive type of experience quasi-miracles offer. Cases of poetic justice offer a dual awareness of the accidental nature of the events and of a non-accidental process, involving intention, which it appears would explain them. We also extend this account to incorporate how we might experience magic tricks. An account of poetic justice as quasi-miraculous allows us to account for the experience of encounters with poetic justice, as involving the incongruity of seeing design in accident.

ABSTRACT In 'An Insoluble Problem', Storrs McCall presents an argument which he takes to reveal the real problem with backwards time travel. McCall asks us to imagine a scenario in which a renowned artist produces his famous works by copying them from reproductions brought back to him by a time-travelling art critic. The novelty of the scenario lies in its introduction of aesthetic constraints on the possibility of time travel, something which sets it apart from other time travel cases. McCall states that 'The puzzle lies... in finding where artistic creativity enters the equation', and that 'Unlike the traditional "paradoxes of time travel", this problem has no solution'. We offer four responses to McCall's puzzle. Whilst we show that the puzzle is not insoluble, we also argue that it reveals something about the proper relationship between copying and creativity, which may not have been apparent without considering time travel.

"Iago's 'I am not what I am' epitomises how Shakespeare's work is rich in philosophy, from issues of deception and moral deviance to those concerning the complex nature of the self, the notions of being and identity, and the possibility or impossibility of self-knowledge and knowledge of others. The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy examines the following important topics: - What roles can be played in an approach to Shakespeare by drawing on philosophical frameworks and the work of philosophers? - What can philosophical theories of meaning and communication show about the dynamics of Shakespearean interactions, and vice versa? - How are notions such as political and social obligation, justice, equality, love, agency, and the ethics of interpersonal relationships demonstrated in Shakespeare's works? - What do the plays and poems invite us to say about the nature of knowledge, belief, doubt, deception and epistemic responsibility? - How can the ways in which Shakespeare's characters behave illuminate existential issues concerning meaning, absurdity, death and nothingness? - What might Shakespeare's characters and their actions show about the nature of the self, the mind, and the identity of individuals? - How can Shakespeare's works inform philosophical approaches to notions such as beauty, humour, horror and tragedy? - How do Shakespeare's works illuminate philosophical questions about the nature of fiction, the attitudes and expectations involved in engagement with theatre, and the role of acting and actors in creating representations? The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in aesthetics, philosophy of literature and philosophy of theatre"--