دانلود کتاب Unreality: The Metaphysics of Fictional Objects

In one breath, we acknowledge that, really, there is no Sherlock Holmes—he does not exist. In the next, we allow that, of course, there is such a character-he exists in detective stories. And while, on the one hand, we deny that there is or ever was a Holmes, we allow that Holmes smoked a pipe, that he is a character in some Arthur Conan Doyle stories, and even, perhaps, that he is a better detective than Hercule Poirot. Reflecting on these apparently conflicting ways of talking about fiction has led many philosophers to be puzzled about the ontological status of fictional objects and about how best to understand our apparent reference to them. If Holmes does not exist, if there is no such person as Sherlock Holmes, then what are we saying, what are we talking about, what are we committing ourselves to when we make the second sort of claim exemplified above? The central concern of the present work is to resolve these puzzles.


Crittenden's aim is to defend the essentially Meinongian view that there are fictional objects to which we can and often do successfully refer, but they do not exist. Of course, being told that there are fictional objects but they do not exist will hardly count, by itself, as a satisfactory response to anyone puzzled by the ontological status of fictional objects. After all, we find it just as acceptable pretheoretically to deny that there are any such things as Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot as to deny that they exist, and just as acceptable to say that these characters exist as that there are such. Unless we are provided with a satisfactory explanation of the intended contrast between the sense in which it is supposed to be appropriate to say that there are fictional objects and the sense in which it is not appropriate to say that they exist, no progress will have been made against our original puzzlement. Crittenden seems to me, however, never successfully to satisfy this demand.


Crittenden hopes to explicate the required contrast by appealing to our ordinary understanding of reference as "talking about." As he sees it, it is because we successfully refer to (talk about) fictional objects that we can, in the relevant sense, say that there are such things. That we do refer to them will be obvious, he argues, once we reflect on what is required for reference. We shall also see that, and ir;i what sense, the objects of genuine reference are not required to exist. Once this is appreciated, to admit that certain objects of reference-fictional objects-do not exist will turn out to be plain metaphysical good sense.


The conception of reference to which Crittenden appeals is essentially a speech-act theoretical version of Strawsonian identifying reference. In identifying reference, a speaker is "singling out" an object for an audience by employing a contextually appropriate expression, intending, of course, that his audience recognize his intention, etc. (33). The "presence" of an object referred to is, as Crittenden intends the notion, a conceptual requirement of successful identifying reference, a requirement implicit in our ordinary understanding of reference as "singling out" or "talking about" (35, 39). Crittenden accepts, moreover, that it is constitutive of the relevant notion of an object of reference that "objects have (at least some) associated criteria of identity and enumeration and are bearers of properties, thus making them possible subjects of true/false (warranted/unwarranted) claims" (40). Nevertheless, he asserts that none of this implies that for there to be an object of reference it must exist (41).


Invoking the authority of Thomas Reid, Crittenden points out that no one will deny that in some perfectly ordinary sense we can think and talk about, and therefore refer to, things that do not exist (42). And is this not especially obvious in the case of fictions? Is it not, after all, quite natural to say of a "suitable utterance" of "Sherlock Holmes smokes a pipe," that "there is certainly something that [the speaker] is talking about here, namely the fictional detective in the famous stories," that she is intending through her use of "Sherlock Holmes" to direct the attention of her audience to this character, that we have workable criteria for identifying what one person is talking about when she talks about Holmes with what another is talking about, and so on (43, my emphasis)? And so there is reference to Sherlock Holmes, and thus there are objects of reference-fictional objects-that do not exist.


Surely, though, this by itself represents no real progress toward a puzzle-resolving explication of the intended contrast. Crittenden has simply pointed out some of the very phenomena that led to the initial puzzlement. No one ever doubted that it is in some sense natural for us to say things of the sort he and Reid mention. The problem was to provide a systematic and philosophically satisfying account of what it is that we are thereby claiming, asserting, committing ourselves to, that is consistent with our explicit assertions that fictions do not really exist. Someone puzzled about the ontological status of fictional objects will hardly find much solace in Crittenden's reflections. If fictional objects do not exist and yet are genuinely referred to, what kind of metaphysical standing do they have?


Crittenden has an answer: Fictional objects constitute a distinct category of object-what he calls a "conceptual" or "grammatical" object-created by using language in the ways practiced by authors and story tellers (63). To explain what he has in mind, he appeals to Anscombe's discussion of direct objects and intentional objects in "The Intentionality of Sensation." Fictional objects are then explained by analogy with direct objects. As Crittenden sees it, just as whether there is a direct object depends purely on grammatical considerations-and not upon the existence of an entity "corresponding to the phrase indicating the direct object"-so also, whether there is a fictional object depends only on the largely grammatical facts concerning the production of sentences by authors:
"[F]ictional characters are also introduced entirely through a grammatical movement, through the construction of sentences by authors in the course of writing novels and stories. Like direct objects, fictions are purely intentional, having no status in existence at all. . . . There are such objects solely in the sense that they have been written about and thereby become available for thought or reference. (65)"


But this would seem to tell us nothing more than that the existence of works of fiction, in which all manner of fictional objects and characters get introduced, licenses us in some sense to talk about these charactersthat is, to say precisely the sorts of thing that, in conjunction with our assertions of their nonexistence, have led philosophers to be puzzled. Again, this would seem to describe part of the puzzling data, not to offer a solution. And so, again, I doubt whether anyone who is puzzled about the ontological status of fictional objects or the status of our apparent reference to them will find much satisfaction in the claim that they are, in the sense described, "grammatical" objects.


There is, of course, much that I have not discussed. Crittenden applies his suggestion to various problems and puzzles about fictional discourse. He offers an explanation of how we are best to understand the predication of properties to fictional objects, and how we are to understand the distinction between statements intended to report the contents of fiction- which he calls "inside" statements-and those intended to comment on or compare the contents of fictions-which he calls "outside" statements (94-96). The former, according to Crittenden, are always to be understood as being prefixed by one or another "fiction operator," though he never offers a very precise account of how we are to understand their semantic function. He also addresses various puzzles and confusions surrounding the logical completeness or incompleteness of fictional objects (138-48). His discussions are often useful. But to the extent that his specific proposals rely upon his general view of fictional objects as conceptual objects, they inherit the explanatory weakness possessed by that view.


Along the way, Crittenden also offers comparative assessments of other strategies for dealing with fictional objects, including those of Meinong, Russell, Kripke, Searle, Walton, Evans, van Inwagen, and Parsons. Though they are suggestive on points, few will find these discussions compelling. Too often, the position being criticized is too underdescribed or caricatured for the critical remarks to be taken seriously. Finally, in closing, Crittenden addresses the implications of his proposals for various views in Eastern philosophy concerning the fictional status of the world.


In addition to being an essay on the metaphysics of fictional objects, this work is intended by Crittenden to exemplify a certain kind of, as he sees it, Wittgensteinian methodology. By carefully examining and detailing the contexts and circumstances in which we ordinarily and most naturally find ourselves using language which, on reflection, we find philosophically puzzling, we can often expose and avoid the false moves, temptations, illicit comparisons, or what have you, that underwrite our original philosophical puzzlement. Though I count myself somewhat sympathetic with something like this approach, I find-and expect others too will findthe present attempt at its execution disappointing.