Fictions and Models

New Essays

ISBN: 978-3-88405-099-6

                                             Foreword by Nancy Cartwright

Forty years ago, the philosophical analysis of fiction was a rump movement in the philosophy of language. Today it is a bustling research programme whose health and staying power are attested to by the briskness of its rate of expansion and the ingenuity - the boldness, some would say - of its theoretical insights. The early work on fiction hovered at the interaction of the philosophy of language and analytical aesthetics. Today’s is a broader range. Beyond its treatment in literary semantics, the concept of fiction is a topic of interest in the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of science, especially model-based science; in metaphysics and epistemology; and in ethics and the law. A central question for the present research programme is what, when philosophers ascribe fictions within non-literary contexts, is the nature of the concept called into play? Is it the literary concept of fiction? Isn’t a fiction sui generis, purpose-built for each different application? Or is it some overarchingly generic notion of which the literary and non-literary are particular instantiations?

   These are just some of the myriad questions driving contemporary research. The object of Fictions and Models is to place these matters in the creative hands of the its impressive authors: Robert Howell, Amie Thomasson, Mark Balaguer, Otávio Bueno, Mauricio Suarez, Roman Frigg, Jody Azzouni, Alexis Burgess, Giovanni Tuzet, and the editor, John Woods, with his co-author Alirio Rosales, with a Foreword by Nancy Cartwright. The result is a book

of impressive richness which advances the research programme in fiction in a major way.

Content

               1.  Robert Howell   Literary Fictions, Real and Unreal

2.   Amie Thomasson   Fiction Existence and Indeterminacy

3.  Mark Balaguer Fictionalism, Mathematical Facts and Logical/Modal Facts

4.   Otávio Bueno Can Set Theory Be Nominalized A Fictionalist Response     

5.   Mauricio Suarez Fictions, Inference, and Realism

6.  Roman Frigg  Fiction and Science 

7.   Jody Azzouni  Partial Ontic Fictionalism

8.  Alexis Burgess  Metaphysics as Make Believe

9.  John Woods and Alirio Rosales   Unifying the Fictional

10.  Giovanni Tuzet How Fictions are Credible

432 pp., References, Index, Abstracts, Biographien der Beiträger ( Contributors  Biographies ) Paperback