Fiora Salis: Fictionally Creating Fictional Characters

SEMINAR SERIES IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY

2012-13: Session 9

Fictionally Creating Fictional Characters

Fiora Salis (LanCog Group, University of Lisbon)

19 de Abril de 2013, 15:00
Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa
Sala Mattos Romão (departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Upholders of fictional creationism claim that fictional characters are abstract entities created by the author of fiction through the activity of story telling. They recognize that story telling involves pretense and imagination, yet they claim that by pretending to refer to a fictional individual the author genuinely brings something into existence. I distinguish two kinds of creation, genuine creation and fictional creation. Genuine creation is the process of causing something to exist or bringing something into existence. Fictional creation (I claim) is the author’s origination, performed in story telling, of a practice of thinking and talking about the same thing, even though there is not such a thing. I argue that upholders of fictional creationism have not been able to offer any adequate account of the genuine creation of fictional characters. Alternatively, I offer an account of the fictional creation of fictional characters coherent with fictional irrealism.