The primary aim of this paper is to provide a plausible fictional creationist explanation of when and how a fictional object comes into existence without a successful creative intention, focusing on the problem posed by Stuart Brock’s nominalist author scenario. I first present some intuitions about parallel scenarios for fictional objects and concrete artifacts as data to be explained. Then I provide a sufficient condition for the existence of artifacts that can explain both cases. An important upshot of this is (...) that there is an overlooked way to bring artifacts into existence that should merit serious consideration, and this leads to a version of the mind-dependence, but not the intention-dependence, view of artifacts. (shrink)

This paper deals with the identity problems of fictional objects, focusing on Anthony Everett's and Stuart Brock's leading criticisms against fictional creationism, the view that fictional objects are abstract objects created by our acts involving literary practices. My primary aim is to argue that creationism based on referentialism has enough resources to individuate fictional objects and hence can address the alleged identity problems: every alleged problematic case regarding the identity of fictional objects is well explained in terms of the notions (...) of authorial intention, gappy proposition, inadvertent creation, and reference shift. (shrink)

I defend the intention-dependence of artifacts, which says that something is an artifact of kind K only if it is the successful product of an intention to make an artifact of kind K. I consider objections from two directions. First, that artifacts are often mind- and intention-dependent, but that this isn’t necessary, as shown by swamp cases. I offer various error theories for why someone would have artifact intuitions in such cases. Second, that while artifacts are necessarily mind-dependent, they aren’t (...) necessarily intention-dependent. I consider and reject three kinds of cases which purport to show this: accidental creation, automated production, and mass production. I argue that intentions are present in all of these cases, but not where we would normally expect. (shrink)

There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding abstract artifacts and how such entities (e.g., fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, and mythological planets like Vulcan), if they indeed exist, could possibly be our creations. One interesting aspect of some of these debates concerns the extent to which creative intentions play a role in the creation of artifacts generally, both abstract and concrete. I here address the creation of concrete artifacts in particular. I ultimately defend a Brock-inspired, heterodox view on (...) which creative intentions are not at all necessary for the creation of concrete artifacts. A concrete artifact is just a hunk of matter having a certain configuration owing to human activity and, given that configuration, is disposed to participate in other human activities. (shrink)