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![A Reconsidered Defence of Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals
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nonactual entities have haecceities and few if any other nontrivial essential properties; the
descriptions used to introduce them do not produce or determine essences. I also
proposed a particular theory of negative existentials (Chapter 7).
I made at least one passing reference to Saul Kripke’s ‘Existence: Vacuous Names and
Mythical Kinds’, which I had heard him deliver at the 1972 Oberlin Colloquium in
Philosophy but which remained unpublished. I had heard of his subsequent John Locke
Lectures, now Reference and Existence (1973/2013, hereafter R&E), but had never
seen a copy. Now that I have been able to read them, and some more recent related
work by others on fictional characters, my positions need reviewing. In this chapter I shall
try to sort out what I got right and what may have been mistaken.
1. Haecceitism for Nonactuals
I. Suppose Haecceitism holds for actual individuals (M&M, Chapter 5); a person S in
nonactual world w is identical with the real Barack Obama at our world @ just in case S is
Barack Obama, never mind what other properties S may have accidentally or essentially
in w. We may even suppose that there is a world qualitatively identical to @ down to the
last subatomic particle, but differs from it in that the identities of Obama and Newt
Gingrich are switched (Chisholm, 1967; Wilson, 1959); that would of course require that
Obama and Gingrich had only a few essential properties that were not merely logical
consequences of their haecceities—being human, perhaps, and possibly being male.1
(p.25) Haecceitism for actual individuals is one thing, tolerated by many, but for
nonactuals it is quite another. I distinguished two opposing positions on nonactuals. First,
the Conservative, according to which fictional and other merely possible individuals have
qualitative essences—individuating properties that necessarily apply to at most one
individual per world and that serve to pick out those respective individuals from world to
world. Suppose, for example, that Q is a qualitative individual essence in world w, and that
at another world w’, ‘(∃x)(Qx & Fx)’ holds for some property F; then we would say that
the merely possible individual identified by Q in w has F in w’.
The opposing position is of course Haecceitism itself, in 1994 nearly unheard of for
nonexistents. On that view, as in the case of actual things, if P is a fictional individual
inhabiting nonactual world w, then S in a distinct nonactual world w’ is identical with P iff S
is P, no matter what other properties S may have accidentally or essentially in w’. As
before, we may even suppose that there is a world qualitatively identical to w down to the
last subatomic particle, but differs from it in that the identities of P and S are switched.
II. Even to those who are comfortable with Haecceitism regarding actual entities,
Haecceitism for nonactuals at first seems crazy. Indeed, the Conservative line has much
to recommend it (M&M: 110–111, 118–19). Briefly: (i) Unlike actual individuals, mere
possibilia are not given or encountered or perceived or ostended, but specified,
stipulated, or constructed out of existing conceptual material. (ii) In the end, the only way
to specify a nonexistent is in effect to proffer a description. Nor does the description
seem merely to fix reference (in Kripke’s [1972a, 1980] phrase) to an independently
identifiable individual. (iii) If nonactuals have haecceities and can differ numerically without](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2608864-250619073825-38497ab4/85/Fictional-Objects-1st-Edition-Stuart-Brock-Anthony-Everett-38-320.jpg)
![A Reconsidered Defence of Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals
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differing qualitatively, then it ought to be possible for us to have a particular nonexistent
in mind, or to have a propositional attitude toward that object, without having in mind a
qualitative twin; yet that does not seem possible.2 (iv) It is hard to maintain that a
nonexistent can be an element of a singular proposition. An ordinary haecceity requires
and introduces the actual existence of its owner. (v) Even if we can coherently think of a
world just like this one save for the switching of Obama and Gingrich, we simply cannot
distinguish two nonactual worlds which differ only in the switching of the alleged
haecceities of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, or (Adams, 1981) two worlds which differ
only in the switching of two nonactual electrons.3 (vi) It is not easy to say how an
unexemplified (p.26) haecceity differs from a Meinongian nonexistent possible (if we are
concerned to avoid association with Meinong).
And, (vii) (here I will quote myself, because we shall revisit this argument below):
[C]onsider a single possible world containing two planets qualitatively identical to
each other—say, each planet contains a replica of Conan Doyle’s Victorian England
and in particular a Sherlock Holmes figure. What conceivable ground could there
be for choosing one of the two Holmes figures and deciding that it is the real
Holmes while the other is only its qualitative duplicate? To attach a Holmesian
haecceity to either figure would be entirely arbitrary. (M&M: 119)
III. Nonetheless I defended Haecceitism. My central argument was based on Alan
McMichael’s (1983a, 1983b) observation that not only fictional individuals but other mere
possibilia have modal properties that take the form of iterated unrealized possibilities.
Consider Mrs Hudson, Sherlock Holmes’ longsuffering landlady. Might she instead of
being a landlady have gone into service in a great household, or become a poet, or
emigrated to New Zealand and run a lucrative dairy farm?
Remember that fictional individuals do not have only the properties explicitly ascribed to
them in their native works, but also those which may fairly be extrapolated or assumed
on the basis of the text and its setting (Lewis, 1978).4 Now, the original Mrs Hudson is (in
the story) a woman. Presumably she has knees, even though we never see them or hear
of them and even though there is no specific circumference that they have. Similarly, she
had parents, though we know nothing about them and can infer only a bit more. By the
same token, she has the everyday sorts of modal properties that ordinary women have
as well. Every actual working woman is such that she (metaphysically) might have
pursued a different occupation, so doubtless the same is true of Mrs Hudson.
But if we grant that she might have joined a different trade, it seems we are saying that at
a world other than that described in Conan Doyle’s stories, Mrs Hudson does go into
dairy farming or whatever instead of keeping 221B Baker Street. And this conflicts with
any assumption we might have made about a qualitative essence for her. If her being a
landlady is not a reliable transworld identifying mark, the same can be said of any other
feature attributed to her by Conan Doyle; and so it seems we must award her a
haecceity, just as if she were actual. The point is reinforced by a more general argument
of McMichael’s that is not tied to fiction but is based on plain real-world iterated](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2608864-250619073825-38497ab4/85/Fictional-Objects-1st-Edition-Stuart-Brock-Anthony-Everett-39-320.jpg)
![A Reconsidered Defence of Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals
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modalities. Again (almost) indisputably, there might have been someone having such-and-
such a property F that also had but might have lacked a further property G; for example,
Mary Lycan and I might have had a foster daughter—distinct from our actual Jane and
from our actual foster son Devin—who went into philosophy but who might instead have
gone into arbitrage. Thus on anyone’s possible-worlds semantics, fiction completely aside,
it seems there is a world (p.27) w containing the extra Lycan daughter and a further
world w’ also containing that very woman but at which she goes into arbitrage instead of
philosophy—not because of any work of fiction but simply because the envisaged
possibilities seem genuine, in the real world. Thus we are forced to consider transworld
identity conditions for McMichael-individuals.5
For that matter, the foster daughter need not have been a foster daughter, nor ever
have borne any interesting relation to the Lycans. Here no extrinsic essence is ready to
hand; all we know about the foster daughter is that in w she is one, of ours, but her being
one is not essential to her. So it seems we must award her an haecceity of some sort; we
must grant that there is a property of being N, where N is a proper name of our
imaginary foster daughter, that persists from world to world despite variation of all her
ordinary features.
IV. What of the foregoing seven arguments for the Conservative position? In M&M
(Chapter 6, sec. 7) I rebutted them seriatim, but here I shall merely describe my general
line, and then turn to the alternative position furnished by Kripke’s R&E.
Most of the arguments stem from the fact that nonactual individuals stand in no causal
relation to us and are known only by description. But it is possible to frame a Causal-
Historical theory of referring, even for empty singular terms, that affords a finer-grained
individuation scheme. Consider Mrs Hudson again. At least part of what makes her the
person she is are the circumstances of her character’s creation.6 We might say that a
fictional person qualifies as being (=) Mrs Hudson if and only if the relevant use of that
person’s name is connected in the right historical way with Conan Doyle’s original act of
writing (in the real world).
This idea accommodates intuitions about several sorts of cases: coincidental authorship,
spinoffs, revisionary sequels and such (M&M: 120). As can readily be checked, it also
takes care of arguments (i)–(iii) above. And I argued that, perhaps less easily, it also at
least staves off (iv)–(vii). For example, regarding singular propositions ([iv]), the causal-
historical element at least helps identify the particular haecceity corresponding to the
relevant fictional character; and we do not have to grant that that haecceity exists in the
absence of its owner, for at the relevant nonactual world, the owner does exist. (The
presence of the haecceity and the existence of the owner there are one and the same
state of affairs.)
As I said, we shall return to (vii), once we have introduced Kripke’s tertium quid.
(p.28) V. So far we have assumed that a fictional person such as Holmes or Mrs
Hudson is a possible individual residing in a nonactual world. Kripke rejects that](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2608864-250619073825-38497ab4/85/Fictional-Objects-1st-Edition-Stuart-Brock-Anthony-Everett-40-320.jpg)
![A Reconsidered Defence of Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals
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assumption, on each of several grounds. First, naturally, he scouts Russellian description
theories of fictional names, on grounds similar to those he had (1972) wielded against
description theories generally. That alone would leave open Haecceitism, but, second
(R&E, Lecture 2), he takes a radical position regarding the coinage and use of fictional
names: that such names are not really names, but only pretend names, part of the
author’s overall pretence of narrating real events.
Indeed, there is no need to offer a semantics for them, since they are not actually being
used as names; that they have some nameish semantics or other is only part of the
pretence.7 If they are not really names at all, then a fortiori they do not name possible
individuals. Indeed, Kripke says, sentences containing them do not express propositions;
there are only ‘pretend propositions’ putatively expressed by the author’s pretended
factual assertions.
I shall discuss pretence theories below. For now I want to address a third argument of
Kripke’s, that is related to (vii) above; call it the ‘plurality argument’. He writes:
[W]hy shouldn’t one say that such a situation is a situation in which Sherlock
Holmes would have existed? I mean, someone might have performed these
exploits, and Conan Doyle might have written of him. So why not suppose, as is
being done by the modal logician, that Sherlock Holmes is some possible but not
actual entity?
Certainly someone might have done the deeds ascribed to Holmes in the stories.
Indeed, many actual people in the appropriate time period (late nineteenth century
to early twentieth century) might have done them. But none of these people would
have been Sherlock Holmes.
The fact is that in introducing the name we make ‘Sherlock Holmes’ name a
particular man who would have done certain things, not just any old man who did
these things. It will be part of this story of Sherlock Holmes that, of course, he may
not be uniquely called forth to do these things. Holmes might remark to Watson
that, had he not been such a great detective, his brother Mycroft would have been
equally good, but not wishing to be a rival, he went into another field. So ‘Sherlock
Holmes’ doesn’t designate the person—any old person—who did these things: it is
supposed to be a name of a unique man. And there is no unique man being named,
nor is there any possible man being named here. (R&E: 41)
Spoken like a good Haecceitist, up to the concluding pair of sentences; the ‘Holmes’ role
could have been occupied by any number of indisputably different men. And Kripke
could also have invoked the McMichael argument. But as before, his purpose is to reject
Haecceitism as well as the Conservative position: ‘there is no unique man being named’. If
‘Holmes’ does not designate just any old person who should fit the (p.29) stereotype,
but it does not designate a particular person or haecceity either, then it simply does not
designate, not even a possible man. To put the thesis shockingly, it is not and was never
possible for Holmes to have existed.8](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2608864-250619073825-38497ab4/85/Fictional-Objects-1st-Edition-Stuart-Brock-Anthony-Everett-41-320.jpg)
![A Reconsidered Defence of Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals
Page 13 of 19
There are many theories of negative existentials, and a great virtue of Russell’s Theory of
Descriptions was that it afforded an initially plausible one; too bad R&E refuted it
(Lecture 1). I believe my own theory (M&M, Chapter 7) is the least bad of the lot, but
space does not permit my touting it here. I am concerned only to argue that the pretence
view is indeed without resources as regards negative existentials.
XIV. Kripke continues his discussion by admitting a liability additional to the one just
noted.
It seems that in some sense the analysis of a singular existence statement will
depend on whether that statement is true. And this, of course, seems in and of
itself to be absolutely intolerable: the analysis of a statement should not depend on
its truth value. Or so at any rate might be our prejudice. (R&E: 147)
Yes, bad start. If not absolutely intolerable, to be avoided if at all possible. (The reason
the analysis depends on actual truth-value is that a false negative existential regarding an
actual individual, say ‘Napoleon never existed’, expresses a singular proposition about its
subject, while a true negative existential containing an empty name as usual expresses no
proposition at all.)
Kripke adverts to ‘that’-clauses containing fictional names, such as belief complements. He
suggests that what such believers believe is that there is a true proposition about (e.g.)
Holmes. Similarly for the Vulcan-friendly astronomer (R&E: 156); Kripke adds, ‘[I]n the
sentence “The astronomer believes that there is a [true] proposition about Vulcan,
saying of Vulcan that it is red,” the phrase “about Vulcan” is a special sort of quasi-
intensional use’. The astronomer is wrong because there is no such proposition. And, not
knowing whether Holmes or Vulcan exists, a sceptic can still believe that there is no
relevant true proposition, leaving it open whether there is a false proposition or none at
all. (Never mind for now that ‘Vulcan’ as used by the astronomer was not a fictional
name; I shall return to this in sec. XV.)
Accordingly (R&E: 157), to believe the positive existential is to believe that there is a true
proposition that Holmes or that Vulcan exists. (But in reality, to believe that Obama exists
is just to believe of Obama that he exists—nothing about propositions.) And to believe the
true negative existential is to believe that there is no true proposition that Holmes, or
that Vulcan, exists. ‘[W]e lump the two cases [false proposition and no proposition]
together, and it is our ability to do so which gives the negative existential its use’ (R&E:
159).
But this is puzzling, because Kripke is still trafficking in ‘that’-clauses. His calling his
locution ‘a special sort of quasi-intentional use’ does not help, because ‘Holmes’ and
‘Vulcan’ are still supposed to be only pretend names, not names. If they are not names,
then of course there is no proposition ‘that Holmes exists’ or ‘that Vulcan (p.38) exists’,
but there is also no proposition that there is no such proposition, either, and so still
nothing for any wielder of a negative existential to believe.20 This will not do.21](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2608864-250619073825-38497ab4/85/Fictional-Objects-1st-Edition-Stuart-Brock-Anthony-Everett-49-320.jpg)
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- 6. Fictional Objects Stuart Brockand Anthony Everett ABSTRACT The essays in this collection aim to make sense of our talk about fictional characters, and more generally about fictional objects. The chapters in this volume take a variety of different perspectives on the metaphysics of fictionalia. But they all address the same questions, questions like: Do fictional objects really exist? What would fictional objects be like if they existed? Do they exist eternally? Are they created? By whom? When and how? Can they be destroyed? If so, how? Are they abstract or concrete? Are they actual? Are they complete objects? Are they possible objects? How many fictional objects are there? What are their identity conditions? What kinds of attitudes can we have towards them? These questions, and others, have dominated the philosophical literature on fictional objects over the last half century, and as this collection shows, interest in these questions shows no sign of abating. Keywords: fiction, fictional objects, fictional characters, identity conditions, philosophical literature BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION Print publication date: 2015 Print ISBN-13: 9780198735595 DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735595.001.0001 Front Matter Introduction Stuart Brock and Anthony Everett 1 A Reconsidered Defence of Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals William G. Lycan 2 Objects of Fiction and Objects of Thought Robert Howell 3 Wondering about Witches David Braun 4 The Philosopher’s Stone and Other Mythical Objects Nathan Salmon 5 A Suitable Metaphysics for Fictional Entities Alberto Voltolini 6 Creationism and the Problem of Indiscernible Fictional Objects Frederick Kroon
- 7. 7 Brutal Identity BenCaplan and Cathleen Muller 8 The Importance of Fictional Properties Sarah Sawyer 9 Fictionalism, Fictional Characters, and Fictionalist Inference Stuart Brock 10 Fictional Discourse and Fictionalisms Amie L. Thomasson 11 Ideas for Stories Anthony Everett and Timothy Schroeder End Matter
- 8. Title Pages Page 1of 3 University Press Scholarship Online Oxford Scholarship Online Fictional Objects Stuart Brock and Anthony Everett Print publication date: 2015 Print ISBN-13: 9780198735595 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735595.001.0001 Title Pages Fictional Objects Fictional Objects (p.iv) Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © the several contributors 2015
- 9. Title Pages Page 2of 3 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2015 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2014950158 ISBN 978–0–19–873559–5 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
- 10.
- 11. Notes on Contributors Page1 of 2 University Press Scholarship Online Oxford Scholarship Online Fictional Objects Stuart Brock and Anthony Everett Print publication date: 2015 Print ISBN-13: 9780198735595 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735595.001.0001 (p.vi) (p.vii) Notes on Contributors DAVID BRAUN is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York, USA. STUART BROCK is Reader and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. BEN CAPLAN is Professor of Philosophy at Ohio State University, USA, and is an affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo, Norway. ANTHONY EVERETT is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Bristol, UK. ROBERT HOWELL is Professor of Philosophy, SUNY University at Albany, USA, and Moscow State University, Russia. FREDERICK KROON is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. WILLIAM G. LYCAN
- 12. Notes on Contributors Page2 of 2 is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, USA. CATHLEEN MULLER is a Teaching Associate at Marist College, USA. NATHAN SALMON is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. SARAH SAWYER is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sussex, UK. TIMOTHY SCHROEDER is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ohio State University, USA. AMIE L. THOMASSON is Professor of Philosophy, Cooper Fellow, and Parodi Senior Scholar in Philosophy of Art at University of Miami, USA. ALBERTO VOLTOLINI is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Turin, Italy. (p.viii)
- 13. Introduction Page 1 of24 University Press Scholarship Online Oxford Scholarship Online Fictional Objects Stuart Brock and Anthony Everett Print publication date: 2015 Print ISBN-13: 9780198735595 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735595.001.0001 Introduction Stuart Brock Anthony Everett DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735595.003.0001 Abstract and Keywords The introduction describes the general philosophical importance of issues to do with fiction and fictional objects. The introduction then rehearses the arguments commonly offered for fictional realism and fictional irrealism, together with the ways in which realists and irrealists may respond to these. It discusses the different forms that fictional realism may take, comparing these and assessing some of their strengths and weaknesses. It then raises a series of questions, some of which have been unduly neglected, that need to be addressed. Finally, It summarizes the contributions to this collection, situating them in the light of the issues discussed in the introduction and the wider debates concerning fictional objects. Keywords: fiction, fictional object, fictional characters, fictional realism, fictional irrealism, existence, metaphysics
- 14. Introduction Page 2 of24 1. Fiction and Fictional Objects Observations about fiction have played a crucial role in twentieth century analytic philosophy. Examples from fiction have been used fruitfully to guide our philosophical theorizing generally. And it’s not hard to see why. According to many, conceptual analysis is the main philosophical enterprise. And philosophical analyses are evaluated by attempting to imagine situations in which the analysans is true and the analysandum is false, or vice versa. The very best philosophy, therefore, often involves ingenious thought experiments—that is, instructions prompting us to imagine certain scenarios—against which we can test various philosophical hypotheses. So what’s the connection here with fiction? According to a popular account of fiction advocated by Kendall Walton, a fiction is a ‘work with the function of serving as a prop in games of make-believe’, where a game of make-believe is defined as a continuous stretch of imaginative activity (Walton, 1990: 72). On this view, then, a thought experiment is just a special kind of fiction. The important role fiction plays in philosophy, however, does not end there. Our philosophical theories must give voice to our intuitions about fiction. Grand metaphysical theories—theories about the nature of everything—must be able to explain the nature of fictions; philosophers of mind are required to explain how we can have attitudes—beliefs, desires, emotions—about or toward not only the actual, but also the merely fictional; philosophers of language must explain how sentences can be meaningful in every context —including fictional contexts. Indeed, thought experiments about fiction have often provided a significant motivation in support of a philosophical theory and have sometimes led to the rejection of the orthodox theories of the day (cf. Frege, 1893; Russell, 1905; Searle, 1983). But while fictions help us solve difficult problems in other domains, any inquiry into the nature of fiction itself comes with philosophical problems of its own. Philosophers interested in this topic tackle tricky questions like the following: What exactly is fiction? What distinguishes fiction from non-fiction? Are all fictions works of literature, or are some films and paintings also fictions? Are fictions created (p.2) or discovered? How can we be surprised by events described in a fiction when we already know how the narrative ends? What is it that we appreciate in a work of fiction? Under what conditions do we say that a proposition is true (false) according to a particular fiction? How can fiction teach us important truths about the actual world? All of these questions are important, but an answer to each of them has proved more elusive than one might expect. The essays in this collection all make a contribution to the philosophy of fiction. But none attempts to answer any of the questions posed above. Each essay takes it for granted that there are fictions, we know what they are like, we know what distinguishes them from other forms of literature (and other representations generally), and we know what propositions they imply. For the chapters in this collection are not focused on fiction per se. Instead, they each aim to make sense of our talk about fictional objects. Fictional objects are the individuals we refer to when we use names (and descriptions) from fiction. We can distinguish three kinds of fictional object. First there are real world individuals who appear in fiction. For example, Napoleon, General Mikhail Kutuzov, and
- 15. Introduction Page 3 of24 Tsar Alexander I are all characters in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Second, there are the individuals that aren’t real but are modelled on individuals from the actual world. Tolstoy, for example, is often thought to have based his character Pierre Bezukhov on himself. Third, there are the merely fictional objects, individuals who don’t reside in the concrete real world and are not based on individuals who do. Characters like Natasha Rostova and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky from War and Peace are merely fictional characters in this sense. When philosophers interested in the metaphysics of fiction use the phrase ‘fictional object’, they are usually using it in the second or third of the three senses distinguished above (and we will follow this practice hereafter). This is because real world individuals who make an appearance in novels (i.e., fictional objects in the first sense) don’t obviously give rise to any special metaphysical conundrums. Merely fictional individuals and individuals from fiction who are based on real (or fictional or mythical) individuals, though, seem like particularly puzzling beasts. Fictional objects should be distinguished from fictions. Fictional individuals might appear in many different fictions, and a fiction may be a story about many different fictional individuals. This suggests, but does not entail, that fictions and fictional objects are distinct kinds of things. And that seems right. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a fiction—it is not a fictional object. Dorothy’s silver shoes, on the other hand, are fictional objects, and are not fictions. This is not to say that a fiction and a fictional object cannot bear homonymous names. Elizabeth Costello, for example, is a fiction by the South African author J.M. Coetzee. Elizabeth Costello, on the other hand, is a fictional individual, the main protagonist of Coetzee’s novel. Moreover, we do not mean to suggest that an individual cannot be both a fiction and a fictional object at the same time. The House on Eccles Street and Fire and Ice are both fictions—fictions (p.3) written by the character Elizabeth in Coetzee’s novel. Because they are both fictions within a fiction, however, they are also fictional objects. Finally, and most importantly, our claim that fictions and fictional objects are different kinds of things should not be taken to mean that there is no dependence of one on the other. The difficult task for the philosopher of fiction, though, is to spell out exactly what the relationship is between the two. Fictional objects must also be distinguished from fictional characters. While every fictional character is a fictional object, there are many fictional objects that aren’t characters. Hogwarts, Durmstrang, Godric’s Hollow, Malfoy Manor are all fictional locations—schools and dwellings—in the Harry Potter novels. Aladdin’s lamp, Cinderella’s slipper, Gandolf’s rings, and Sherlock Holmes’ pipe are all fictional artefacts that have special significance in the novels in which they appear. These fictional locations and artefacts are not naturally characterized as characters within fiction. A fictional character is a fictional person— though not necessarily a human person. Just as persons are but one kind of object, so too fictional persons are one kind of fictional object. Finally, fictional objects should be distinguished from other kinds of non-actual individuals. Santa Claus and Excalibur are mythical objects, individuals from legend and mythology. Vulcan and phlogiston are theoretical posits, individuals and kinds hypothesized by a misguided scientific theory. My twin sister and Elizabeth I’s husband
- 16. Introduction Page 4 of24 are merely possible (or perhaps impossible) objects. None of these individuals are fictional objects. This might seem odd given that, for example, Vulcan is a central planet in the science fiction series Star Trek and the 1903 novel King Arthur and his Knights by Maude Radford makes more than a passing reference to Excalibur. But fictional objects— in the sense we are interested in here—are individuals first introduced in a work of fiction. The objects mentioned above don’t meet this condition. They are instead objects that make an appearance in fiction. Mythical objects and theoretical posits can do this just as easily as concrete real world objects like Napoleon, London, and the Pyramids in Egypt can. Philosophers interested in the metaphysics of fictional characters ask puzzling questions about their nature. In particular, they ask questions like the following: Do they really exist? What would fictional objects be like if they existed? Do they exist eternally? Are they created? Who by? When and how? Can they be destroyed? If so, how? Are they abstract or concrete? Are they actual? Are they complete objects? Are they possible objects? How many fictional objects are there? What are their identity conditions? What kinds of attitudes can we have toward them? These questions, and others, have dominated the philosophical literature on fictional objects over the last half century, and interest in these questions shows no sign of abating. (p.4) 2. An Ontology of Fictional Objects No doubt the most pressing question concerning fictional objects is whether there are any in the first place. That is to say, what reasons are there to posit or resist positing such entities? And unsurprisingly a variety of arguments have been advanced by fictional realists who accept there are such entities and by fictional irrealists who deny this. Probably the most common argument offered for fictional realism is semantic in nature. Thus, the realist might argue, we need to accept that there are fictional objects in order to account for our intuitions that utterances of various sentences which appear to refer to, or quantify over, fictional objects are meaningful and true. Thus, for example, consider: (1) Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character, (2) Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, (3) Holmes is smarter than Watson, (4) Some fictional characters are greatly admired, (5) There are many fictional characters that have been modelled on real people. Utterances of these sentences strike most people as true. But it is hard to see how these utterances could be genuinely true unless the occurrences of the name ‘Sherlock Holmes’ in (1)–(3) referred to a fictional object and the quantifiers in (4) and (5) ranged over a domain that included fictional entities. At any rate, it is very hard to see how we could adequately and systematically paraphrase (1)–(5) in a way that avoids apparent
- 17. Introduction Page 5 of24 reference to, and quantification over, fictional objects. Moreover, at least if we take the meaning of a proper name to be its referent, one might worry how (1)–(3) could even be meaningful if the occurrences of ‘Holmes’ they contain fail to refer.1 Of course some care is needed here. For one thing, on reflection it is not obvious that the meaningfulness of (1)–(3) require us to accept that the name ‘Sherlock Holmes’ refers. Perhaps our sense that (1)–(3) are meaningful simply comes from the fact that they are syntactically well-formed sentences constructed out of genuine lexical items.2 Or perhaps it comes from the fact that they express genuine, albeit gappy, propositions or from the fact that ordinary speakers use them to express beliefs and, moreover, utterances of (1)–(3) give rise to beliefs in those who hear them.3 For another, while utterances of (1)–(5) will certainly strike many people as true, the mere fact that a sentence strikes us as true obviously doesn’t entail that the sentence actually is true. Our intuitions in these matters may simply be mistaken. After all, no doubt utterances of ‘there are witches’ will strike those who mistakenly (p.5) believe in witches as true, but this fact hardly makes those utterances genuinely true. Still, perhaps our intuitions about (1)–(5) give us at least a prima facie reason to think that they are true and place the burden of proof on those who would deny this. Perhaps it is good methodology to take our truth-value intuitions at face value unless we have some reason to doubt them or some alternative explanation of why we have them. If so then we have at least a prima facie argument for fictional objects here. Moreover fictional realists may offer a related, though slightly different, argument from sentences such as (1)–(5) to there being fictional objects. This is a broadly Quinean argument, familiar from many other areas of philosophy, to the effect that in so far as we accept theories (literary theories) or propositions which entail (1)–(5), or in so far as we are willing to assert and assent to such theories and propositions, we thereby commit ourselves to the things (1)–(5) refer to and quantify over. This argument does not, of course, establish that there are fictional objects. Rather it has a more pragmatic aim. It aims to show that those of us who continue to accept theories or propositions that imply that statements (1)–(5) are true had better accept that there are fictional objects. The considerations just rehearsed are broadly semantic in nature. But there is a further, broadly semantic form of argument for fictional realism that appeals to a rather different sort of phenomena. In its most basic version the argument notes that we appear to stand in various sorts of intentional attitudes that appear to be directed toward fictional objects, as when someone admires Holmes or fears Dracula. The argument then proceeds by claiming that since such intentional states require an object, we need to accept fictional entities in order to account for such attitudes.4 Let’s call this the argument from intentionality. A more sophisticated variation on this argument notes that, in a context where Alice and Beth are both discussing the plot of Hamlet, there seems an intuitive sense in which Alice’s utterances of ‘Hamlet’ are about the same thing as Beth’s, and the thoughts Alice expresses with those utterances are about the same thing as the thoughts Beth expresses with hers. However, the argument proceeds, this can only be so if there really is something that Alice and Beth’s utterances and thoughts are about.
- 18. Introduction Page 6 of24 Consequently we need to accept fictional objects in order to account for cases where, intuitively, two utterances or thoughts purporting to be about fictional entities count as being about the same fictional thing. In short we need to accept fictional objects in order to make sense of certain cases of what is sometimes called intentional identity. In what follows we will call this argument the argument from intentional identity.5 (p.6) The problem posed by cases of intentional identity was stated in perhaps its most famous and pointed form by Peter Geach over forty years ago, and a small literature has developed discussing Geach’s example.6 Geach notes that the following sentence might be used, intuitively correctly, to report the thoughts of Hob and Nob who believe in witches, even if the speaker herself does not believe in witches: (G) Hob thinks a witch has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow.7 (G) itself raises a host of complex and thorny issues. It involves apparent quantification over apparent nonexistents, the intensional contexts created by the attitude verbs, and the phenomenon of so-called unbound anaphora with the pronoun in the second conjunct apparently being in some sense anaphoric upon, or bound by, the indefinite in the first conjunct. The proper treatment of all these phenomena is highly controversial. Moreover, to further complicate matters, (G) appears to have multiple possible readings. For example, it has a specific reading on which, as it were, Hob and Nob both have the same specific witch in mind.8 On this reading (G) would be intuitively correct if, say, Hob and Nob had both read the Harry Potter novels, mistaken them for fact, and Hob believed that Bellatrix Lestrange had blighted Bob’s mare while Nob wondered whether Bellatrix had killed Cob’s sow. Note that in this case (G) would still count as an intuitively true report of Hob and Nob’s thoughts, even if Hob and Nob were unaware of each other’s existence. But one might also think that (G) has a non-specific reading as well, a reading that would be true if Hob simply thought that some witch or other blighted Bob’s mare and Nob, overhearing Hob in conversation, wonders whether that witch also killed Cob’s sow. Discussion has tended to focus on the former, specific, reading and here some realists have invoked fictional or mythical witches in order to provide a satisfactory analysis.9 So far we have been considering what we might regard as broadly semantic arguments for accepting fictional objects. However, fictional realists have offered other sorts of arguments for their view, arguments that we might regard as broadly metaphysical in nature. Thus, for example, Amie Thomasson has argued that our concept of a fictional object (and also our term ‘fictional object’) are associated with certain existence conditions, conditions which specify when the concept counts as (p.7) having something fall under it (or the term counts as genuinely referring).10 She then argues that, since these existence conditions are in fact met, there are fictional objects. In a different vein, Alberto Voltolini has recently argued that we need to accept fictional objects into our ontology in order to provide adequate identity conditions for works of fiction.11 Of course fictional irrealists have offered various responses to these arguments. And
- 19. Introduction Page 7 of24 here the responses may take one of two forms. The irrealist might seek to undermine the realist’s arguments indirectly, by claiming that if we accept those arguments we should also accept certain analogous arguments whose conclusions are clearly unacceptable. Thus, the response continues, we shouldn’t accept the realist’s arguments in the first place. We might call this the bad company response to the realist arguments. The second response would be to meet the realist’s arguments head on and diagnose some way or other in which they fail. We might call this the straight response to the realist arguments. Let’s consider each in turn. The bad company response will proceed by noting that, just as we utter intuitively true sentences which appear to involve reference to, and quantification over, fictional objects, we also utter intuitively true sentences that appear to involve reference to, and quantification over, a range of other things that intuitively don’t exist, including the objects we dream about, hallucinate, and imagine. Thus, in the right context we might say the following and our utterances might be intuitively correct: (6) There were more gorgons than people in the dream I had last night, (7) Three of the daggers I hallucinated were green, (8) There were more red objects than blue objects in the scene I visualized. And, the response continues, if the Quinean argument for fictional realism establishes that there are fictional objects, analogous considerations to do with (6)–(8) would establish that there are dream-objects, hallucinated-objects, and imaginary objects. However, since there are no such things, the Quinean argument for fictional realism must be flawed.12 The realist obviously has two rejoinders to this sort of response. She might try to find some disanalogy between (4)–(5) and (6)–(8) in virtue of which a Quinean argument can be run for fictional objects but not for dream-objects, hallucinated-objects, and imaginary objects. But it is very hard to see what this might be. Or she might accept that, after all, there are such things as dream-objects, hallucinated-objects, and imaginary objects. But while some realists might be willing to make this move, one suspects that many who might initially be attracted to the idea that there are fictional characters will baulk at the suggestion that there are objects corresponding to the denizens of dreams, hallucinations, and imaginings. Turning to the arguments from intentionality and intentional identity, the bad company response notes that if these arguments worked, then analogous arguments (p.8) would seem to establish that, for any thought purporting to be about an object, there is an object which that thought is about. Thus, for example, if Beth mistakes the rustle of some leaves for a mouse and thinks to herself ‘that mouse must be cold’ there will be some sort of object, a non-existent mouse object, toward which her thought is directed. Likewise suppose granny (mistakenly) thinks that a snake has got into the attic and grandpa wonders whether it will leave soon. It seems that there would be some object toward which their thoughts were both directed.13 Just as before, the realist might either try to find some critical disanalogy between these cases and the examples taken to
- 20. Introduction Page 8 of24 motivate realism, or she might accept that there really are objects toward which the thoughts of Beth, grandma, and grandpa, are directed. But, again just as before, it is very hard to see what this disanalogy might be. And many who might have otherwise found realism an attractive position will baulk at the suggestion that whenever we mistakenly suppose there is an F there really is some object toward which our thought is directed. So, perhaps, we should regard the arguments from intentionality and intentional identity as flawed. The bad company response seeks to undermine the arguments offered for fictional realism without diagnosing where those arguments go wrong. But it would obviously be nice to have a straight response to those arguments, a response that did diagnose where they failed. And here irrealists have offered a number of suggestions. Taking the Quinean argument first, some irrealists argue that utterances of sentences such as (1)–(5) are not in fact genuinely true or genuine assertions that aim to describe the world. Rather, what seem to be genuinely true assertions of such sentences are in fact made within the scope of the pretence, or presupposition, or assumption, that there are such things as fictional characters.14 While such utterances are not genuinely true they may nevertheless count as true within the scope of the pretence, or presupposition, or assumption. And, because we mistake this for genuine truth, we are misled into thinking these utterances are genuinely true assertions. Alternatively the irrealist might accept that utterances of sentences such as (1)–(5) are genuinely true assertions but deny that they commit us to fictional objects. One way to do this would be to adopt some sort of prefix fictionalist account of the relevant claims, holding that we should take such utterances to be implicitly prefixed with some form of ‘according to the theory of fictional realism’ operator.15 On this view utterances of (a) and (b) would ultimately have the same sort of status as utterances of ‘In the Conan Doyle stories, Holmes is a detective.’ They would be genuinely true, but they would make claims about what is the case according to the view that there are fictional objects, rather than what is really the case in the world. And as such, the (p.9) thought goes, their truth does not commit us to the existence of fictional objects. A more radical strategy would be to deny that we should understand utterances of (a) and (b) as involving some sort of implicit prefix, but rather try to develop a non-standard semantics or a non-standard meta-semantics on which utterances of such sentences could be genuinely true without requiring fictional objects.16 As for the argument from intentionality, the irrealist might question whether intentional states are in fact relational, and hence whether they require objects.17 But perhaps a less radical strategy would be to hold that thoughts and utterances which seem to be about fictional objects are really about nothing, although they will count as being about things within the scope of the pretence, or presupposition, or assumption, that there are fictional objects. On this approach our intuitions that Alice’s utterances of ‘Hamlet’ are about the same thing as Beth’s, and that likewise the thoughts Alice and Beth express with those utterances, doesn’t come from the fact that those utterances and thoughts refer to the same object. Rather it comes from the fact that, within the scope of the pretence or
- 21. Introduction Page 9 of24 presupposition or assumption, these thoughts and utterances count as being about the same thing.18 Let’s turn to the arguments offered for fictional irrealism. One natural worry some might have about fictional realism would come from a desire for ontological parsimony, from a desire not to bloat our ontology by accepting fictional entities. But matters here are not straightforward. For one thing, the realist can accept the principle that we should strive to keep our ontology as parsimonious as possible but note, not implausibly, that this principle is best understood in a comparative rather than an absolute manner. Given two theories or views that are otherwise equal we should opt for the one that has the most parsimonious ontology. But, the fictional realist might continue, we are not in this sort of situation when it comes to fictional objects. We do not have two equally good theories, one of which posits fictional objects while the other does not. Rather, she may argue, fictional realism provides the only adequate account of a range of phenomena such as our truth-value intuitions concerning utterances of (1)–(5), our intentional attitudes directed toward fictional things, our intuitions concerning cases of intentional identity, and so on. Alternatively, the realist might argue that her ontology is no less parsimonious than the irrealists. According to this line of defence, we must distinguish between two kinds of parsimony. David Lewis famously puts the distinction as follows: Distinguish two kinds of parsimony…qualitative and quantitative. A doctrine is qualitatively parsimonious if it keeps down the number of different kinds of entity… A doctrine is (p.10) quantitatively parsimonious if it keeps down the number of instances of the kinds it posits. (Lewis, 1973: 87) Thus, a theory that postulates humans and orcs might be thought to be qualitatively less parsimonious than a theory that postulates humans alone. A theory that postulates 7 billion humans might be thought to be quantitatively less parsimonious than a theory that postulates 6 billion. Once this distinction has been made, it is open to the realist to claim that the only kind of parsimony of importance to the metaphysician is qualitative parsimony, that realism about fictional objects is just as qualitatively parsimonious as irrealism because both hypotheses are committed to works of literature, plots, poems, etc. and that fictional objects are of the same kind. If she cannot argue for irrealism on the grounds of ontological parsimony, what other arguments might the irrealist offer? No doubt many who deny there are fictional objects are motivated by a pre-theoretic gut intuition that there are no fictional characters, that there is no such thing as Holmes, that hobbits do not exist, and so on. However, it is not clear what weight this sort of simple gut intuition should carry in philosophy. A more sophisticated though related worry would appeal, not so much to our gut intuition that there are no fictional objects, but to our intuitions that utterances which appear to deny there are such things are true: (9) Holmes does not exist,
- 22. Introduction Page 10 of24 (10) Most of the characters in the novel don’t exist, (11) There is no such thing as Holmes, (12) There are no hobbits, and perhaps also to the intuitive truth of various further related claims: (13) ‘Holmes’ does not refer to anything. Given the realist thinks there are such things as fictional objects, she obviously faces the burden of explaining our intuitions about these sorts of cases. So just as the realist can offer a semantic argument from our truth-value intuitions in favour of her position, the irrealist can offer a semantic argument from our truth-value intuitions against it. Overall, then, it seems no account will be able to take all our semantic intuitions at face value. So we will need to consider which account is able to provide the best overall explanation of the relevant cases, explaining away those intuitions it cannot accommodate in a plausible manner.19 3. The Metaphysics of Fictional Objects Let’s put to one side for the moment the arguments offered for fictional realism and fictional irrealism. If we do accept that there are fictional objects, the next obvious (p.11) question concerns what sorts of things they are. Here we find four common views, although others are possible. Firstly the realist might take fictional objects to be Meinongian objects, objects which fail to exist and perhaps which lack any form of being whatsoever.20 Secondly she might take fictional objects to be the denizens of non-actual worlds. Perhaps she might take them to be possibilia, the denizens of non-actual possible worlds. But, since arguably fictional characters could not possibly exist, she may have to accept a metaphysical framework that includes not merely possible worlds but also impossible worlds and take fictional objects to be impossibilia, entities which occur only in impossible worlds. Thirdly she might take fictional objects to be some form of eternal abstract platonic entities.21 On this view fictional objects are entities whose existence and nature is independent of human beings and human practices, entities which are of the same metaphysical kind as mathematical objects (at least as the latter are standardly conceived). Finally the realist might take fictional objects to be abstract artefacts, actual abstract entities that are brought into existence by, and whose natures depend upon, human beings and human practices.22 On this view, fictional objects would be of the same metaphysical kind as nations, universities, economies, and other entities which, while apparently abstract, depend upon human practices for their existence and nature. The next obvious question here is how we might adjudicate between these four views. Obviously we might take issue with general features of a view. Thus, for example, many philosophers will probably reject Meinongian accounts on the grounds that the notion of things that lack any sort of being whatsoever is simply incoherent, or at least too bizarre to be taken seriously. Still, these particular worries are unlikely to move the Meinongian so we seem left with a stand-off and it is not clear how the debate might productively be
- 23. Introduction Page 11 of24 taken forward here. To take another example, however, Kripke (1980) offers a famous argument to the effect that fictional characters cannot be the denizens of other worlds. For there are many worlds in which someone has all the characteristics the Conan Doyle stories attribute to Holmes. In fact there will be many distinct individuals such that, in some world, they have the characteristics the Conan Doyle stories attribute to Holmes. But then which of these many distinct individuals is Sherlock Holmes? The view that fictional characters are the denizens of non-actual worlds seems to be faced with a problematic indeterminacy here. (p.12) Going beyond any objections we might have to general features of a view, the fictional realist needs to answer a further series of questions (or perhaps explain why no answer is needed) and these questions provide a potential further way to adjudicate between different versions of fictional realism. Moreover, of course, these questions constitute a potential further site of combat between the realist and irrealist. For if no version of realism can give a satisfactory answer to a question, and if the realist cannot make out a case that the question doesn’t need answering, this will constitute a strike against realism. Here are some important questions that, plausibly, the fictional realist needs to answer. 3.1. Existence conditions One obvious question facing the realist is what the existence conditions are for fictional objects.23 Here the realist needs to decide whether authors genuinely create fictional characters or whether, in circumstances when we normally say they had created a character, they have simply bestowed some sort of status upon a pre-given object. Those who think that authors can genuinely create fictional characters must explain what, exactly, is involved in this and what the conditions are under which a fictional character comes into being. Those who do not think that authors can genuinely and literally create characters must give an account of the conditions under which authors can bestow the relevant status to a pre-given entity. They must explain what has to be the case in order for us to acceptably say that author A created character c.24 A second related question here concerns whether a fictional character can pass out of being and, if so, under what conditions.25 If we think that characters can pass out of being, we might hold either that the relevant entities have genuinely passed out of being or that they still have being but have lost their status that they now no longer count as ‘fictional characters’. In either case, we must explain the conditions under which the change takes place. The need to provide existence conditions for fictional objects is particularly pressing given cases in which, intuitively, a fiction may talk about a series of fictional entities without directly referring to any of them. Thus, for example, in The Lord of the Rings we are told about numerous orcs and dwarves without these being mentioned by name or otherwise distinguished from each other. Intuitively it seems as if the fictional world portrayed contains numerous orcs and dwarves. Should the realist accept that there are numerous fictional objects corresponding to these? Or in Tess we are told that 16 policemen come to arrest Tess. Intuitively, in the (p.13) world of the fiction, there are 16 distinct policemen. Should the realist accept that there are 16 distinct fictional objects
- 24. Introduction Page 12 of24 corresponding to these? The realist needs to give a principled answer to these questions and a principled account of exactly what it takes for a fiction to give rise to a fictional entity. 3.2. Identity criteria Along with the existence conditions for fictional objects, it might be thought that the realist also needs to offer identity conditions for them.26 Of course, arguably there are many perfectly respectable sorts of entities, such as chairs and tables and clouds, for which clear identity criteria cannot be provided. Nevertheless ordinary people are quite happy to judge that, say, character a is the same as character b but distinct from character c. There seems fairly widespread and systematic agreement about these matters. And so, at the very least, the conditions under which ordinary people accept or reject such judgements need to be articulated. Here the realist will need to provide conditions for both intrafictional and interfictional identity. That is to say, she will need an account of when character a and character b count as the same character, both when a and b intuitively occur in the same fiction, and where intuitively a and b occur in distinct fictions. Given the widespread and systematic agreement in our judgements, then, the realist needs to articulate the conditions under which we count characters a and b as the same and when we count them as distinct. But in fact more may be required of her. For plausibly which characters there are in a given fiction depends upon and is grounded in further facts. In particular, it seems, this will be grounded in how the fiction describes the world it portrays, the creative intentions of its author, and so on. If so, the fictional realist should be able to offer identity criteria for fictional objects which reflect this, criteria which articulate how exactly the identity or distinctness of various characters are grounded. Thus, for example, the criteria should be able to explain why it is that the character of Jekyll and that of Hyde are the same, while the character of Holmes and that of Watson are distinct. And they should be able to explain why the character of Angel in Buffy is the same as the character of Angel in Angel, although the character of Emma Woodhouse in Emma is distinct from the character of Cher Horowitz in Clueless. 3.3. Cognitive fix and reference The realist also faces the question of how it is that our talk and thought about fictional objects comes to be about fictional objects, the question of how our utterances of ‘Holmes’ and the thoughts these express came to refer to the fictional Holmes-object. Here a number of further questions arise. Thus, for example, when Conan Doyle started writing his first Holmes story and imagining its main (p.14) protagonist, were his thoughts about the fictional character of Holmes or did his initial thoughts lack a reference? And did the initial uses of the name ‘Holmes’, made by Conan Doyle as he wrote that story, refer to the character? Or did they lack a referent so that only later did the name ‘Holmes’ come to refer to a fictional character? If the realist takes Conan Doyle’s initial thoughts and uses of ‘Holmes’ to refer to the fictional character, how were they able to do this; what secured their reference? Conversely, if the realist denies that these initial thoughts and uses of ‘Holmes’ referred, at what point did our thoughts and talk come to be about the character and how did this transition take place?27
- 25. Introduction Page 13 of24 3.4. Fictional non-particulars What should the realist say about cases where a fiction talks about non-particulars that do not really exist, such as fictional properties, kinds, or stuffs? For fictions do not merely describe worlds containing people, objects, and places that don’t really exist. They may also describe worlds containing properties, kinds, and stuffs that don’t exist. Indeed, utterances of the following sentences seem intuitively true: (14) Being a firebolt is a fictional property made up by J. K. Rowling. (15) Woozles are a fictional kind of creature, mentioned in the Winnie the Pooh stories. (16) Amortentia is a fictional substance that occurs in the Harry Potter stories. (17) Some fictional properties/kinds/stuffs are more interesting than others. (18) There is some fictional property/kind/stuff that occurs in a twentieth-century story which is the model for a fictional property/kind/stuff that occurs in a twenty- first-century story. One might therefore suppose that, if the sort of Quinean argument noted earlier gives us a reason to posit fictional objects, analogous considerations will give us reason to posit fictional properties, fictional kinds, and fictional stuffs. Likewise, it seems, there is an intuitive sense in which you and I can both talk and think about Woozles, Amortentia, and being a firebolt. So if the arguments from intentionality and intentional identity give us reason to accept fictional characters such as Holmes and Hamlet into our ontology, it seems analogous considerations give us reason to accept fictional properties, kinds, and stuffs as well. Clearly, however, if the realist accepts such things she owes us an account of how exactly we should understand them and, in particular, of the metaphysical category to which they belong. Do fictional properties/kinds/stuffs, belong to the same metaphysical categories as ordinary properties/kinds/stuffs? Or do they belong to some other metaphysical category? Are they perhaps objects which are simply described by the relevant fictions as being properties, kinds, or stuffs? The realist (p.15) needs to answer this question and provide some account of what is going on when, say, a fiction ascribes a fictional property to a fictional object or describes a fictional object as belonging to a certain fictional kind. In fact this sort of question generalizes. To take a somewhat bizarre example, a fiction might in principle be set in a world in which there are impossible alien metaphysical categories. Suppose, for example, that someone writes a magical realist story in which it turned out that the fundamental constituents of reality were para-particulars (entities which stand to particulars in the same relation that particulars stand to universals) and sub-particulars (entities which stand to particulars in the same relation that particulars stand to stuffs). No doubt a fictional world involving such things would be bizarre and
- 26. Introduction Page 14 of24 hard to imagine. But perhaps with enough skill an author might get us to imagine, at least to a certain extent, that the fictional world contained things falling into these categories. Indeed it might become fashionable to write stories set in such worlds. And we might end up talking about which author made up fictional para-particular X, comparing the fictional sub-particular Y invented by one author with the fictional sub-particular Z invented by another, and so on. In short, it seems we might end up in a situation where versions of the Quinean argument and the arguments from intentionality and intentional identity pushed us to accepting that there were fictional, alien and impossible, metaphysical categories and fictional things falling into those categories. Of course the realist might try to resist this move. Perhaps she might argue that any story purporting to talk about para-particulars and sub-particulars would be ultimately incoherent or defective in some way. And, she might continue, as a consequence of this the story would not really give rise to fictional para-particulars and fictional sub- particulars. Talk purporting to be about such things would merely purport to be about them; it would in fact be about nothing. But exactly why this was so would need to be carefully argued and explained. And in the absence of such arguments and explanations, and in so far as it is possible for someone to write a story purporting to be about para- particulars and sub-particulars, then it seems the realist is under pressure to accept there are, or could be, fictional para-particulars and fictional sub-particulars. Granted this, once again the fictional realist owes us an account of how to understand the metaphysical nature of these fictional categories and the fictional entities that seem to fall under them. Should we accept that, in some sense, there really are bizarre alien metaphysical categories of para-particulars and sub-particulars, categories to which X, Y, and Z belong? Should we deny there are such categories and simply take X, Y, and Z to be ordinary fictional objects that, in the relevant fictions, somehow count as belonging to alien metaphysical categories? Or should we understand such cases in some different way? 3.5. Parts of fictional objects Finally let’s turn to a question that, while initially perhaps a little odd, has not received the attention it deserves and which brings us back to our first question, (p.16) the question of what the existence conditions for fictional objects are. The objects described in fictions typically have parts. In some cases the fiction may explicitly describe and talk about these. Indeed in some cases these parts may play a central role in the fiction. What should the realist say about such cases? Are there distinct fictional objects corresponding to the relevant parts? And, if so, how are they related to the fictional object of which they count as parts; are they genuinely parts of it or merely described as being parts of it by the fiction? Moreover, if a fiction portrays an object that has various parts in the world of the fiction, are there distinct fictional objects for every part or only for some? These questions may sound bizarre but they deserve principled answers. And we can bring them out a little by considering some examples. Lilliput is a fictional island and, like all islands, within the world of the fiction Lilliput has
- 27. Introduction Page 15 of24 parts. It contains various regions and places, such as the place where Gulliver came ashore and the east-most beach on the island. And the sorts of arguments offered for accepting fictional characters into ontology seem to push us toward accepting fictional locations on, and regions of, Lilliput as well. Thus for example, suppose Alice, Beth, and Cathy are discussing Lilliput. Alice and Beth think about its east-most beach while Cathy thinks about its centre. It seems that Alice and Beth intuitively count as talking and thinking about the same region of Lilliput while Mary intuitively counts as talking and thinking about a distinct region. So, one might suppose, the arguments from intentionality and intentional identity give us reason to accept, not merely a fictional Lilliput-object, but also fictional objects corresponding to at least some of its regions. Moreover, it seems, we might make intuitively true claims that appear to refer to, or quantify over, fictional regions. The following, for example, is most likely true: (19) There is some fictional region of Lilliput that is the model for a fictional region that occurs in a later story. So the Quinean argument also seems to push us toward accepting not merely fictional islands but also fictional regions of those islands. This sort of worry can be amplified. We certainly talk and think as if the body parts of a fictional character were distinct from that character themselves. Thus, for example, we might compare the eyes of various fictional characters. We might note that when Gogol created Major Kovalyov’s nose he created an object that symbolized human alienation. We might note that, in all likelihood, there are a number of fictional noses that have been modeled on that of Cyrano de Bergerac (although the characters to which those noses belonged might sometimes have had little else in common with Cyrano). We might note that the eyes of some nineteenth century characters are described in far greater detail than any eyes of any eighteenth century character. Likewise Alice and Beth will intuitively count as thinking about the same thing when they are both thinking about Anna Karenina’s eyes but as thinking about different things when Alice thinks of Anna’s nose and Beth thinks of Cyrano’s. And so on. (p.17) In all these cases, then, the realist needs to decide whether the relevant island and body parts do indeed correspond to distinct fictional objects. If not she must explain why we talk and think as if they do and how, intuitively, claims such as (19) can be true. If so she must explain how these objects are related to the fictional object of which they count as parts. And she must also provide an account of when a fiction gives rise to such further fictional objects and why this is so. Does the fiction have to explicitly mention the part to generate a fictional object? Or does it merely need to be the case that, in the world of the fiction, the relevant object has that part? It is not clear how a principled argument for the former answer might be given. But, of course, the latter would commit the realist to a vast plenum of fictional objects at which she might well baulk. We certainly don’t mean to claim that the realist can’t provide plausible and principled answers to these questions. But we do think that the debate concerning fictional entities has tended to concentrate upon a few stock examples of ‘familiar’ and ‘well behaved’
- 28. Introduction Page 16 of24 fictional characters, such as Hamlet and Holmes. A fully adequate account of fictional entities, be it of a realist or irrealist flavour, will need to say something about a much wider range of cases, including cases where a fiction purports to describe not merely islands and people but also their parts. Perhaps, in the end, the best way to adjudicate between realism and irrealism will turn upon how well they can deal with these cases. At the very least, we think, these sorts of cases deserve more discussion than they have so far received. 4. This Volume We hope it is clear from the previous section why a volume on the metaphysics of fictional objects is justified (and well overdue). Vigorous philosophical debates about the existence and nature of fictional individuals continue to the present day. It is our hope that the present volume will provide a significant contribution to that debate. The contributors are some of the most important philosophers working in this field and the contributions all address some of the controversies discussed above. None of the contributions has been previously published elsewhere. In 1973, Kripke presented the John Locke lectures at Oxford University—a series of six lectures in total—under the title Reference and Existence. In this series of lectures, only recently published in monograph form by Oxford University Press (2013), Kripke raises for the first time many of the issues discussed in the previous section. Interestingly, Kripke was the first proponent of artefactualism, the view that fictional characters are actual abstract artefacts bought into existence by the activities of human beings. Artefactualism is perhaps the orthodoxy today, and is certainly the most widely accepted form of realism. It is defended by David Braun, Peter van Inwagen, Nathan Salmon, and Amie Thomasson. But Kripke was also one of the first advocates of a kind of pretence theory, the view that our thought and talk in fictional contexts involves a kind of pretence and in such contexts we don’t use fictional names (p.18) to refer—instead we use them to pretend to refer. This kind of view is commonly associated with fictional irrealists, philosophers such as Anthony Everett, Frederick Kroon, and Ken Walton. Kripke’s discussion of these two parts of his view is sophisticated and detailed. Kripke’s influence on the philosophical landscape can be seen in all of the chapters within this volume, but nowhere more so than in William Lycan’s (Chapter 1) ‘A Reconsidered Defence of Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals’. In his contribution to this anthology, Lycan reflects on and evaluates Kripke’s arguments in order to come to a reconsidered view about fictional objects. In his monograph Modality and Meaning, Lycan defended the view that fictional objects have haecceities. In light of Kripke’s discussion, though, Lycan revises his position. The resulting view vindicates haecceitism. Like Lycan, Bob Howell, in his (Chapter 2) ‘Objects of Fiction and Objects of Thought,’ re-examines his own earlier views on fictional objects. In previous publications Howell was persuaded by arguments like the argument from intentionality, to accept artefactualism about fictional characters. But in this essay Howell recants his earlier view and argues that our impression that we are talking of a real-world thing when we speak about fictional objects, like Sherlock Holmes, is mistaken. It derives from a non-conscious
- 29. Introduction Page 17 of24 assumption, which governs all our discourse about fiction, that terms like ‘Sherlock Holmes’ function as a rigid-designator. The view of fictional objects that Howell develops is neither a classical realist account nor is it a make-believe/pretence version of irrealism. It is, however, a version of irrealism based on his semantic-descent model for understanding proper names—a view he defends in a number of recent publications (Howell, 2010 and 2011). Interestingly, Howell’s account provides a satisfying resolution to Geach’s classic Hob–Nob problem. Howell’s chapter is not the only contribution in this volume to discuss Geach’s Hob-Nob problem. Nathan Salmon’s (Chapter 4) ‘The Philosopher’s Stone and Other Mythical Objects’ develops an alternative solution to the problem and defends this solution from objections raised by David Braun. Braun argued against the hypothesis that ‘witch’ is ambiguous between real witch and real or mythical witch. Salmon, on the other hand, argues on the contrary that terms for certain dubious kinds, including ‘magician’, ‘faith healer’, ‘seance’, and ‘witch’, evidently display an ambiguity of strict and looser senses. It is argued further that even if Geach’s puzzle sentence is committed to witches, a genuine solution to Geach’s puzzle must acknowledge the crucial role played by mythical objects in non-literal but intended statements. David Braun’s (Chapter 3) ‘Wondering about Witches’ and Sarah Sawyer’s (Chapter 8) ‘The Importance of Fictional Properties’ both take up the issue of fictional properties. The question of whether a fictional name refers to a fictional object lies at the heart of the semantic debate concerning fiction. The question of whether a fictional predicate or general term picks out a fictional property, in contrast, has been little discussed. In their respective contributions, Braun and (p.19) Sawyer independently argue that semantic questions surrounding fictional names and metaphysical questions surrounding fictional objects cannot be answered independently of analogous questions concerning fictional predicates and fictional properties. Interestingly, Braun takes these considerations to be consistent with what he calls the Naïve Theory—a semantic theory according to which the semantic value of a proper name (if it has one) is the individual (if any) to which it refers and the semantic value (if any) of a simple verb or predicate is an attribute (a property or relation). Sawyer, though, takes these considerations to lend support to a pretence theory. Pretence theory is roughly the view that all of our thought and talk (apparently) about fictional objects and attributes is just a pretence—even in our most serious moments. When we make such utterances we don’t believe or assert what we say, we merely make-believe what’s said and merely pretend to assert it (or engage in some other speech act entirely). Pretence theories often travel under the name ‘fictionalism’ because an analogy is drawn between our serious and critical discussions using fictional names and predicates and the act of telling a story (when, for example, we read to our children before they go to sleep at night). Fictionalism of this stripe, pretence fictionalism, is famously defended by philosophers such as Anthony Everett and Ken Walton. In this volume, it is defended directly by Sawyer and indirectly by Frederick Kroon (Chapter 6) in his ‘Creationism and the Problem of Indiscernible Fictional Objects.’ Another
- 30. Introduction Page 18 of24 alternative version of fictionalism, prefix fictionalism, is defended by Stuart Brock (Chapter 9) in his ‘Fictionalism, Fictional Characters, and Fictional Inference.’ Prefix fictionalism is a version of irrealism that doesn’t take most utterances involving fictional names and predicates at face value. Instead, they are understood as containing a silent prefix, of the form ‘according to such-and-such fiction.’ As such, the statements don’t commit the speaker to an ontology of fictional objects or properties. Yet these utterances are genuine assertions and don’t involve any element of pretence. In his contribution to this anthology, Brock defends prefix fictionalism against a popular objection to the view— the objection that prefix fictionalism cannot accommodate our intuitions about the kinds of inferences we are entitled to make from fictional and critical claims. In her ‘Fictional Discourse and Fictionalisms’ (Chapter 10) Amie Thomasson defends her artefactual theory of fictional objects against objections mounted by fictionalists. Once the objections have been countered, Thomasson acknowledges that some might still think that the fictionalist approach is preferable to the artefactualists. This undermines the attractions of the kind of minimalist realism artefactualism offers. Thus in the latter half of her contribution, Thomasson examines whether fictionalism really does undermine the easy ontological methodology behind artefactualism. She argues that it does not. To the contrary, she suggests that the easy ontological approach poses important challenges for the fictionalist of any stripe, wherever they appear in metaphysics. (p.20) Much of the debate between realists and irrealists about fictional individuals focuses on the problem of giving existence conditions for fictional objects. A number of contributions to this anthology, though, take up the issue of how to give identity criteria for fictional objects. Kroon, for example, gives a reductio against semantic arguments in favour of realism and artefactualism: If such arguments establish the existence of abstract named or at any rate determinate characters, structurally similar arguments establish—what is arguably impossible—the existence of abstract indiscernible characters. On the other hand Ben Caplan and Cathleen Muller (Chapter 7) in their contribution ‘Brutal Identity’ defend a view according to which at least some facts about the identity and distinctness of fictional characters exhibit what David Lewis (1986: vii) calls ‘the brute arbitrariness of our world’; they are among ‘the arbitrary, “quirky” facts about the world’. Caplan and Muller think we simply can’t explain these facts. In order to illustrate the point, they compare the view to two of its alternative positions, which are due to Terence Parsons (1980) and to Benjamin Schnieder and Tatjana von Solodkoff (2009). Caplan and Muller argue that, at least as far as arbitrariness is concerned, there is no reason to reject the view they defend in favour of either of its rivals. It is worth emphasizing again that the orthodox metaphysical view of fictional objects is artefactualism (the view that such objects are actual abstract artefacts created by and dependent upon human activities). Artefactualism’s dominance on the philosophical landscape, though, is due in part to the fact that the traditional alternative realist positions (Meinongianism, possibilism, Platonism, etc.) have such counterintuitive consequences. A number of the contributions in this volume, though, propose new and exciting alternative metaphysical views which provide a fresh contrast to artefactualism. So, for example, in
- 31. Introduction Page 19 of24 Alberto Voltolini’s (Chapter 5) ‘A Suitable Metaphysics for Fictional Entities: Why One Has to Run Syncretistically’ the author claims that a Syncretist metaphysics that combines Meinongianism with Artefactualism has the merits of both views but the costs of neither. According to Syncretism, fictional objects are hybrid entities individuated in terms of a certain make-believe narrative process and the properties that such narration mobilizes. In Anthony Everett and Timothy Schroeder’s (Chapter 11) ‘Ideas for Stories’, Everett and Schroeder point out that there is currently a heated debate concerning whether there really are such things as fictional characters, but it is far less controversial whether there are such things as ideas. They argue that if there are ideas then, plausibly, these include ideas of fictional characters, such as the idea of Sherlock Holmes and the idea of Watson. They note that our talk and thought about the idea of Sherlock Holmes in many ways parallels our talk and thought about the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes. They then argue that realists about fictional characters should identify the characters with the corresponding ideas. Conversely, irrealists should take many of the intuitions appealed to by realists to concern, not fictional characters, but rather to our ideas of them. References Bibliography references: Azzouni, Jodi (2004). Deflating Existential Consequence: A Case for Nominalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Azzouni, Jodi (2010). Talking about Nothing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Braun, David (1993). ‘Empty Names.’ Noûs 27: 449–69. Braun, David (2005). ‘Empty Names, Mythical Names, Fictional Names.’ Noûs 39: 596– 631. Brock, Stuart (2002). ‘Fictionalism about Fictional Characters.’ Noûs 36: 1–21. Brock, Stuart (2010). ‘The Creationist Fiction: The Case Against Creationism about Fictional Characters.’ Philosophical Review 119: 337–64. Cameron, Ross (2008). ‘Truthmakers and Ontological Commitment: Or, How to Deal With Complex Objects and Mathematical Ontology without Getting into Trouble.’ Philosophical Studies 140: 1–18. Cameron, Ross (2010). ‘How to Have a Radically Minimal Ontology.’ Philosophical Studies 151: 249–64. Cameron, Ross (2012). ‘How to Be a Nominalist and a Fictional Realist.’ In Art and Abstract Objects, edited by Christy Mag Uidhir. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 179– 96.
- 32. Introduction Page 20 of24 Caplan, Ben (2004). ‘Creatures of Fiction, Myth, and Imagination.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 41: 331–7. Crimmins, Mark (1998). ‘Hesperus and Phosphorus: Sense, Pretense, and Reference.’ Philosophical Review 107: 1–48. Deutsch, Harry (1991). ‘The Creation Problem.’ Topoi 10: 209–25. Edelberg, Walter (1986). ‘A New Puzzle about Intentional Identity.’ Journal of Philosophical Logic 15: 1–25. Edelberg, Walter (1992). ‘Intentional Identity and the Attitudes.’ Linguistics and Philosophy 15: 561–96. Edelberg, Walter (2006). ‘Intrasubjective Intentional Identity.’ Journal of Philosophy 103: 481–502. Evans, Gareth (1982). The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frege, Gottlob (1893). ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung.’ Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik 100 (translated by Black, Max (1948). Philosophical Review 57: 209–30). Geach, Peter (1967). ‘Intentional Identity.’ Journal of Philosophy 64: 627–32. Glick, Ephraim (2011). ‘A Modal Approach to Intentional Identity.’ Noûs 46: 386–99. Goodman, Jeffery (2004). ‘A Defense of Creationism in Fiction.’ Grazer Philosophische Studien 67: 131–55. Goodman, Jeffery (2005). ‘Defending Author Essentialism.’ Philosophy and Literature 29: 200–8. Howell, Robert (1979). ‘Fictional Objects: How They Are and How They Aren’t.’ Poetics 8: 129–77. Howell, Robert (2010). ‘Literary Fictions, Real and Unreal.’ In Fictions and Models: New Essays, edited by John Woods. Munich: Philosophia Verlag: 27–107. Howell, Robert (2011). ‘Fictional Realism and Its Discontents.’ In Truth in Fiction, edited by Franck Lihoreau. Frankfurt: Ontos: 153–202. Jacquette, Dale (1996). Meinongian Logic: the Semantics of Existence and Nonexistence. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. King, Jeffery (1993). ‘Intentional Identity Generalized.’ Journal of Philosophical Logic 22: 61–93.
- 33. Introduction Page 21 of24 Kriegel, Uriah (2007). ‘Intentional Inexistence and Phenomenal Intentionality.’ Philosophical Perspectives 21: 307–40. Kriegel, Uriah (2008). ‘The Dispensability of (Merely) Intentional Objects.’ Philosophical Studies 141: 79–95. Kripke, Saul (1980). Naming and Necessity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kripke, Saul (2013). Reference and Existence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kroon, Fred (2013). ‘The Fiction of Creationism.’ In Truth in Fiction, edited by Franck Lihoreau. Ontos Verlag: 203–22. Lamarque, Peter (2003). ‘How to Create a Fictional Character.’ In The Creation of Art: New Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics, edited by Berys Gaut and Paisley Livingston. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 33–52. Lewis, David K. (1973). Counterfactuals. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lewis, David K. (1986). On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lycan, William G. (1994). Modality and Meaning. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy series). McKinsey, Michael (1986). ‘Mental Anaphora.’ Synthese 66: 159–75. Parsons, Terence (1980). Nonexistent Objects. New Haven: Yale University Press. Priest, Graham (2005). Toward Non-Being. The Logic and Metaphysics of Intentionality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Routley, Richard (1980). Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond. Canberra: Australian National University. Russell, Bertrand (1905). ‘On Denoting.’ Mind 14: 479–93. Sainsbury, R.M. (2009). Fiction and Fictionalism. London: Routledge. Salmon, Nathan (1998). ‘Nonexistence.’ Noûs 32: 277–319. Salmon, Nathan (2005). ‘Mythical Objects.’ In Philosophical Troubles: Collected Papers, Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 91–110. Schnieder, Benjamin and Tatjana von Solodkoff (2009). ‘In Defence of Fictional Realism.’ Philosophical Quarterly 59: 138–49. Searle, John (1983). Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Kenneth (2000). ‘Emptiness without Compromise.’ In Empty Names, Fiction, and
- 34. Introduction Page 22 of24 the Puzzles of Non-Existence, edited by Anthony Everett and Thomas Hofweber. Stanford: CSLI Press. Thomasson, Amie L. (1999). Fiction and Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomasson, Amie L. (2003a). ‘Fictional Characters and Literary Practices.’ British Journal of Aesthetics 43: 138–57. Thomasson, Amie L. (2003b). ‘Speaking of Fictional Characters.’ Dialectica 57: 207–26. Thomasson, Amie L. (2007). Ordinary Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomasson, Amie L. (2010). ‘Fiction, Existence and Indeterminacy.’ In Fictions and Models: New Essays, edited by John Woods. Munich: Philosophia Verlag: 109–48. Van Inwagen, Peter (1983). ‘Fiction and Metaphysics.’ Philosophy and Literature 7: 67– 77. Van Inwagen, Peter (2000). ‘Quantitifcation and Fictional Discourse.’ In Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-Existence, edited by Anthony Everett and Thomas Hofweber. Stanford: CSLI Press: 235–47. Van Inwagen, Peter (2001). ‘Creatures of Fiction.’ In his Ontology, Identity, and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 37–56. Voltolini, Alberto (2006). How Ficta Follow Fiction: A Syncretistic Account of Fictional Entities. Dordrecht: Springer. Walton, Kendall (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wolterstorff, Nicholas (1980). Works and Worlds of Art. Oxford University Press: Oxford. Yagisawa, Takashi (2001). ‘Against Creationism in Fiction.’ Noûs 35: 153–72. Zalta, Edward (1988). Intensional Logic and the Metaphysics of Intentionality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Notes: (1) For two excellent discussions of this and other prima facie problems which non- referring names generate for the Millian, see Braun (1993) and (2005). (2) See Taylor (2000) for an account generally along these lines. (3) See Braun (1993) and (2005). (4) Priest motivates a Meinongian account of intentional objects, which include fictional
- 35. Introduction Page 23 of24 objects, in this sort of way (see Priest, 2005: 58–9). (5) For arguments of this kind see, for example, Terence Parsons (1980) and Amie Thomasson (1999, Chapter 6). An argument along these lines was also given by Kripke in his 1973 John Lock Lectures, Reference and Existence (Lecture 3). (6) See Geach (1967). For further discussion see, for example, Edelberg (1986), (1992), and (2006), Glick (2011), King (1993), and McKinsey (1986). (7) Although (G) makes no mention of fictional entities or kinds—witches, after all, are mythical beings—(G) can be transformed, mutatis mutandis, to (appear to) make reference to such things. Consider, for example, the statement (F) ‘Hob thinks an orc has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow.’ (F) gives rise to the same problems as (G) and appears, on its face, to quantify over fictional kinds. (8) We note that the specific reading of (G) adds a further thorny and controversial issue to the mix, that of how we should understand specific uses of indefinites. (9) See in particular Nathan Salmon (2005). (10) See Thomasson (2003b) and (2007). (11) See Voltolini (2006). (12) See Caplan (2004). (13) See Kroon (2013). (14) For the first strategy see Walton (1990). For the second see Chapter 6 of Sainsbury (2009). And for the third see Howell (2010) and (2011). There may be subtle differences between these approaches, but we can ignore these for our purposes here. (15) For a view of this kind see Brock (2002). (16) Thus, for example, Azzouni (2004) and (2010) claims that we can adopt a familiar truth-conditional semantics for such sentences without this committing us to fictional objects. And Ross Cameron (2012) argues that the truth of such sentences need not commit us to fictional objects as we can give an account of their truthmakers without needing to invoke such things (see also Cameron, 2008 and 2010). (17) See for example the adverbial account of intentionality suggested by Kriegel (2007) and (2008). (18) Versions of this sort of approach can be found in Chapter 10 of Evans (1982) and chapter 6 of Sainsbury (2009). Crimmins (1998) offers a pretence theoretic account of Hob-Nob sentences. (19) For various fictional realist accounts of negative existentials see, for example, Salmon
- 36. Introduction Page 24 of24 (1998), Thomasson (2003b), (2007, Chapters 2 and 4), and (2010), and van Inwagen (2000: 246–7). (20) See Parsons (1980), Routley (1980), and Jacquette (1996) for Meinongian accounts. Priest (2005) also develops a form of Meinongianism. (21) The view developed in Zalta (1988) is probably best understood along these lines. Other Platonists include Lamarque (2003) who takes fictional characters to be abstract character-types and Wolterstorff (1980) who takes them to be abstract person-kinds. (22) Advocates of this view include Braun (2005), Howell (1979), Kripke (2013), Salmon (1998), and in particular Thomasson (1999), (2003a), (2003b), (2007), and (2010). A similar view is defended by van Inwagen (1983), (2000), and (2001), although van Inwagen does not commit himself to the view that authors create fictional objects. (23) Thomasson suggests existence conditions for fictional objects in her (2003b) and (2007). (24) For a critical discussion of the view that authors create fictional characters see Stuart Brock (2010). Harry Deutsch (1991) and Takashi Yagisawa (2001) also raise worries about creationism, although see Goodman (2004) and (2005) for a defence. Parsons (1980: 188), Priest (2005: 118–21), and Zalta (1988: 124–5) offer Meinongian and Platonist accounts of what is going on in situations where an author intuitively counts as ‘creating’ a fictional character. (25) See Thomasson (1999) for the view that fictional objects can pass out of being. (26) For various accounts of the identity criteria for fictional objects see, for example, Parsons (1980: 19, 27–9), Thomasson (1999: 63–8), Voltolini (2006: 79–8), and Zalta (1988: 123–7). (27) For discussion see Braun (2005), Salmon (1998), and Thomasson (1999, Chapter 4) and (2003a: 150).
- 37. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 1 of 19 University Press Scholarship Online Oxford Scholarship Online Fictional Objects Stuart Brock and Anthony Everett Print publication date: 2015 Print ISBN-13: 9780198735595 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2015 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735595.001.0001 A Reconsidered Defence of Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals William G. Lycan DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735595.003.0002 Abstract and Keywords Modality and Meaning (1994) defended the minority position that nonfactual entities have haecceities (plus whatever other essential properties might be); the descriptions used to introduce them do not produce or determine substantive essences. In light of Kripke’s John Locke Lectures and some more recent work on fictional characters, it appears that position needs further defending. This chapter rebuts Kripke’s odd view that fictional persons are not possible beings; instead it contends that the author’s original stipulatory model saves Haecceitism about fictional characters from Kripke’s plurality objections. His case against Haecceitism must therefore rest entirely on his pretence view of fictional discourse. But the pretence view does not work either; so Haecceitism survives. Keywords: Haecceitism, Saul Kripke, essentialism, fictional objects, negative existentials, pretence In Modality and Meaning (1994, hereafter M&M), I defended several claims about fictional and otherwise nonactual individuals, notably (Chapter 6) the minority position that
- 38. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 2 of 19 nonactual entities have haecceities and few if any other nontrivial essential properties; the descriptions used to introduce them do not produce or determine essences. I also proposed a particular theory of negative existentials (Chapter 7). I made at least one passing reference to Saul Kripke’s ‘Existence: Vacuous Names and Mythical Kinds’, which I had heard him deliver at the 1972 Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy but which remained unpublished. I had heard of his subsequent John Locke Lectures, now Reference and Existence (1973/2013, hereafter R&E), but had never seen a copy. Now that I have been able to read them, and some more recent related work by others on fictional characters, my positions need reviewing. In this chapter I shall try to sort out what I got right and what may have been mistaken. 1. Haecceitism for Nonactuals I. Suppose Haecceitism holds for actual individuals (M&M, Chapter 5); a person S in nonactual world w is identical with the real Barack Obama at our world @ just in case S is Barack Obama, never mind what other properties S may have accidentally or essentially in w. We may even suppose that there is a world qualitatively identical to @ down to the last subatomic particle, but differs from it in that the identities of Obama and Newt Gingrich are switched (Chisholm, 1967; Wilson, 1959); that would of course require that Obama and Gingrich had only a few essential properties that were not merely logical consequences of their haecceities—being human, perhaps, and possibly being male.1 (p.25) Haecceitism for actual individuals is one thing, tolerated by many, but for nonactuals it is quite another. I distinguished two opposing positions on nonactuals. First, the Conservative, according to which fictional and other merely possible individuals have qualitative essences—individuating properties that necessarily apply to at most one individual per world and that serve to pick out those respective individuals from world to world. Suppose, for example, that Q is a qualitative individual essence in world w, and that at another world w’, ‘(∃x)(Qx & Fx)’ holds for some property F; then we would say that the merely possible individual identified by Q in w has F in w’. The opposing position is of course Haecceitism itself, in 1994 nearly unheard of for nonexistents. On that view, as in the case of actual things, if P is a fictional individual inhabiting nonactual world w, then S in a distinct nonactual world w’ is identical with P iff S is P, no matter what other properties S may have accidentally or essentially in w’. As before, we may even suppose that there is a world qualitatively identical to w down to the last subatomic particle, but differs from it in that the identities of P and S are switched. II. Even to those who are comfortable with Haecceitism regarding actual entities, Haecceitism for nonactuals at first seems crazy. Indeed, the Conservative line has much to recommend it (M&M: 110–111, 118–19). Briefly: (i) Unlike actual individuals, mere possibilia are not given or encountered or perceived or ostended, but specified, stipulated, or constructed out of existing conceptual material. (ii) In the end, the only way to specify a nonexistent is in effect to proffer a description. Nor does the description seem merely to fix reference (in Kripke’s [1972a, 1980] phrase) to an independently identifiable individual. (iii) If nonactuals have haecceities and can differ numerically without
- 39. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 3 of 19 differing qualitatively, then it ought to be possible for us to have a particular nonexistent in mind, or to have a propositional attitude toward that object, without having in mind a qualitative twin; yet that does not seem possible.2 (iv) It is hard to maintain that a nonexistent can be an element of a singular proposition. An ordinary haecceity requires and introduces the actual existence of its owner. (v) Even if we can coherently think of a world just like this one save for the switching of Obama and Gingrich, we simply cannot distinguish two nonactual worlds which differ only in the switching of the alleged haecceities of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, or (Adams, 1981) two worlds which differ only in the switching of two nonactual electrons.3 (vi) It is not easy to say how an unexemplified (p.26) haecceity differs from a Meinongian nonexistent possible (if we are concerned to avoid association with Meinong). And, (vii) (here I will quote myself, because we shall revisit this argument below): [C]onsider a single possible world containing two planets qualitatively identical to each other—say, each planet contains a replica of Conan Doyle’s Victorian England and in particular a Sherlock Holmes figure. What conceivable ground could there be for choosing one of the two Holmes figures and deciding that it is the real Holmes while the other is only its qualitative duplicate? To attach a Holmesian haecceity to either figure would be entirely arbitrary. (M&M: 119) III. Nonetheless I defended Haecceitism. My central argument was based on Alan McMichael’s (1983a, 1983b) observation that not only fictional individuals but other mere possibilia have modal properties that take the form of iterated unrealized possibilities. Consider Mrs Hudson, Sherlock Holmes’ longsuffering landlady. Might she instead of being a landlady have gone into service in a great household, or become a poet, or emigrated to New Zealand and run a lucrative dairy farm? Remember that fictional individuals do not have only the properties explicitly ascribed to them in their native works, but also those which may fairly be extrapolated or assumed on the basis of the text and its setting (Lewis, 1978).4 Now, the original Mrs Hudson is (in the story) a woman. Presumably she has knees, even though we never see them or hear of them and even though there is no specific circumference that they have. Similarly, she had parents, though we know nothing about them and can infer only a bit more. By the same token, she has the everyday sorts of modal properties that ordinary women have as well. Every actual working woman is such that she (metaphysically) might have pursued a different occupation, so doubtless the same is true of Mrs Hudson. But if we grant that she might have joined a different trade, it seems we are saying that at a world other than that described in Conan Doyle’s stories, Mrs Hudson does go into dairy farming or whatever instead of keeping 221B Baker Street. And this conflicts with any assumption we might have made about a qualitative essence for her. If her being a landlady is not a reliable transworld identifying mark, the same can be said of any other feature attributed to her by Conan Doyle; and so it seems we must award her a haecceity, just as if she were actual. The point is reinforced by a more general argument of McMichael’s that is not tied to fiction but is based on plain real-world iterated
- 40. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 4 of 19 modalities. Again (almost) indisputably, there might have been someone having such-and- such a property F that also had but might have lacked a further property G; for example, Mary Lycan and I might have had a foster daughter—distinct from our actual Jane and from our actual foster son Devin—who went into philosophy but who might instead have gone into arbitrage. Thus on anyone’s possible-worlds semantics, fiction completely aside, it seems there is a world (p.27) w containing the extra Lycan daughter and a further world w’ also containing that very woman but at which she goes into arbitrage instead of philosophy—not because of any work of fiction but simply because the envisaged possibilities seem genuine, in the real world. Thus we are forced to consider transworld identity conditions for McMichael-individuals.5 For that matter, the foster daughter need not have been a foster daughter, nor ever have borne any interesting relation to the Lycans. Here no extrinsic essence is ready to hand; all we know about the foster daughter is that in w she is one, of ours, but her being one is not essential to her. So it seems we must award her an haecceity of some sort; we must grant that there is a property of being N, where N is a proper name of our imaginary foster daughter, that persists from world to world despite variation of all her ordinary features. IV. What of the foregoing seven arguments for the Conservative position? In M&M (Chapter 6, sec. 7) I rebutted them seriatim, but here I shall merely describe my general line, and then turn to the alternative position furnished by Kripke’s R&E. Most of the arguments stem from the fact that nonactual individuals stand in no causal relation to us and are known only by description. But it is possible to frame a Causal- Historical theory of referring, even for empty singular terms, that affords a finer-grained individuation scheme. Consider Mrs Hudson again. At least part of what makes her the person she is are the circumstances of her character’s creation.6 We might say that a fictional person qualifies as being (=) Mrs Hudson if and only if the relevant use of that person’s name is connected in the right historical way with Conan Doyle’s original act of writing (in the real world). This idea accommodates intuitions about several sorts of cases: coincidental authorship, spinoffs, revisionary sequels and such (M&M: 120). As can readily be checked, it also takes care of arguments (i)–(iii) above. And I argued that, perhaps less easily, it also at least staves off (iv)–(vii). For example, regarding singular propositions ([iv]), the causal- historical element at least helps identify the particular haecceity corresponding to the relevant fictional character; and we do not have to grant that that haecceity exists in the absence of its owner, for at the relevant nonactual world, the owner does exist. (The presence of the haecceity and the existence of the owner there are one and the same state of affairs.) As I said, we shall return to (vii), once we have introduced Kripke’s tertium quid. (p.28) V. So far we have assumed that a fictional person such as Holmes or Mrs Hudson is a possible individual residing in a nonactual world. Kripke rejects that
- 41. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 5 of 19 assumption, on each of several grounds. First, naturally, he scouts Russellian description theories of fictional names, on grounds similar to those he had (1972) wielded against description theories generally. That alone would leave open Haecceitism, but, second (R&E, Lecture 2), he takes a radical position regarding the coinage and use of fictional names: that such names are not really names, but only pretend names, part of the author’s overall pretence of narrating real events. Indeed, there is no need to offer a semantics for them, since they are not actually being used as names; that they have some nameish semantics or other is only part of the pretence.7 If they are not really names at all, then a fortiori they do not name possible individuals. Indeed, Kripke says, sentences containing them do not express propositions; there are only ‘pretend propositions’ putatively expressed by the author’s pretended factual assertions. I shall discuss pretence theories below. For now I want to address a third argument of Kripke’s, that is related to (vii) above; call it the ‘plurality argument’. He writes: [W]hy shouldn’t one say that such a situation is a situation in which Sherlock Holmes would have existed? I mean, someone might have performed these exploits, and Conan Doyle might have written of him. So why not suppose, as is being done by the modal logician, that Sherlock Holmes is some possible but not actual entity? Certainly someone might have done the deeds ascribed to Holmes in the stories. Indeed, many actual people in the appropriate time period (late nineteenth century to early twentieth century) might have done them. But none of these people would have been Sherlock Holmes. The fact is that in introducing the name we make ‘Sherlock Holmes’ name a particular man who would have done certain things, not just any old man who did these things. It will be part of this story of Sherlock Holmes that, of course, he may not be uniquely called forth to do these things. Holmes might remark to Watson that, had he not been such a great detective, his brother Mycroft would have been equally good, but not wishing to be a rival, he went into another field. So ‘Sherlock Holmes’ doesn’t designate the person—any old person—who did these things: it is supposed to be a name of a unique man. And there is no unique man being named, nor is there any possible man being named here. (R&E: 41) Spoken like a good Haecceitist, up to the concluding pair of sentences; the ‘Holmes’ role could have been occupied by any number of indisputably different men. And Kripke could also have invoked the McMichael argument. But as before, his purpose is to reject Haecceitism as well as the Conservative position: ‘there is no unique man being named’. If ‘Holmes’ does not designate just any old person who should fit the (p.29) stereotype, but it does not designate a particular person or haecceity either, then it simply does not designate, not even a possible man. To put the thesis shockingly, it is not and was never possible for Holmes to have existed.8
- 42. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 6 of 19 That thesis can be downplayed, and at the same time it can be up-played. To downplay it, notice Kripke grants that there are countless possible worlds answering perfectly to the Conan Doyle canon, in each of which the detective is named ‘Sherlock Holmes’. Of course there are. What is denied is just that any of those figures would be Holmes in whatever sense attaches to that term in our present actual language.9 Perhaps that is not a large issue. But to make more of it: If Holmes is not a possible being, is he then an impossible one? Kripke does maintain that it is not possible that Holmes had ever existed, poor fellow. Those of us who believe that there are impossible worlds in just as robust a sense as that in which there are merely possible ones (however robust or not that sense may be; M&M, Chapter 2) would at first conclude that Holmes is an impossible individual and inhabits each of a number of impossible worlds. Yet it seems Kripke’s argument if sound would iterate to impossible worlds. (The impossibilist could simply insist that in such a world, the individual in question would just both be Holmes and not be Holmes, but that seems to miss Kripke’s point, which is that no nonactual of any sort could genuinely be Holmes.) If Holmes inhabits neither any possible world nor any impossible world, ‘he’ inhabits no world of any sort at all, and that is Kripke’s claim—supported independently, of course, by his pretence view. VI. But now it is time to see whether my reply to argument (vii) extends to cover Kripke’s plurality argument as well. It ran: Here again we rely on Kripke’s (1972) seemingly justified penchant for stipulation of the identities of individuals at other worlds. Which ‘Holmes’ really is Holmes depends on our stipulation in the real world, provided that our stipulative act is connected in the right historical way with Conan Doyle’s writing of the Holmes stories.…If our stipulative act is not connected in that way with Conan Doyle’s fictive act, then we cannot attach Holmes’ haecceity to either of the ‘Holmes’s’, and we are not describing a world containing the authentic Sherlock Holmes at all. (p.30) I had envisaged a single world incorporating two molecularly identical Doylean planets. To say which of the two ‘Holmes’ figures is Holmes at that world, I maintain I am free to stipulate. Compare (cf. Kripke, 1972a and 1980): Newt Gingrich might have been an acrobat, in particular one of a troupe called the Flying Republicans. Suppose there are two molecularly indistinguishable worlds, in each of which the Republicans are sitting on a circus bench awaiting their cue. Which acrobat in which of the worlds is Gingrich? The answer is that we are free to stipulate. In one world, Gingrich is the second man from the left end of the bench, while in the other, he is the third. (In this, Kripke goes against the ‘telescope’ view widely attributed to Lewis (1986), the idea that to identify an individual at another possible world we should have to look at that world as through a telescope and accomplish our identification solely on the basis of the qualitative properties we detect there.) So too, I can stipulate which ‘Holmes’ figure in the double-Doylean world is Holmes, and which is merely his molecular twin. Will my stipulatory model extrapolate to Kripke’s R&E plurality scenario, that involves two
- 43. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 7 of 19 worlds? The task is to pick out and discuss a world containing a nonactual person who is the authentic Holmes. According to my model, I need only to be in a referential state of mind that is (‘in the right way’) causally-historically descended from Conan Doyle’s act of introducing the Holmes character, and stipulate that the world I am about to talk about is one containing Holmes himself, not Darwin or Jack the Ripper or, more to the point, any nonexistent other than the authentic Holmes. An immediate objection would be that, while we are indeed free to offer stipulations about Newt Gingrich’s locations in various nonactual worlds (so long as those worlds are reasonably supposed to be possible), that is because we already have a reality- supported practice of referring to the actual Gingrich; we have no such practice of referring to Holmes, as Holmes is no denizen of our world @. But, I reply, we do have a reality-supported practice of using the name ‘Holmes’, that which derives by causal- historical chain from Conan Doyle’s introducing of that name. Kripke further objects, ‘None of these situations, I think, has a special title to be called “the situation in which Sherlock Holmes would have existed.”’ From the telescope point of view, that is so, but I think only from the telescope point of view. In the same vein, one could say of my Flying Republican worlds that neither has a special title to be that in which Gingrich is second from the left as opposed to third, or vice versa; but no special title is needed, so long as a proper stipulation can distinguish the two possibilities at the outset. Would my Holmes stipulation be a proper one? Not, of course, if the appropriately shaped causal-historical chain were not in place; but assuming it is in place, is there a further objection? I daresay, but I do not see it offhand. VII. A ramified plurality argument for Kripke’s position might be based on the idea attributed to him (1972a, 1980) that a person’s genetic code is that person’s (p.31) distinctive essence.10 The ‘Holmes’ figures in all the different Doylean worlds would all have different genetic codes, hence (according to the present idea) cannot be the same person across worlds; and as always none is identical with any actual person. Yet as before, it would be entirely arbitrary to pick one of the many genetic codes and insist that it, to the exclusion of the others, was that of the authentic Holmes; therefore none of the figures is the authentic Holmes, and there is no such individual. An obvious ground on which to reject this ramified argument is simply to deny the genetic-essentialist premise. I know of no good argument for it, and, after all, identical twins and clones are cases in which numerically distinct people share the (as near as matters) same genetic code. But like the original plurality argument, the ramified version also seems to succumb to the method of stipulation. As before, why may I not simply stipulate that I am about to describe a world containing Sherlock Holmes, and that in that world he has such-and-such a genetic code? (Even if we granted genetic essentialism, it would follow only that the ‘Holmes’ figures who do not share that code are not Holmes.) If my model can save Haecceitism from Kripke’s plurality objections, then his case against
- 44. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 8 of 19 Haecceitism must rest entirely on his pretence view. 2. Pretence Theories VIII. Here is Kripke’s first statement of the view. What happens in the case of a work of fiction? A work of fiction, generally speaking of course, is a pretense that what is happening in the story is really going on. To write a work of fiction is to imagine—spin a certain romance, say—that there really is a Sherlock Holmes, that the name ‘Sherlock Holmes’ is used in this story really refers to some man, Sherlock Holmes, and so on. It is therefore presumably part of the pretense of the story that the name ‘Sherlock Holmes’ is really a name and really has the ordinary semantic function of names. If one mistakenly believed the name to be non-empty rather than empty, it would be part of the mistake that this is a name having the ordinary semantic function of names. This principle I have roughly stated here, just as applied to works of fiction, we can call the pretense principle. What goes on in a work of fiction is a pretense that the actual conditions obtain. (Kripke, 1972b/2011: 58)11 As a characterization of many kinds of mainstream fiction, this is hard to fault.12 But we must ask how far it generalizes, in each of two directions. First, does it show that every putative use of a fictional name is only a pretend use, and that we need say (p.32) nothing semantical about such names? Second, does it extrapolate to empty names of other sorts? On the first point, Kripke begins with a bold, sweeping statement: The existence of fiction is a powerful argument for absolutely nothing: it cannot settle the question as between the Russellian theory and the Millian theory, nor can it settle the question between Mill’s theory and any other theory. (R&E: 23) Here again, the idea is that just as the fictional names are only pretend names, they have only a pretend semantics and it is left to the reader’s imagination; we can infer nothing about the semantics of actual names. That is why fictional names show nothing about names. IX. In M&M I acknowledged the view that fictional individuals are not possible and do not inhabit worlds, but without having considered the pretence argument. I gave three brisk reasons for rejecting it (M&M: 112): (a) Fictional individuals have always been used as paradigmatic examples by partisans of nonexistent possibles. (b) Novels and stories generally seem to say things that could have been true even though they are not; so if possible-worlds semantics constitutes our standard device for handling modal statements, then sentences occurring in fictions are true at worlds other than our own and the fictional individuals they mention exist at those worlds. (c) Fictional individuals have modal properties, and that too seems to show that fictional individuals somehow inhabit worlds.
- 45. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 9 of 19 But a pretence theorist can easily knock those points aside. In reverse order: (c) is false; that Mrs Hudson had modal properties is just part of the pretence, as in the case of her other alleged properties. (b) is true if we ignore fictional uses of names; as noted above, of course there are worlds containing Holmes figures named ‘Holmes’ that conform perfectly to the stories. But it does not follow that any denizen of any of those worlds is Holmes or Mrs Hudson. (a) Theorists who have offered Holmes, Pegasus, Hamlet et al. as paradigm cases of nonexistent possibles have just been wrong, understandably misled by the undisputed possibility of the Doylean worlds just mentioned. The pretence view is not even scratched by my M&M arguments.13 X. Kripke’s bold, sweeping statement has bid to clear the air. But in Lecture 3 he takes it back, realizing that not every use of a fictional name is safely impacted within the fiction. First and foremost, literary critics and commentators talk about fictional characters as such and in their own right: (p.33) Other examples which might give us trouble are these. First kind of example: ‘Hamlet was a fictional character.’ Second kind of example: ‘This literary critic admires Desdemona, and despises Iago’; ‘the Greeks worshipped Zeus’; and so on. In the second case there appears to be a relational statement, with a real subject and an apparently empty name or names as objects. (R&E: 61) These sentences have two important features. (i) They are or purport to express real- world truths, not pretend truths. Hamlet really was, and is, a fictional character. A literary critic really does admire Desdemona. (It is not true in the play that Hamlet is fictional, nor in Othello that any literary critic so much as exists.) (ii) Accordingly, such sentences do not yield to a ‘story operator’ approach. Kripke’s solution: Everything seems to me to favor attributing to ordinary language an ontology of fictional entities, such as fictional characters, with respect to which ordinary language has the full apparatus of quantification and identity. I say ‘full apparatus’— well, we may not be able to make every possible statement; but both notions, at any rate, apply to these entities. ‘Ah,’ so it’s said, ‘so you agree with Meinong after all! There are entities which have only a secondary kind of existence.’ No, I don’t mean that. I mean that there are certain fictional characters in the actual world, that these entities actually exist. (R&E: 69–70) A fictional character, then, is an abstract entity. It exists in virtue of more concrete activities of telling stories, writing plays, writing novels, and so on, under criteria which I won’t try to state precisely, but which should have their own obvious intuitive character. It is an abstract entity which exists in virtue of more concrete activities the same way that a nation is an abstract entity which exists in virtue of concrete relations between people. (R&E: 73) So a fictional character is an actual though abstract literary entity, ontologically on a par
- 46. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 10 of 19 with a story or a novel itself.14 In one sense characters are proper constituents of novels and stories, and are open to description and evaluation of the same sorts as are their containing works themselves: A character may be admired by this critic or that one, well- drawn or a two-dimensional cardboard pin-up, vital or inessential to the plot, more ingeniously or less creatively conceived than Conan Doyle’s detective, a faithful realization of the author’s original intention or an unexpectedly evolved departure, popular or unpopular with readers, and the like. Such things cannot (except metaphorically) be said of real flesh-and-blood people; no more can they be said of fictional flesh-and-blood people. Lest he mar his pretence picture, Kripke is at pains to deny that the author coins a name for her/his own fictional character. As always, the author coins nothing, but only pretends to. The real-world use of a fictional name to designate a fictional (p.34) character is an analogical spin-off creating a paronymous use, or rather what would be a paronymous use had the author’s original inscribing of the name been a use.15 A name such as ‘Hamlet’ might have been said to designate nothing, or only to pretend to designate something; one also now speaks of it as designating a fictional character. (R&E: 72) The introduction of the ontology of fictional characters is in some sense a derivative or extended use of language, at least on the picture that I was presenting. When one originally introduces the term ‘Hamlet’ there is merely a pretense of reference, and there is no referent—period. But then we find a referent by the ontology of fictional characters, so that we can say…when we talk about Hamlet, that we refer to a fictional character. (R&E: 81) Kripke’s distinction has become standard,16 and it is both intuitive and ontologically helpful. Kripke also points out insightfully that whether a fictional character exists in its fiction may be controversial (R&E: 59–60): Shakespeare scholars may disagree about whether Hamlet’s father’s ghost really is a character in the play or is (in the play) merely a figment. Gonzago, the victim in the play-within-the-play, is not a character in Hamlet, but only in The Murder of Gonzago (which play is itself a character in Hamlet but only that). XI. Notice that Kripke’s distinction gives rise to ambiguities: ‘Hitler admired Iago’—Does that mean that Hitler admired the character, as conceived and constructed by Shakespeare and manifesting the Bard’s deep understanding of human nature, or does it mean that Hitler admired Iago himself, the duplicitous person portrayed in the play? ‘Holmes was created by Conan Doyle’—The character was, but Holmes the man was brought into existence by his parents in the traditional way. ‘Holmes was a better detective than Charles Paris’—That could mean, a better-drawn fictional detective figure than Simon Brett’s detective character (and is open to dispute); or it could be a direct and indisputable comparison of prowess as between the two flesh-and-blood detectives as they are shown in the respective fictions.17 It would be nice for the pretence theorist if all extra-fictional references to fictional beings
- 47. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 11 of 19 could be taken as naming characters as opposed to fictional people or other individuals. But no such luck. Brock (2002) divides the relevant sentences into three groups: ‘fictional statements’, meaning, reports on what holds in the relevant fiction (e.g., ‘Holmes lived in Baker Street’, ‘Othello was jealous’, ‘Lear very foolishly tried to divest himself of all his kingly responsibilities while retaining his kingly prerogatives’); ‘critical statements’, i.e., candidates for being truths about fictional characters (p.35) in the Kripke–van Inwagen sense; and ‘existential statements’ positive and negative. But if we look at his examples of critical statements, we find not merely ambiguous ones as above, but anomalous cases, in that they are real-world true but cannot be taken to be about characters as opposed to people: ‘Holmes would not have needed tapes to get the goods on Nixon’ (Lewis, 1978); ‘Anna Karenina is less neurotic than is Katerina Ivanovna’ (Howell, 1979); ‘Things would be better if certain politicians who (unfortunately) exist only in fiction, were running this country instead of the ones we now have’ (Parsons, 1980). No abstract entity can accomplish legal feats (with or without tapes), or is neurotic to any degree, or could run the country at all.18 It gets worse. As Kripke himself anticipates, there is a problem about fictional statements. He is at first inclined to think they are true in virtue of tacit story operators, but as a pretence theorist he is not entitled to hold that view. For according to him, fictional statements outside the scope of story operators do not express propositions; there is nothing to be true even ‘in the story’, and so the application of a story operator would not help. If ‘Hamlet’ is not a name to begin with and leaves a hole in any would-be proposition its containing sentence purports to express, then ‘In the play, Hamlet asks Ophelia to pray for him’ does not express a proposition either. Note that that is not a problem only about fictional statements themselves; it affects ‘metafictional’ statements such as the one just mentioned, that incorporate story operators and so are intuitively just plain, real-world true. (For that matter, what would be the semantics of the story operator itself? Normally we should expect that ‘In the story, P’ is true iff P is true at every world consistent with the story.) XII. Kripke has several options. One is to understand the utterer of a fictional statement as just falling in with the pretence; the sentence uttered does not after all express a proposition, much less have a literal truth-value, though in the context of the pretence game we can count it as ‘true’, since of course it is pretend-true. A little more ambitiously, Kripke appeals to an extended use of predicates applying to names of fictional characters. Using the character name, one cannot literally say ‘Hamlet was melancholy’ because an abstract entity is not capable of emotion and has no behavioural dispositions. But, Kripke says, we can analogically stretch the predicate ‘was melancholy’ to incorporate a story operator, so that it means ‘was, in the story, melancholy’—or rather, since it is being applied to the name of an abstract entity, it means something more like ‘is described in the story as being melancholy’ (R&E: 74).19 (p.36) That ‘described in’ relation would need some unpacking. It is not that the abstract entity is literally described in the story (at all). Nor is it that the fictional being
- 48. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 12 of 19 named in the story corresponds to the abstract entity, since on Kripke’s view there is no such being whatever. Kripke’s present idea is to finesse the problem of the utterly nonreferring name by attaching the story operator to the predicate; but predicates, even intensionally enhanced ones, still have to attach to subjects if they are to figure in meaningful sentences. And the only subject candidate Kripke has allowed us is the fictional character. For that reason I suggest that he backtrack to the ‘falling in’ view, according to which the utterer of a fictional statement participates in the pretence and so her/himself expresses only pretend propositions. As before, it would be perfectly appropriate for interlocutors to respond ‘That’s true’, or for that matter ‘That’s false’, so long as they too are merely playing the game. This applies to grade-school pupils taking true–false tests (R&E: 57). How plausible is that ‘falling in’ view? For now I do not see how it can be refuted, but I think it is impugned by an argument I shall produce below (sec. XV). It should not be confused, however, with any version of the story-operator position, nor allowed to draw specious support from the undoubted plausibility of that position. As Kripke himself emphasizes, it is not a semantic proposal. XIII. But now to existential statements. Positive ones do not raise much of an issue. Of course there exist fictional characters, the abstract entities. But what of a citizen who believed (as some did) that Sherlock Holmes, the person, was a real detective working in London, and who would have asserted, ‘Holmes really exists’? On Kripke’s view, that person’s belief and assertion lacked truth-value and indeed was not propositional at all. That is counterintuitive, but it is salved by the fact that the person has the closely associated false beliefs—that there is a great detective named ‘Holmes’ who did all the canonical things as faithfully reported by Dr Watson. (Whoops, no, strike that last phrase: No belief about ‘Watson’ is to be propositional either.) The big problem is negative existentials—as Kripke is the first to grant, in Lecture 6: The thing which has most boggled people, and confuses me still to this day, is how to analyze a singular negative existential statement. The problem becomes more acute rather than less so on my view. Why do I say that? The original problem is: what can someone mean when he says that Sherlock Holmes does not exist? Is he talking of a definite thing, and saying of it that it doesn’t exist? The reason the problem becomes somewhat more acute on my view is that it has been universally regarded in the literature as unproblematic to make a negative existential statement using a predicate. (R&E: 144) But here Kripke misidentifies the reason. Never mind natural-kind terms or other predicates; what could someone mean in saying ‘Holmes does not exist’ if ‘Holmes’ is a name? Not that the fictional character does not exist, because the fictional character obviously does. But neither on the story-operator analysis nor on the pretence theory (p.37) is there is anything left to mean: In the stories, Holmes does exist, and if we fall in with the pretence, we must say ‘Of course Holmes exists’.
- 49. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 13 of 19 There are many theories of negative existentials, and a great virtue of Russell’s Theory of Descriptions was that it afforded an initially plausible one; too bad R&E refuted it (Lecture 1). I believe my own theory (M&M, Chapter 7) is the least bad of the lot, but space does not permit my touting it here. I am concerned only to argue that the pretence view is indeed without resources as regards negative existentials. XIV. Kripke continues his discussion by admitting a liability additional to the one just noted. It seems that in some sense the analysis of a singular existence statement will depend on whether that statement is true. And this, of course, seems in and of itself to be absolutely intolerable: the analysis of a statement should not depend on its truth value. Or so at any rate might be our prejudice. (R&E: 147) Yes, bad start. If not absolutely intolerable, to be avoided if at all possible. (The reason the analysis depends on actual truth-value is that a false negative existential regarding an actual individual, say ‘Napoleon never existed’, expresses a singular proposition about its subject, while a true negative existential containing an empty name as usual expresses no proposition at all.) Kripke adverts to ‘that’-clauses containing fictional names, such as belief complements. He suggests that what such believers believe is that there is a true proposition about (e.g.) Holmes. Similarly for the Vulcan-friendly astronomer (R&E: 156); Kripke adds, ‘[I]n the sentence “The astronomer believes that there is a [true] proposition about Vulcan, saying of Vulcan that it is red,” the phrase “about Vulcan” is a special sort of quasi- intensional use’. The astronomer is wrong because there is no such proposition. And, not knowing whether Holmes or Vulcan exists, a sceptic can still believe that there is no relevant true proposition, leaving it open whether there is a false proposition or none at all. (Never mind for now that ‘Vulcan’ as used by the astronomer was not a fictional name; I shall return to this in sec. XV.) Accordingly (R&E: 157), to believe the positive existential is to believe that there is a true proposition that Holmes or that Vulcan exists. (But in reality, to believe that Obama exists is just to believe of Obama that he exists—nothing about propositions.) And to believe the true negative existential is to believe that there is no true proposition that Holmes, or that Vulcan, exists. ‘[W]e lump the two cases [false proposition and no proposition] together, and it is our ability to do so which gives the negative existential its use’ (R&E: 159). But this is puzzling, because Kripke is still trafficking in ‘that’-clauses. His calling his locution ‘a special sort of quasi-intentional use’ does not help, because ‘Holmes’ and ‘Vulcan’ are still supposed to be only pretend names, not names. If they are not names, then of course there is no proposition ‘that Holmes exists’ or ‘that Vulcan (p.38) exists’, but there is also no proposition that there is no such proposition, either, and so still nothing for any wielder of a negative existential to believe.20 This will not do.21
- 50. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 14 of 19 XV. The example of ‘Vulcan’ as juxtaposed with that of ‘Holmes’ is unsettling, because ‘Vulcan’ was not a fictional name. Those who posited a planet called that, in order to explain perturbations in the orbit of Mercury, were not writing fiction and were not engaging in pretence of any sort; they were theorizing, and they certainly did assert the (actual) existence of Vulcan, and they meant what they said, even though they were mistaken. Kripke writes: Here the astronomers were, on my view, under a mistaken impression that they had named a planet when they introduced the name; and when they uttered sentences containing the name ‘Vulcan’ it was a mistake to suppose that they expressed propositions, rather than a case of pretense. And most of what I say about pretense, though not perhaps all (you can check it out for yourselves), will apply mutatis mutandis with the term ‘mistake’ in place of ‘pretense.’ (R&E: 30–1) Let us indeed check it out for ourselves. According to the pretence theorist, (i) the fiction writer does not actually use the names s/he makes up; (ii) s/he asserts nothing, at least when pseudo-using a fictional name; and (iii) there is no need to give a semantics for fictional names, because they answer only to a pretend semantics. But none of these things is true of ‘Vulcan’. Kripke may have his own reason for denying that sentences containing ‘Vulcan’ express propositions, but it cannot be that the sentences were not really used to make genuine assertions, and he cannot say that they need no semantics. That the astronomers were mistaken does not even suggest either of those things.22 There is a spectrum of cases running between pure deliberate fiction and erroneous beliefs. (i) Myths: presumed false, but not just made up by a single author. (ii) Legends: like myths but not so strongly presumed false; in some cases, such as those of Moses, King Arthur, and Robin Hood, we do not know whether the stories (true or false) are about a single real person. (iii) Sometimes we are sure that a name has at (p.39) least one real-world referent, but we are not sure that only one person answers to it. I am told it is now controversial whether the musical works attributed to Josquin des Prez were all written by him; ‘Josquin’ may be ambiguous. (iv) Posits, like Vulcan, which may at the time be quite confident. (v) Hallucinatory individuals, such as the friend character ‘Charles’ played by Paul Bettany in the movie A Beautiful Mind.23 I would say that the pretence theory applies at most to the first of those. That of course does not show that the theory is not true of deliberate fiction. It does show that the theory is no solution to the general problem of empty names. XVI. I argued that my stipulatory model saves Haecceitism about fictional characters from Kripke’s plurality objections, and that his case against Haecceitism must therefore rest entirely on his pretence view. But the pretence view does not work either. Haecceitism survives. References Bibliography references:
- 51. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 15 of 19 Adams, Robert Merrihew (1981). ‘Actualism and Thisness.’ Synthese 49: 3–41. Berger, Alan (2002). Terms and Truth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bjurman-Pautz, Anna (2008). ‘Fictional Coreference as a Problem for the Pretense Theory.’ Philosophical Studies 141: 147–56. Brock, Stuart (2002). ‘Fictionalism about Fictional Characters.’ Noûs 36: 1–21. Carney, James (1977). ‘Fictional Names.’ Philosophical Studies 32: 383–91. Chisholm, Roderick (1967). ‘Identity through Possible Worlds: Some Questions.’ Noûs 1: 1–8. Currie, Gregory (1986). ‘Fictional Names.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 66: 471– 88. Donnellan, Keith (1974). ‘Speaking of Nothing.’ Philosophical Review 83: 3–32. Fine, Kit (1984). ‘Critical Review of Parsons’ Non-Existent Objects.’ Philosophical Studies 45: 95–142. Frege, Gottlob (1897/1979). ‘Logic.’ In Posthumous Writings, edited and translated by Hans Hermes, Friedrich Kambartel, and Friedrich Kaulbach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Howell, Robert (1979). ‘Fictional Objects: How They Are and How they Aren’t.’ Poetica 8: 129–77. Kaplan, David (1973). ‘Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.’ In Approaches to Natural Language, edited by Jaakko Hintikka, Julius Moravcsik, and Patrick Suppes. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Kraut, Robert (1979). ‘Attitudes and Their Objects.’ Journal of Philosophical Logic 8: 197–217. Kripke, Saul A. (1972a). ‘Naming and Necessity.’ In Semantics of Natural Language, edited by Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman. Synthese Library 40. Dordrecht: Reidel: 253–355, 763–9. Reprinted (with preface) as Kripke (1980). Kripke, Saul A. (1972b/2011). ‘Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities.’ In Kripke (2011). (Originally delivered at the 1972 Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy under the title ‘Existence: Vacuous Names and Mythical Kinds’.) Kripke, Saul A. (1973/2013). Reference and Existence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kripke, Saul A. (1980). Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- 52. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 16 of 19 Kripke, Saul A. (2011). Philosophical Troubles: Collected Papers, Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kroon, Frederick (1994). ‘Make-Believe and Fictional Reference.’ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52: 207–14. Lewis, David K. (1978). ‘Truth in Fiction.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 15: 37–46. Lewis, David K. (1986). On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lycan, William G. (1994). Modality and Meaning. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy series). Martinich, Aloysius P. and Avrum Stroll (2007). Much Ado about Nonexistence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. McGinn, Colin (1976). ‘On the Necessity of Origin.’ Journal of Philosophy 73: 127–35. McMichael, Alan (1983a). ‘A Problem for Actualism About Possible Worlds.’ Philosophical Review 92: 49–66. McMichael, Alan (1983b). ‘A New Actualist Modal Semantics.’ Journal of Philosophical Logic 12: 73–99. Parsons, Terence (1980). Nonexistent Objects. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Plantinga, Alvin (1974). The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Proudfoot, Diane (2006). ‘Possible Worlds Semantics and Fiction.’ Journal of Philosophical Logic 35: 9–40. Salmon, Nathan (2011). ‘Fiction, Myth, and Reality.’ In Saul Kripke, edited by Alan Berger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 49–77. Schwayder, David (1976). ‘Reflections on Kripke.’ In Issues in the Philosophy of Language, edited by Alfred F. MacKay and Daniel D. Merrill. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Searle, John (1958). ‘Proper Names.’ Mind 67: 166–73. Thomasson, Amie L. (1999). Fiction and Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Inwagen, Peter (1977). ‘Creatures of Fiction.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 14: 299–308. Walton, Kendall (1978). ‘Fearing Fictions.’ Journal of Philosophy 75: 5–27.
- 53. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 17 of 19 Walton, Kendall (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wiggins, David (1967). Identity and Spatiotemporal Continuity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wilson, Neil (1959). ‘Substances without Substrata.’ Review of Metaphysics 12: 521–39. Yagisawa, Takashi (2009). ‘Possible Objects.’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), edited by Edward Zalta, available at: <>. Notes: (1) This second supposition is stronger in spirit than the first formulation (whether it is stronger in letter depends on one’s view of properties). From the fact that Obama might have lacked any of his familiar properties and still have been Obama, it does not follow that he could have lacked all or even most of them. Searle (1958) and Wiggins (1967) insisted that an individual must preserve at least a vague preponderance of its familiar properties overall; at some imprecise point in the switching process, Obama would cease to be Obama and Gingrich would cease to be Gingrich. I rebut that contention in M&M: 97–9. (2) Kraut (1979: 213) notes the peculiarity of someone’s claiming to want Pegasus but denying that s/he would be satisfied by just any winged horse that was ridden by Bellerophon, etc. (3) Currie (1986) makes the point in terms of Ramsey sentences, claiming that to grasp a Ramsification of a story is ‘all there is to understanding’ the story. (4) For a great and very sophisticated improvement on Lewis’ own view, see Proudfoot (2006). (5) McMichael offered this consideration as an argument against modal actualism in particular, as if it did not apply to the Meinongian or Lewisian ‘possibilist’ who believes that there are nonactual possibilia in a robust and concrete sense. Yagisawa (2009) expands on this theme, calling the objection the ‘nesting problem’ for actualism and arguing specifically that Lewis’ (1986) concretist view is not subject to it. I disagree, and argued precognitively that Lewis is indeed subject to it (M&M: 131 n. 16). (6) This will sound odd to anyone who is used to making Kripke’s R&E distinction between fictional people and fictional characters proper. But I myself rely on that distinction; see section X ff. A similar suggestion was made by Carney (1977). (7) Thus, amusingly, when Kripke maintains that fictional names are not ‘really’ names, he means something quite different from what Russell would have in uttering the same words. For Russell, the slogan meant only that fictional names are not semantically names; Kripke’s contention is deeper, and emphatically not semantical, though in part metasemantical.
- 54. A Reconsidered Defenceof Haecceitism Regarding Fictional Individuals Page 18 of 19 (8) A similar position was taken by Kaplan (1973, Appendix XI) and by Donnellan (1974). See also Plantinga (1974) and Fine (1984). Salmon takes these works to have carried the day: ‘Contemporary philosophy has uncovered that…a name from fiction does not even designate a merely possible object’ (Salmon, 2011: 56). As is well known, Kripke (1972b/2011, R&E) takes a similar view of fictional natural kinds. There could not have been unicorns, much less bandersnatches or (R&E: 53) a colour called ‘plagenta’. Here I am more sympathetic to Kripke’s view than to the same position vis-à-vis fictional individuals, and will not contest it. (9) ‘It would be wrong to identify the language people would have, given that a certain situation obtained, with the language that we use to describe how circumstances would have been in that situation’ (Kripke, 1972b/2011: 57). (10) More properly, the pair of gametes from which the person sprang. I do not know how seriously Kripke ever held this view. But see McGinn (1976). (11) Kripke notes that a very clear statement of this view is found in Frege (1897). (12) However, for the record, it does not quite straightforwardly apply to Kripke’s own example of the Holmes stories. Conan Doyle did of course engage in a pretence, but it was not that of (himself) narrating real events. Rather, he assumed the persona of Dr Watson and had Watson both narrate and participate in ostensibly real events; in the stories, Watson has the official status of an authorized ‘chronicler’. (13) Martinich and Stroll (2007: Chapter 2) make several quite different arguments against pretence theories (their main target is Walton, 1978 and 1990): (i) that much of what a novelist writes may be true and flatly asserted, not merely pretend-asserted, as true; (ii) that there is no univocal notion of ‘pretence’ that applies to fiction writing; and (iii) that pretence theories are incompatible with each of several truths about ‘the logic of pretending’. I do not find any of these arguments terribly convincing, but I shall not discuss them here, nor Martinich and Stroll’s own highly original theory of fiction. (14) Thomasson (1999) usefully compares them to cultural entities more generally; think of symphonies, laws, and marriages. (15) Walton’s (1978, 1990) pretence view is more liberal in that it allows fictional inscribings to be actual uses. For a highly ingenious critique, see Kroon (1994). (16) Mostly due, I believe, to van Inwagen (1977); I developed it from his article before I had had the opportunity to see R&E. I think the same is true of Thomasson (1999), though not of Salmon (2011). (17) Salmon (2011: 66) points out that it is in a way question-begging to call these sentences examples of ambiguity, because according to the pretence theory, the ‘person’ readings as opposed to the ‘character’ readings are not propositional, and so are not alternate sentence meanings. Kripke does allow himself to speak of ambiguity.
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- 56. flesh; and fromthe moment of the impact, the Boer neither breathed nor stirred again.
- 57. Chapter XIX. HOMEWARD BOUND. Thereport of Engelbrecht's rifle shot had at once roused the attention of the gold-diggers at the head of the kloof; and although the final catastrophe had overtaken the Boer before they had extricated themselves from some bush behind which they were working, they were all three instantly aware that something was happening in the neighbourhood of the upper camp. "Come, lads," said Mr. Blakeney, "we must be off. I don't know what's up, but there's some mischief brewing, I'm certain." At once they set off at a steady trot towards the rope-ladder. They had traversed some six hundred yards, and emerged from a small grove of thorn trees about three hundred yards from the ladder foot, when an exclamation from Guy suddenly brought them to a halt. "Look!" he cried. "There's some one--Poeskop, I believe--at the top of the cliff; and, by Jove, the ladder's gone!" Mr. Blakeney and Tom stared hard at the cliff top, and saw at once that Guy's assertion was right. Poeskop it was, gesticulating at the summit of the precipice, and the ladder had vanished. "There's something very wrong here," exclaimed Mr. Blakeney. "Come on!" They were not long in covering the last three hundred yards that separated them from the foot of the cliff, and there a strange
- 58. and tragic sceneawaited them. Standing alone, by the confused heap of the fallen ladder, which itself partly covered the dead body of Karl Engelbrecht, was the Hottentot Quasip, who was evidently much too terrified by the appalling tragedy that had taken place to attempt any hostilities. The man was trembling with terror, and, as Mr. Blakeney approached him, threw down his rifle and awaited the Englishman's speech. "What does all this mean?" asked Mr. Blakeney sternly, holding his rifle in readiness. It was some moments before the Hottentot could pull himself sufficiently together to reply coherently. Then he spoke. "My baas there," he said, pointing to the dead Boer, "was coming to attack you. He made me climb down first, and then started himself. Some one from your camp above must have seen him. The baas fired a shot as he hung on the ladder, and then the ladder was cut, and he fell to the bottom and was killed." "A pretty story, indeed," was Mr. Blakeney's comment, as he moved a pace or two forward and picked up the man's rifle. "So you two meant, I suppose, to stalk and murder us while we were at our work.--And but for Poeskop's fancy to climb out last night," he added, turning aside to Guy and Tom, "they might very well have accomplished their purpose. Poeskop's restlessness was providential indeed. The little man's instincts are wonderful." "Yes," said Guy, "he seems almost to smell danger when it's about." "Well," went on Mr. Blakeney, gazing at the awful remains of the dead Boer, lying a mere huddle of broken humanity beneath the tangle of the ladder, "we shall have no more trouble from that
- 59. quarter, which isa blessing. But we're in a very pretty mess. I suppose Poeskop had no alternative in cutting the ladder and hurling Engelbrecht to the bottom, but he has left us in a very awkward predicament. What's to be done, I wonder?" "Hadn't we better secure this miserable Hottentot?" said Tom, glancing at Quasip. "Yes, you're right, Tom," replied his father. "I don't suppose he'll attempt anything again, now his precious baas is done for; and he looks as if all the stuffing were knocked out of him. But we may as well make sure." Tom went to their camping ground hard by, and brought back a couple of raw-hide riems. With these they fastened the wrists and ankles of the Hottentot, and placed him under the shade of an olive tree. The man submitted quietly enough. As they had surmised, all the fight had been frightened out of him. "Now," said Mr. Blakeney, "we must see what we can do with Poeskop." Coming out from under the cliff, they looked up and saw Poeskop's yellow face far above them, peering anxiously over the precipice. The Bushman put his hands to his mouth and shouted shrilly. It was some minutes before they could make out his words, so great a distance was between them. Then Tom suddenly said,-- "I have it. He asks: 'Is Engelbrecht dead?'" Making a speaking trumpet of his hands, Mr. Blakeney roared out very slowly, in deep, stentorian tones, "Ja, Engelbrecht is dood!" There was a fine echo up the cliff. It was quite clear that Poeskop comprehended the message. He rose to his feet, and
- 60. clapped his handswith joy. Then, throwing himself down once more, he asked again in Dutch,-- "What shall I do, baas?" They understood him, after several repetitions, and Mr. Blakeney again shouted up the cliff,-- "Get riems. Make a rope, and let down." For some minutes it seemed that the Bushman could not comprehend this message. Then, after more repetitions, delivered very slowly, it dawned upon him, and he shouted down,-- "Yes! In three days." After this message he sprang to his feet and disappeared. "Well," said Mr. Blakeney, "we're in a curious position, and must look upon ourselves as prisoners for the present. With ordinary luck I think Poeskop and the other men will be able to relieve us. What Poeskop has bolted away for is quite clear. He knows he has somehow got to find three hundred and twenty feet of hide rope. Altogether I think they may have up there--the remnants of what we did not use for the ladder--eighty or a hundred feet. He and the other three men have got to find the rest. They'll, of course, go out, leaving one man in charge of the oxen and horses, and shoot game till they get enough raw hide for the purpose. Poeskop says three days; I believe it will be nearer a week before they can do the business. I don't think there will be any interruptions, but I'll ask the Hottentot what became of the other party of Boers." Five minutes' cross-questioning of Quasip elicited the fact that Engelbrecht and his allies had quarrelled, after the repulse of their attack on the camp, and that the Boers had trekked for Benguela.
- 61. "That's all right,"said Mr. Blakeney to the two lads. "Barring accidents, our men will perform their task, and put together a rope strong enough to haul up the ladder here. Now we'll have some food, and then settle to work again. We've got three or four days before us, and we may as well make the best of them, and add to our stock of gold. Luckily we've got a week's supply of flour, coffee, and other necessaries. We have plenty of meat, and can shoot more when we need it. We shall be all right, and must just go about our work quietly till the rope comes." They turned away from the dread spectacle of the dead Boer, and rekindled their fire. A kettle being boiled, they made some coffee. Mr. Blakeney ate some lunch, but the two lads, beyond drinking some coffee and eating a morsel of bread apiece, had little stomach for the meal. The horror of the tragedy of Karl Engelbrecht had upset them. "Pater," said Tom, "I can eat no lunch, and I don't think Guy has much appetite either. That sight over yonder has fairly sickened me." "Well," said his father, "it is rather horrible, I grant. I became hardened to horrors of this kind in the Basuto War of 1879. At the storming of Morosi's Mountain in that year we witnessed many unpleasant incidents, which hardened one's stomach to scenes of this kind. This fall of Engelbrecht is, I admit, far worse than the state of affairs the morning after our fight the other day, when we had to look after the enemy's dead and wounded." "Yes, uncle, far worse," added Guy. "I, for one, shall never forget the ending of Karl Engelbrecht. It's horrible!" After lunch they went back to the scene of the tragedy. The Hottentot Quasip, on being questioned, volunteered to help them.
- 62. "Baas," he said,addressing Mr. Blakeney, "you think badly of me, and I daresay you have good cause. But I am not so bad as you think me. I was Engelbrecht's servant, and had to do his bidding. If I dared to disobey him I should have been flogged, and perhaps shot. Like your own man, Poeskop, I was afraid of him, and only wanted to get out of his service." "Well, that may or may not be," said Mr. Blakeney coolly. "Anyhow, I'll give you a chance. I'll untie you, and if you work for us quietly and well during the daytime you shall have your liberty. At night you'll have to be tied up, until we feel we can trust you." "Very well, baas," said the man. "That is good enough for me. I'll prove to you that I am willing to work for my skorf, and that I am not so bad as you may think me." Untying the Hottentot, therefore, they set him to work with pick and spade to dig a grave for his dead master. They themselves, meanwhile, proceeded to disentangle the ladder from the confusion in which it had fallen. This was a work of some little time. Then they removed the battered corpse of Karl Engelbrecht--a terrible spectacle--and laid it in the grave dug by Quasip. This done, they proceeded up the valley, and spent the remainder of the day in their gold-mining operations. They took the Hottentot with them; it was evident that he was sincere in his attempt to please them. He plied pick and shovel, and worked away steadily till dusk, when they relinquished their labours and returned to their camping ground. For the next three days they steadily pushed on with their mining work. On the whole they did much better than they had anticipated, coming upon a fresh and very rich find of gold, which lay a few feet below the surface in some alluvial ground at the head
- 63. of the stream.Each night they added considerably to the big pile of treasure already accumulated near the ladder foot. That morning Poeskop had appeared at daybreak at the top of the cliff, and shouted down to them. It was difficult to gather clearly what he said, but they understood him to mean that in two more days he would be ready for them. "That means five days' waiting instead of three," said Tom, as they returned to breakfast. "Yes, it's a long wait," replied his father. "But I expect they may have had some trouble in shooting game and getting hide for the rope. However, a day or so extra down here won't hurt us." "Not a bit," said Guy, who took the whole matter very good humouredly. "We shall be all the richer." "Oh, that's all very well," retorted Tom, "but I want to get out of this place. I shan't feel happy till I'm on the top of the cliff yonder, and we've inspanned the oxen and are trekking for home. By the way, pater," he went on, "which route are we going home? By Mossamedes or Benguela?" "Well, Tom," returned his father, "that's what I've been puzzling my head over for a long time past. If we go out by a Portuguese port we shall have to show our gold; there will be all sorts of inquiries; and very possibly the authorities may try and lay claim to the whole of our findings. Not only do I think this possible, but much more than probable. That would be a pretty ending to all our adventures, dangers, and hard work." "Uncle," exclaimed Guy, "we'll never yield a red cent of this gold to any Portuguese in the world! These filibusters of Boers have had a shot for us and our treasure. It isn't likely that we shall cart our
- 64. nuggets to Mossamedes,and calmly allow these Portuguese, who, as you have shown us, have misgoverned their country so shamefully for three or four hundred years, to rob us in that way. Besides, it's much more than doubtful whether we are in Portuguese territory here at all." "Quite so, Guy," replied Mr. Blakeney. "I'm entirely with you. For several days past I have been turning the whole thing over in my mind. I am honestly certain, from Poeskop's information, that we have discovered and won this gold in neutral ground--in land belonging to no man. That being so, we're not going to allow the Portuguese authorities even a royalty on our find. To avoid any disturbance with them we shall have to make a long and troublesome trek right across country to Bechuanaland. This will take us several months. It's a nasty business. We shall have to go through feverish veldt, and the rains will be upon us. Still, it's the only thing to be done, and we shall have to do it. What do you lads say? Are you prepared for further difficulties?" "Of course we are, pater," broke in Tom. "Anything is better than meekly handing over our hard-won gold to the Portuguese Government. Guy, what do you say?" he added, turning to his cousin. "Why, I'm entirely with you, Tom," returned Guy. "I say trek south and east, by all means, for Bechuanaland." "Carried nem. con.," said Tom cheerfully. "Pater, we'll travel by the overland route. What do you make out our course to be? I confess I'm rather vague. I suppose we'll have to pass Lake Ngami, cross the Kalahari thirst-land, and go down through Khama's Country and the Protectorate."
- 65. "That's just whatwe shall have to do, lads," said Mr. Blakeney. "Once at Lake Ngami, we shall manage very well, although the 'thirst' is a bad one after you leave the Lake River, before reaching Khama's chief town, Palachwe. But the main difficulties lie between here and Lake Ngami. We shall have to find our way down to the Okavango, cross that river somewhere--by no means a simple operation with a heavily-loaded wagon--and trek for the lake. I confess I don't like the look of the first part of the journey. It's almost unknown country, and bound to give us a lot of trouble." On the fourth morning of their enforced confinement in the kloof, Jan Kokerboom appeared at the top of the cliff, showed the end of a raw-hide rope, which he dangled over the precipice, and made them understand that all would be ready next day. On the fifth day, therefore, the three adventurers awoke betimes with cheerful anticipations. They had finished their gold-digging; their heap of treasure was completed; and they now only looked forward to a speedy escape from the valley in which they had delved so long and so successfully. Quasip was, as usual, unbound, and allowed to wait on them at breakfast. Poeskop's face had not yet appeared over the top of the precipice, but they confidently looked forward to setting eyes on his yellow visage very shortly. They made an excellent meal of stewed guinea-fowl, which Guy had shot the evening before; and a whole tin of marmalade--a piece of reckless extravagance, Mr. Blakeney called it--was, in celebration of their last meal in the Gold Kloof, sacrificed for the occasion. Half an hour after breakfast, cheers of applause greeted the appearance of Poeskop at the head of the cliff. It was quite clear he was in as high spirits as his masters beneath him. He waved his
- 66. hand to themand shouted. The Bushman was joined by Jan Kokerboom, and then Mangwalaan and September peered over with grinning faces. Then all withdrew from the edge, and the tail end of the rope began to creep down the face of the precipice. To the watchers below it seemed an unconscionable time before it reached the bottom; but at last it was within reach of their fingers. Then a hearty cheer from the lads informed Poeskop at the top that all was well. Next, the end of the rope was made fast to the ladder, and the business of hoisting up the ladder itself began. It was a long, and by no means an easy, operation. There were several sticks and stoppages, requiring care and manipulation on the part of the hoisters; but at length, at the end of a couple of hours, the task was completed, the ladder hoisted, and the upper end securely fastened. Then, with all the nimbleness of an ape, down came Poeskop. His story was a simple one. They had shot game in order to obtain hide and make the fresh rope, and the beasts of chase had not been so plentiful, or so easy to come by, as on the former occasion. Moreover, the absence of the three best shots in the party, Mr. Blakeney, Tom, and Guy, had made a good deal of difference. However, the task was accomplished, and communication once more restored. That very afternoon began the work of carrying up the gold. This was a long and most tedious process. It was impossible, owing to the severity, and it may be added the risk, of the climb, to carry up more than a small load at a time. But all hands save one set willingly to work, and by degrees the business was done. Seleti, the humorist and butt of the camp, still raftered from his wound, and was not equal to the descent of the rope-ladder. He had never, in
- 67. fact, attempted it;and the very real terror and distress which he once exhibited at the prospect of the downward climb, or indeed at any near approach to the edge of the cliff, had disarmed his master's anger, although it was not sufficient to deter the chaff and laughter of his fellow-servants. However, Seleti was kept well occupied in cooking for the party, doing odd jobs, and looking after the oxen and horses. In two days the long and severe labour of bringing up the gold was over. They had worked from earliest dawn till the fading of the last gleam of daylight, and all were tired out by their exertions. None of them, they declared, ever wanted to see the bottom of the kloof again, or to climb that awful ladder. They had brought up the last of the stores and implements, and all were stiff and sore from their great strain. Most of them had raw and blistered hands from much handling of the ropes. Quasip, although viewed at first with much disfavour by the rest of the natives, proved himself so cheerful and so willing that gradually he wore down the enmity of all his captors, and was taken into some degree of favour. Having transferred the heap of gold from the bottom to the top of the cliff, it was now put into strong new sacks, tied up, and sealed. The sacks and the rough sealing wax were the products of Tom's fertile imagination. He had insisted on their being bought at Cape Town. If, he urged, they were going to find gold, why not take appliances for securing the safety of the treasure? Many times during the expedition had Tom been chaffed for his pains; but the laugh was now on his side, and he did not forget to remind Guy and Mr. Blakeney of the fact. The wagon was carefully reloaded, the gold being placed at the bottom, with the remaining stores, which had
- 68. now very considerablydiminished, at the top. There was just room for Mr. Blakeney's kartel and no more, and the after-part of the interior of the wagon carried as much as it could hold. All things now being in order, the oxen were inspanned, and the long trek for home began. They quitted the kloof and its neighbouring mountains with strangely mingled feelings. Joy and satisfaction were theirs, in that they had conquered all their obstacles, achieved their purpose, and gained a considerable fortune. The whole expedition had been full of romantic incident. They had passed through many adventures, and had escaped many perils. Upon the whole, fair as was the Gold Kloof and its vicinity, they were not sorry to set eyes upon it for the last time. Death and tragedy had had their part there; and somehow, as Guy said, and they all agreed, the kloof would, in the recollection of each one of them, always be associated with that last terrible episode in their Odyssey--the death of Karl Engelbrecht. Once more, then, as the wagon rolled away down the mountain, the three white men and Poeskop crept to the edge of the precipice, and looked for the last time on the fair and lovely valley, which for them had proved indeed an El Dorado. Then, mounting their horses, they slowly followed the wagon. It was a long trek before the wayfarers reached British Bechuanaland. Travelling south, and crossing various streams, they presently struck the Kuito River, and followed it down to its junction with the Okavango. Somewhat lower down they crossed the Okavango, after much difficulty, and travelled south-east until they reached Lake Ngami. During this part of their journey they underwent many adventures, and suffered at times much from fever.
- 69. The rains fell,and they were delayed for weeks by the impassable state of the country. Crossing the Kalahari to Khama's Country, they recovered much of their health and spirits in the pure and dry air of this desert region. At Palachwe, where they arrived in rags, and with scarcely any remnant of their stores left to them, they were enabled to refit, and to procure all necessary provisions for their trek south through the Protectorate. Finally, five months after quitting the Gold Kloof, they reached Johannesburg, whither they had travelled direct, for the purpose of realizing their treasure. During all this long wandering, the Hottentot Quasip, who had begged to be allowed to travel with them, had served them well and faithfully, and proved himself a reliable man all round. Thenceforth, having purged himself of his unfortunate connection with the ruffian Engelbrecht, which he always declared had been his misfortune and not his fault, Mr. Blakeney took him into regular employment. At Johannesburg the gold was safely and quietly disposed of. Mr. Blakeney had roughly estimated the value of the treasure, after making due deductions, at about £58,000. The gold turned out to be singularly free from impurities, and the price realized for it amounted to £62,000. After setting apart, therefore, Poeskop's £1,000, paying each of their men their wages and the sum of £100 by way of bonus, and a further bonus of £50 to Quasip, there remained for division between Guy Hardcastle and Mr. Blakeney the sum of rather more than £60,000, which, as all parties agreed, furnished a sufficiently handsome return for the risks, labours, and hardships of less than a year's adventure. From Mr. Blakeney's share had to be deducted, according to agreement, Tom's portion of £5,000.
- 70. At Bamborough Farm,whither they returned at once after disposing of their gold at Johannesburg, their reception was a memorable one. It was a joyful meeting, indeed, after their long absence--an absence accentuated by the fact that, during many months, Mrs. Blakeney and her children had had no communication of any kind from the trekkers. For this she had been to some extent prepared; yet, none the less, those long months of silence and of doubt had been very trying to her and her girls. Some happy weeks of reunion had passed before the wanderers had told the tale of their adventures in full, and completely satisfied the natural curiosity of their hearers. Guy Hardcastle and Tom Blakeney took part in the Boer War, fighting in the same colonial contingent, and each retiring at the close of the great struggle with the rank of captain. Their adventures in that stirring campaign cannot, for lack of space, be related here. Guy is now settled on a fine farm in British Bechuanaland, adjoining his uncle's ranch. Here he has built himself a roomy and most comfortable homestead, and, having induced his fair cousin, Ella Blakeney, to become his partner and his helpmate for life, has settled down to an existence for which he is admirably fitted. He and his wife mean, however, by no means to grow rusty in their Bechuanaland home. They pay an occasional visit to Cape Town or its marine suburbs, and during their honeymoon made a trip of some duration to the Old Country; this trip they intend to repeat at intervals. Tom, who looked after their place for them during their absence, is a near neighbour of theirs, living, thus far, as a bachelor on a farm of his own within a few miles of their own homestead and
- 71. of Bamborough. Forthe present he vows that his adventures are by no means ended, and that he has no intention of settling down to married life. Of these declarations, however, his sisters, who know Tom and his idiosyncrasies fairly well, are profoundly sceptical. THE END. *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLD KLOOF ***
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