In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Peter van Inwagen FICTION AND METAPHYSICS Many works of fiction address themselves directly to metaphysiced issues. One thinks of the stories of Olaf Stapledon, Charles Williams, or Jorge Luis Borges. Other fiction is more subtly and indirectly related to metaphysics — A la recherche du temps perdu, for exeimple, or, in a radier different way, some science fiction. The relations that various novels and stories bear to the questions (...) ofmetaphysics would be an interesting topic, but it is not the topic of the present article, which is the relevance to metaphysics not of this or that work, but ramer of the very existence of such a thing as fiction. We shall see mat philosophical reflection on fiction can lead one to certain remarkable metaphysical conclusions. Not surprisingly, the area of metaphysics to which these conclusions pertain is ontology. The word, though not the study it represents, is a new one — it is probably a seventeenth-century coinage. In the present century, the word "ontology" is associated mainly with the names of Heidegger and Quine. I shall be using the word in Quine's sense: as a name for the study that attempts to answer the question, What is there? Quine's contributions to this study are of central importance for the thesis of this article. These contributions may be divided into two parts: those that belong to ontology proper and those that belong to what we may call meta-ontology. By Quine's "ontology proper," I mean his actual attempt to answer the question, What is there? This attempt is of great intrinsic interest, but it is not relevetnt to my topic. By Quine's meta-ontology, I mean his feunous discussion of what it is to ask what there is emd his famous dieses about how to approach mis question.1 These theses are the product of a really remarkable effort to think clearly about questions almost no one had thought cleeirly about, and a proper appreciation of them will liberate one from some very old and very strong illusions about being emd existence. Or so many philosophers, including the present author, would say. And yet Quine's meta-ontology, when it is combined with what seem to be some very simple emd obvious facts about fiction, yields a result mat seems just obviously wrong: that names drawn from works of fiction ("Mr. Pickwick" emd "Tom Sawyer," for example, as well as proper names of odier sorts, such as "Dotheboys Hall" and "Barchester") denote existent objects. The thesis of this 67 68PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE article is mat this consequence of Quine's meta-ontology does not constitute a reductio ad absurdum; radier, Quine's meta-ontology should be retained and mis consequence accepted. I shall first examine Quine's meta-ontology in the abstract, and then in application to fiction. In the abstract, Quine's meta-ontology may be viewed as comprising four propositions. (1)Being is die seune as existence. That is, to say mat things of a certain sort exist emd to say mat there être things of diat sort is to say pretty much the same diing. For example, to say diat horses exist is to say mere are horses, and to say mat diere was such a person as Homer is to say that Homer existed. This might seem obvious, but on reflection it can seem less obvious. Suppose I am discussing someone's delusions and I say, "There are a lot of diings he believes in that do not exist." On die face of it, I appear to be saying diat diere are diings — the poison in his drink, his uncle's medice, emd so on — that do not exist. To tedce a radier more metaphysical example, I have read a letter to the editor of a newspaper, the audior of which argues diat contraception is a sin since it prevents people who would omerwise exist from doing so. This may be a bad argument on meiny grounds that have nothing to do with metaphysics, but it is certainly clear diat its propounder believes diat diere are unconceived people, people who might have existed but who, owing to certain acts of contraception, do not exist... (shrink)

This book is both an introduction to and a research work on Meinongianism. “Meinongianism” is taken here, in accordance with the common philosophical jargon, as a general label for a set of theories of existence – probably the most basic notion of ontology. As an introduction, the book provides the first comprehensive survey and guide to Meinongianism and non-standard theories of existence in all their main forms. As a research work, the book exposes and develops the most up-to-date Meinongian theory (...) (called modal Meinongianism), applies it to specific fields, and discusses its open problems. Part I of the book provides a historical introduction to, and critical discussion of, the dominant philosophical view of existence: the “Kantian-Fregean-Quinean” perspective. Part II is the full-fledged introduction to the Meinongian theories of existence as a real property of individuals: after starting with the so-called naïve Meinongian conception and its problems, it provides a self-contained presentation of the main neo-Meinongian proposals, and a detailed discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. Part III develops a specific neo-Meinongian theory of existence employing a model-theoretic semantic framework. It discusses its application to the ontology and semantics of fictional objects, and its open problems. The methodology of the book follows the most recent trends in analytic ontology. In particular, the meta-ontological point of view is largely privileged. (shrink)

This book tackles the issues that arise in connection with intensional logic -- a formal system for representing and explaining the apparent failures of certain important principles of inference such as the substitution of identicals and existential generalization -- and intentional states --mental states such as beliefs, hopes, and desires that are directed towards the world. The theory offers a unified explanation of the various kinds of inferential failures associated with intensional logic but also unifies the study of intensional contexts (...) and intentional states by grounding the explanation of both phenomena in a single theory. When an axiomatized realm of abstract entities is added to the metaphysical structure of the world, we can use them to identify and individuate the contents of directed mental states. The special abstract entities can be viewed as the objectified contents of mental files, and they play a crucial role in the analysis of truth conditions of the sentences involved in inferential failures. (shrink)

It is advisable to treat some sorts of discourse about fiction with the aid of an intensional operator "in such-And-Such fiction...." the operator may appear either explicitly or tacitly. It may be analyzed in terms of similarity of worlds, As follows: "in the fiction f, A" means that a is true in those of the worlds where f is told as known fact rather than fiction that differ least from our world, Or from the belief worlds of the community in (...) which the fiction originated. (shrink)

In this book, Zalta attempts to lay the axiomatic foundations of metaphysics by developing and applying a (formal) theory of abstract objects. The cornerstones include a principle which presents precise conditions under which there are abstract objects and a principle which says when apparently distinct such objects are in fact identical. The principles are constructed out of a basic set of primitive notions, which are identified at the end of the Introduction, just before the theorizing begins. The main reason for (...) producing a theory which defines a logical space of abstract objects is that it may have a great deal of explanatory power. It is hoped that the data explained by means of the theory will be of interest to pure and applied metaphysicians, logicians and linguists, and pure and applied epistemologists. (shrink)

In this paper, the author shows how one can independently prove, within the theory of abstract objects, some of the most significant claims, hypotheses, and background assumptions found in Kripke's logical and philosophical work. Moreover, many of the semantic features of theory of abstract objects are consistent with Kripke's views — the successful representation, in the system, of the truth conditions and entailments of philosophically puzzling sentences of natural language validates certain Kripkean semantic claims about natural language.

This essay re-examines Meinong's "Über Gegenstandstheorie" and undertakes a clarification and revision of it that is faithful to Meinong, overcomes the various objections to his theory, and is capable of offering solutions to various problems in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. I then turn to a discussion of a historically and technically interesting Russell-style paradox (now known as "Clark's Paradox") that arises in the modified theory. I also examine the alternative Meinong-inspired theories of Hector-Neri Castañeda and Terence Parsons.

In (1991), Meinwald initiated a major change of direction in the study of Plato’s Parmenides and the Third Man Argument. On her conception of the Parmenides , Plato’s language systematically distinguishes two types or kinds of predication, namely, predications of the kind ‘x is F pros ta alla’ and ‘x is F pros heauto’. Intuitively speaking, the former is the common, everyday variety of predication, which holds when x is any object (perceptible object or Form) and F is a property (...) which x exemplifies or instantiates in the traditional sense. The latter is a special mode of predication which holds when x is a Form and F is a property which is, in some sense, part of the nature of that Form. Meinwald (1991, p. 75, footnote 18) traces the discovery of this distinction in Plato’s work to Frede (1967), who marks the distinction between pros allo and kath’ hauto predications by placing subscripts on the copula ‘is’. (shrink)

In its approach to fiction and fictional discourse, pretense theory focuses on the behaviors that we engage in once we pretend that something is true. These may include pretending to name, pretending to refer, pretending to admire, and various other kinds of make-believe. Ordinary discourse about fictions is analyzed as a kind of institutionalized manner of speaking. Pretense, make-believe, and manners of speaking are all accepted as complex patterns of behavior that prove to be systematic in various ways. In this (...) paper, I attempt to show: (1) that this systematicity is captured in the basic distinctions and representations that are central to the formal theory of abstract objects, and (2) that this formal theory need not be interpreted platonistically, but may instead have an interpretation on which the `objects' of the theory are things that pretense theorists already accept, namely, complex patterns of linguistic behavior. The surprising conclusion, then, is that a certain Wittgensteinian approach to meaning (e.g., the meaning of a term like `Holmes' is constituted by its pattern of use) bears an interesting relationship to a formal metaphysical theory and the semantic analyses of discourse constructed in terms of that theory---the former offers a naturalized interpretation of the latter, yet the latter makes the former more precise. (shrink)