It is widely agreed that more is true in a work of fiction than explicitly said. In addition to directly stipulated fictional content (explicit truth), inference and background assumptions give us implicit truths. However, this taxonomy of fictional truths overlooks an important class of fictional truth: those generated by literary formal features. Fictional works generate fictional content by both semantic and formal means, and content arising from formal features such as italics or font size are neither explicit nor implicit: not (...) explicit since formal features don’t say anything; and not implicit since content generated from formal features doesn’t rely on other truths or background assumptions. In addition to showing that our current classification is incomplete, the new class of fictional truths provides four further upshots for definitions of fictional truth, story and work identity conditions, and the relationship between literary interpretation and fictional truth. (shrink)

Fictional ersatz realism is the metaphysical stance that abstract fictional entities exist and are dependent on fiction and literary practices. Everett tackled the position of ersatz realism by claiming that the ersatz realist cannot provide an identity criterion for fictional entities that does not imply a contradiction. Although Woodward proposed a defense to Everett's argument, I will argue that ersatz realism is no tenable position, as it still cannot provide an adequate identity criterion. To establish this result, I will provide (...) a base frame for identity criteria available to the ersatz realist. Afterwards, I will show that to any identity criterion the ersatz realist may propose there is a story such that a fictional entity corresponding to this story is not self-identical, imposing a contradiction to the metaphysical account of ersatz realism. (shrink)

I defend the idea that there are universal fictions, and that the Routley-Deutsch-Kapsner way of generating them – namely, with a story including deliberately and explicitly the proposition Everything is true – is still the best one. I reconstruct Wildman and Folde’s Finean criticisms to universal fictions a la Routley-Deutsch-Kapsner based on the idea that the universal quantifier in such fictions may not target the intended range of quantification, that is, all propositions. I show that Wildman and Folde’s argument does (...) not succeed, for they fail to show that every universal sentence has to be understood as involving a restricted quantifier. (shrink)

We offer an original argument for the existence of universal fictions—that is, fictions within which every possible proposition is true. Specifically, we detail a trio of such fictions, along with an easy-to-follow recipe for generating more. After exploring several consequences and dismissing some objections, we conclude that fiction, unlike reality, is unlimited when it comes to truth.

There are many data suggesting that we should acknowledge fictional entities in our ontological inventory, in spite of the paraphrasing strategies that Russell’s theory of descriptions can offer. Thus the realist attitude toward fictional entities of Meinongian and artifactualist accounts may seem well-motivated. Yet, these approaches infringe the Russellian “robust sense of reality.” A different realist account is proposed here, one that is compatible with the Russellian “robust sense of reality” in that it identifies fictional entities with denoting concepts, understood (...) as properties of properties. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that authors can make anything whatsoever true in their fictions by artistic fiat. Harry Deutsch originally called this position the Principle of Poetic License. If true, PPL sets an important constraint on accounts of fictional truth: they must be such as to allow that, for any x, one can write a story in which it is true that x. I argue that PPL is far too strong: it requires us to abandon the law of non-contradiction and (...) entails a radical revision of otherwise ordinary commitments about truth in fiction. (shrink)

Recently, Xhignesse has argued that the principle of poetic licence, which roughly states that any class of propositions is true in some possible fiction, ought to be rejected. Here, we defend PPL from Xhignesse’s objection by demonstrating that, properly understood, his purported counter-example case is either irrelevant or unproblematic. The upshot is that Xhignesse has given us no reason to reject PPL.