The role of modifying adjectives in fictional discourse
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-6746.2023.1.44617Keywords:
metaphysics of fiction, fictional discourse, artifactualism, modifying adjectivesAbstract
I argue, following Amie Thomasson’s account on the metaphysics of fiction, that fictional objects are abstract artifacts. However, artifactualism struggles on how to make sense of the properties one can correctly ascribe to a fictional object: how is it possible for a fictional character, like L. B. Jefferies from the movie Rear Window, to be a photographer and an abstract artifact at the same time? Can such a character do such a thing as investigate a crime? In order to solve this conceptual tension, I introduce the vocabulary developed by Andrea Bonomi regarding fictional, metafictional and parafictional utterances. Then, in opposition to the accounts that rely on make-believe in order to make sense of fictional discourse, I put forward Hans Kamps’s and Barbara Partee’s theory of modifying adjectives to the case of fiction, and argue that the uses of the adjective ‘fictional’ are intersective regarding the metaphysics of fictional objects, while privative regarding the properties ascribed to them according to the story. Consequently, although fictional objects do not exemplify the properties that are attributed to them in a story, given that abstract artifacts are not spatially located and cannot establish causal interactions with other objects, those are the properties we are entitled and obliged to assign to them. So, I present a unified account on how our practices of fiction are intelligible and in accordance with the artifactualist approach.
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