Abstract
In (2014), Mark Sainsbury has claimed, first, that there is a variety of fiction operators, in particular the “according to f”- operator and the “in f”- operator, whose semantic contribution to the complex sentences they contribute to generate is different, and second, that no worlds-based semantical treatment works for any of them. In this paper, I want to hold that, when suitably reinterpreted, Sainsbury is utterly right as to his first claim, yet just partially right as to his second claim.
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Notes
- 1.
Sainsbury provides cases of further operators yet they are not fundamental for my present purposes, also because the issues some of them are meant to face can actually be dealt with in terms of the above operators. Cf. e.g. the “according to the early chapters of f”- and “it is clear by (some bits of) f”- operators.
- 2.
Sainsbury’s original pair is “In War and Peace, there are both fictional and real characters” and “According to War and Peace, there are both fictional and real characters”. As I believe – cf. my Voltolini (2006b, 2013) – that fictional stories never contain real characters, but just surrogates of them (War and Peace for example does not contain the real Napoleon, but just a surrogate of his whose nature is ultimately fictional just as that of Prince Andrei), I have accordingly modified Sainsbury’s example. Yet nothing substantial hinges on that modification.
- 3.
Cf. Walton (1990: 175, 177, 182).
- 4.
As suggested by his (2009:41), where he rather says that according to the Holmes stories it is false that Holmes is a fictional detective.
- 5.
For the scope of this paper, I accept Walton’s (1990) claim that there are make-believe games whose participants pretend that things unfold in a certain way. Yet nothing would substantially change if one appealed either to make-believe practices or even to make-believe mental processes, as I do e.g. in my Voltolini (2016).
- 6.
Provided of course we allow for sets in our overall ontological domain.
- 7.
In point of fact, I would say “always”, for as I said in fn.2, I believe that fictional stories are always constituted by fictional characters, some of which however are surrogates of real concrete individuals.
- 8.
Notoriously, there are many problems as to whether a world of a make-believe game is a possible world and in the positive case, which possible world it is. For the purposes of this paper, I skip such problems.
- 9.
- 10.
Depending on one’s favorite semantic account of proper names, that sentence so used in such a context is either false or neither true nor false.
- 11.
I hereby follow Predelli (2008), who according to me rightly thinks that the embedded sentence in isolation can only be fictionally true, as is claimed by the so-called context shift view that he himself defended in his (2005) (and that as to that sentence so taken I endorse as well: cf. Voltolini 2006a, 2016). Yet when things are conceived as I say in the text, the context-shift view as applied to the embedded sentence taken in isolation is clearly compatible with the account of the “according to f”-operator as a context shifter. As is well known, for Kaplan (1989), a context-shifter is a monster, yet for the reasons given in the text for the “according to f”-operator this is a welcome result, as Predelli himself holds. For more evidence, even outside fiction, of such context-shifting operators, cf. Schlenker (2003). Recanati (2000) avoids taking the operator as a context-shifter by framing it in a (more sophisticated) make-believe scope as well, the scope of what he calls a Meinongian or second-order pretense that involves both concrete individuals and fictional characters. Yet by so doing one gets that the relevant embedding sentence of the form “according to f, p” is again merely fictionally true, not really true as one wishes in conceiving it as a real comment on the fictionally used embedded sentence “p”.
- 12.
I stick to this cautious formulation for in this paper, I do not want to be apriori ontologically committed to fictional characters. See below in the text.
- 13.
Clearly enough, this is compatible with saying that such a proposition is true at that set, since something is true at a set iff it belongs to it. Cf. Jago (2015:598). Yet the proposition is such, not a sentence.
- 14.
Cf. Voltolini (2006b).
- 15.
In (2006b) I claimed that a sentence in its internal metafictional use is elliptical for a sentence of the form “In f, p”. For the purposes of this paper I remain neutral as to this claim.
- 16.
- 17.
Hence, an antirealist has to reject a standard intensional reading of the “in f, p”- sentence, as I said in Voltolini (2011:104 fn.9).Incidentally, in taking a sentence such as (1) to be true, Sainsbury does not certainly want to be ontologically committed to fictional characters. For he is an antirealist about them (cf. his 2009).
- 18.
Cf. Sainsbury (2014:280–8, particularly 287).
- 19.
Cf. Kripke (1980:77).
- 20.
For similar worries, cf. Voltolini (2006b:163–6).
- 21.
For a clear formulation of this sense, cf. the following passage: “as far as literally fiction is concerned, the author is the authority. There is nothing else—e.g. reality, or other texts—towards which he is responsible. […] To read a text as a literary fiction is to decide not to look for any other justification over and above the text itself for the truth of the statements we read” (Santambrogio 1992:302; my translation). For the idea that fiction is something made up, cf. Deutsch (2000).
- 22.
As some may know, this discovery prompted the Italian writer Pia Pera to write another story on the Humbert-Lolita affair that is recounted from Lolita’s own perspective: Lo’s Diary.
- 23.
- 24.
I thank Diego Marconi for some interesting discussions had with him on this paper’s topic.
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Voltolini, A. (2019). Varieties of Fiction Operators. In: Capone, A., Carapezza, M., Lo Piparo, F. (eds) Further Advances in Pragmatics and Philosophy: Part 2 Theories and Applications. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00973-1_11
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