scholarly journals Talking about Hamlet

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Everett
Keyword(s):  
Fictional Characters ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Fictional Names

AbstractOne argument for fictional realism, the view that there are such things as fictional characters, proceeds by arguing that we need to accept there are fictional characters in order to provide an adequate account of intuitively true and meaningful reports containing fictional names, reports such as »In

The Language of Fiction

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Fictional Characters ◽  
New Research ◽  
Fictional Names ◽  
Philosophy Of Fiction ◽  
And Linguistics ◽  
Literary Techniques ◽  
Fictional Story ◽  
Fictional Truth

The Language of Fiction brings together new research on fiction from philosophy and linguistics. Fiction is a topic that has long been studied in philosophy. Yet recently there has been a surge of work on fictional discourse in the intersection between linguistics and philosophy of language. There has been a growing interest in examining long-standing issues concerning fiction from a perspective informed both by philosophy and linguistic theory. The Language of Fiction contains fourteen essays by leading scholars in both fields, as well as a substantial Introduction by the editors. The collection is organized in three parts, each with their own introduction. Part I, “Truth, reference, and imagination”, offers new, interdisciplinary perspectives on some of the central themes from the philosophy of fiction: What is fictional truth? How do fictional names refer? What kind of speech act is involved in telling a fictional story? What is the relation between fiction and imagination? Part II, “Storytelling”, deals with themes originating from the study of narrative: How do we infer a coherent story from a sequence of event descriptions? And how do we interpret the words of impersonal or unreliable narrators? Part III, “Perspective shift”, zooms in on an alleged key characteristic of fictional narratives, viz. the way we get access to the fictional characters’ inner lives, through a variety of literary techniques for representing what they say, think, or see.

Rethinking Role Realism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Glavaničová
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
General Idea ◽  
Fictional Characters ◽  
Realist Theory ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Individual Concepts ◽  
Gregory Currie ◽  
Fictional Names

Abstract Role realism is a promising realist theory of fictional names. Different versions of this theory have been suggested by Gregory Currie, Peter Lamarque, Stein Haugom Olsen, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The general idea behind the approach is that fictional characters are to be analysed in terms of roles, which in turn can be understood as sets of properties (or alternatively as kinds or functions from possible worlds to individuals). I will discuss several advantages and disadvantages of this approach. I will then propose a novel hyperintensional version of role realism (which I will call impossibilism), according to which fictional names are analysed in terms of individual concepts that cannot be matched by a reference (a full-blooded individual). I will argue that this account avoids the main disadvantages of standard role realism.

Fiction

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lamarque
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Fictional Characters ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Abstract Entities ◽  
General Semantics ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Fictional Names

Aspects of fiction or fictionality have long intrigued and puzzled philosophers across a surprisingly wide range of the subject, including metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of language, and aesthetics. What is fiction exactly, and how is it distinguished from nonfiction? One prominent set of problems relates to fictional names (such as “Sherlock Holmes,” “the Time Machine,” “Casterbridge”), concerning how they might fit into a general semantics for natural languages. Should they be eliminated by paraphrase or should they be acknowledged as proper names, albeit referring to nonreal items? Related problems arise for ontology. Should we admit fictional entities into our ontology, affording them some kind of being (as abstract entities, perhaps, or as possible objects)? Or again, should we find ways to eliminate them? Another difficulty stems from the fact that well-developed fictional characters in realist novels can often seem more real than actual people. Not only are they spoken and thought about but they can also occupy a significant role in ordinary people’s lives, including their emotional lives. How can this be explained? How can people respond with such powerful feelings to beings they know are merely made up? Also, how is it that readers sometimes have difficulty imagining the content of stories? Philosophers writing in aesthetics about literature as an art form have explored the modes of representing fictional characters, the values storytelling might have, and the potential for works of literary fiction to convey truths about the real world. Finally, appeals to fiction are sometimes made to explain whole areas of discourse, such as mathematics or morals, where there is a reluctance to admit familiar kinds of propositions as literal truths because of their ontological commitments. Thus, “fictionalism” has been promoted: the idea that strictly speaking it is better to view the discourse as a species of fiction, even while acting as if the discourse contained straightforward truths.

Zalta on Encoding Fictional Properties

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Klauk
Keyword(s):  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Fictional Characters ◽  
Abstract Object ◽  
Fictional Objects ◽  
Internal Properties ◽  
Fictional Names

AbstractTheories which take fictional objects to be a kind of abstract object are faced with the obvious problem of how to explain the seeming truth of sentences ascribing internal properties. Abstract objects cannot be cynical, be magicians or smoke pipe. Call this the problem of the wrong kind of object. There are a number of well-known strategies which abstractists have employed to evade the problem. In this paper, I discuss whether Edward Zalta’s distinction between two kinds of predication, exemplifying and encoding, can help us solve the problem.I start out in section 2 by reviewing the general debate between realists and antirealists concerning fictional objects. Realists think that fictional objects exist, while antirealists deny this. It is however useful to remember that participants in the debate differ in their interpretation of »exists« and »fictional«. Remembering this helps to locate Zalta’s account in the realist camp.Section 3 introduces the problem of the wrong kind of object, namely of how we can simultaneously take fictional objects to be abstract objects and understand sentences like »Rick Blaine is cynical« as straightforwardly true. I distinguish five strategies of dealing with this problem. Abstractists can (a) assume that fictional names are ambiguous, (b) distinguish between two kinds of properties, (c) understand such sentences as being governed by a fiction operator, (d) distinguish between two kinds of predication, or (e) take the predicate to be evaluated in some special way (which needs to be specified). I shortly comment on (a) and (b), then a problem for strategy (c) is discussed: It seems to commit us to the view that fictions prescribe recipients to imagineSection 4 introduces strategy (d), Zalta’s distinction between exemplifying and encoding. The distinction turns out to be a remedy against the problem of the wrong kind of object. Unfortunately it reintroduces the problem identified for strategy (c). I explore a radical way of evading the problem by understanding fictional objects to be representations. Although the idea can be found in Zalta’s writings, it leads to internal tensions in his account, cannot solve the problem at hand, and seems to generate additional problems. Additionally, Zalta’s assumption that fictional objects have their individuation conditions via the properties they encode is shown to be problematic on independent grounds.Section 5 discusses whether Zalta’s distinction between exemplifying and encoding is compatible with an artefactualist account of fictional characters. Assuming that most artefactualists would not want to understand existence as a discriminating predicate, I argue that combining this idea with the exemplifying/encoding distinction goes at least against the spirit of the artefactualist account.Section 6 introduces the idea of different evaluations of predicates without simultaneously being committed to Zalta’s strong assumptions. While this seems to be possible, such accounts also need to find a way of answering the argument given at the end of section 3.

scholarly journals Singular Reference in Fictional Discourse?

Disputatio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (54) ◽  
pp. 143-177
Author(s):  
Manuel García-Carpintero
Keyword(s):  
Special Problem ◽  
Fictional Characters ◽  
Simple Sentence ◽  
Singular Terms ◽  
Singular Reference ◽  
Fictional Names

Abstract Singular terms used in fictions for fictional characters raise well-known philosophical issues, explored in depth in the literature. But philosophers typically assume that names already in use to refer to “moderatesized specimens of dry goods” cause no special problem when occurring in fictions, behaving there as they ordinarily do in straightforward assertions. In this paper I continue a debate with Stacie Friend, arguing against this for the exceptionalist view that names of real entities in fictional discourse don’t work there as they do in simple-sentence assertions, but rather as fictional names do.

From universalism to individualism: New approaches to economic growth analysis

2019 ◽  
pp. 108-126
Author(s):  
Ivan L. Lyubimov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Structural Transformation ◽  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Growth Analysis ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Catching Up

This paper examines the evolution of academic and applied approaches to analyze the problem of economic growth since the mid-XX century. For quite an extended period of time, these views were corresponding to universalist economic policies taking no adequate account of particularities and limitations that a certain catching-up economy embodied. New approaches analyzing the problems of economic growth, on the contrary, individualize growth diagnostics, structural transformation and the organization of reforms processes for the emerging economies. We argue that individualist approaches might be potentially more effective than the universalist ones for solving the problem of slow economic growth.

An American Dream

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
R. J. Hansen
Keyword(s):  
American Dream ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Hard Core ◽  
Fictional Characters

Malfunctioning of new technology causes mass confusion at the ballot box on the Election Day: people vote for fictional characters, actors who play them, and dead presidents; hard-core Republicans find themselves voting for Democratic candidates and proud liberals give their votes to representatives of the GOP.

Comedy, Class, and Nation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Tew
Keyword(s):  
Youth Culture ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Cultural Narrative ◽  
Cultural Commodification ◽  
Comic Novel ◽  
Post War ◽  
Recurrent Motifs

This chapter studies the comic novel. If British and Irish culture in the post-war decades underwent some radical social and political upheavals, the novel registered and critiqued these transformations in part through the development of a particular comic mode. Comedy in British and Irish novels published from 1940 to 1973 often turned around the difficult intersection of class and nation. Alongside this overarching attention to class and nation, a number of other recurrent motifs can be traced in the comic novel of the period, such as the representation of cultural commodification, the decline of traditional values, and the emergence of new forms of youth culture. In the context of such widespread changes to the narratives that shaped public life, the comic novel expressed an ironic scepticism concerning the capacity of any cultural narrative to offer an adequate account of contemporary identities.

On Convention and Coherence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kehler ◽  
Jonathan Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Ambiguity Resolution ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Language Understanding ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment

A bedrock principle in pragmatics is that the linguistic signals produced by speakers generally underdetermine the meanings that are communicated to interpreters. For Grice, for instance, utterance meaning lies close to what is overtly encoded, allowing only for the resolution of indexicals, tense, reference, and ambiguity. Lepore and Stone (L&S) agree, but with a stunning twist: they analyze all extrasemantic content as being derived from ambiguity resolution, leaving no work for Gricean tools. Despite significant areas of concurrence with L&S, we ultimately find their analysis to be untenable. To establish this, we focus on a form of pragmatic enrichment that recruits coherence establishment processes to apply within the clause—‘eliciture’—for which we see no credible analysis in terms of ambiguity resolution. We argue that an adequate account of language understanding must recognize the robust roles of both ambiguity resolution and pragmatic enrichment, using tense interpretation as a case study.

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