Science is popularly understood as being an ideal of impartial algorithmic objectivity that provides us with a realistic description of the world down to the last detail. The essays collected in this book—written by some of the leading experts in the field—challenge this popular image right at its heart, taking as their starting point that science trades not only in truth, but in fiction, too. With case studies that range from physics to economics and to biology, _Fictions in Science_ reveals (...) that fictions are as ubiquitous in scientific narratives and practice as they are in any other human endeavor, including literature and art. Of course scientific activity, most prominently in the formal sciences, employs logically precise algorithmic thinking. However, the key to the predictive and technological success of the empirical sciences might well lie elsewhere—perhaps even in scientists’ extraordinary creative imagination instead. As these essays demonstrate, within the bounds of what is empirically possible, a scientist’s capacity for invention and creative thinking matches that of any writer or artist. (shrink)

Non-actual model systems discussed in scientific theories are compared to fictions in literature. This comparison may help with the understanding of similarity relations between models and real-world target systems. The ontological problems surrounding fictions in science may be particularly difficult, however. A comparison is also made to ontological problems that arise in the philosophy of mathematics.

From ancient philosophy to contemporary theories of fiction, it is a common practice to relegate illusory appearances to the realm of the non-existent, like shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave. Contrary to this traditional mode of drawing a metaphysical distinction between reality and fiction, Markus Gabriel argues that the realm of the illusory, fictional, imaginary and conceptually indeterminate is as real as it gets. Being in touch with reality need not and cannot require that we overcome appearances in order (...) to grasp a meaningless reality which exists ‘out there’, outside and maybe even beyond our minds. Human mindedness (_Geist_) exists in the mode of fictions through which we achieve self-consciousness. This novel approach provides a fresh perspective on our existence as subjects who lead their lives in the light of self-conceptions. _Fictions_ also develops a social ontology according to which the social unfolds as a constant renegotiation of dissent, of different points of view onto the same reality. Thus we cannot ever hope to ground human society in a fiction-free realm of objective transactions. However, this does not mean that truth and reality are somehow outdated concepts. On the contrary, we need to enlarge our conception of reality so that it fully encompasses ourselves as specifically minded social animals. This major new work of philosophy will be of interest to students and scholars throughout the humanities and to anyone interested in contemporary philosophy and social thought. (shrink)

The recent discussion of fictional models has focused on imagination, implicitly considering fictions as something nonconcrete. We present two cases from synthetic biology that can be viewed as concrete fictions. Both minimal cells and alternative genetic systems are modal in nature: they, as well as their abstract cousins, can be used to study unactualized possibilia. We approach these synthetic constructs through Vaihinger’s notion of a semi-fiction and Goodman’s notion of semifactuality. Our study highlights the relative existence of such (...) concrete fictions. Before their realizations neither minimal cells nor alternative genetic systems were any well-defined objects, and the subsequent experimental work has given more content to these originally schematic imaginings. But it is as yet unclear whether individual members of these heterogeneous groups of somewhat functional synthetic constructs will eventually turn out to be fully realizable, remain only partially realizable, or prove outright impossible. (shrink)

Spinoza took it to be an important psychological fact that belief cannot be compelled. At the same time, he was well aware of the compelling power that religious and political fictions can have on the formation of our beliefs. I argue that Spinoza allows that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fictions. His complex account of the imagination and fiction, and their disabling or enabling roles in gaining knowledge of Nature, is a site of disagreement among commentators. The novels (...) of George Eliot (who translated Spinoza's works) represent a significant development for those who aim to resolve such disagreement in favour of the epistemic value of the imagination and fiction. Although Eliot agreed with Spinoza that belief cannot be compelled, she nevertheless affirmed the potential of certain kinds of fiction to be not only compelling but also edifying. The parallel reading of Eliot and Spinoza offered here raises the question of whether his philosophy can accommodate a theory of art in which the artist is seen to be capable of attaining and imparting dependable knowledge. (shrink)

Introduction, by C.K. Ogden.--The theory of fictions, by Jeremy Bentham.

The sex binary can be a useful idealization in scientific models; a fiction helpful for sorting people into two categories to investigate the possible mechanisms driving the differences we observe. However, attempts to say that the sex binary is anything more than that are misguided. Alisa Bokulich’s account of credentialed fictions will help substantiate this point to articulate a more nuanced view of the fictional sex binary in modeling terms. I will argue that, despite often treating it as such, (...) the sex binary is not an approximation of biological sex nor is it explanatory. (shrink)

I argue that fictional models, construed as models that misrepresent certain ontological aspects of their target systems, can nevertheless explain why the latter exhibit certain behaviour. They can do this by accurately representing whatever it is that that behaviour counterfactually depends on. However, we should be sufficiently sensitive to different explanatory questions, i.e., ‘why does certain behaviour occur?’ versus ‘why does the counterfactual dependency invoked to answer that question actually hold?’. With this distinction in mind, I argue that whilst fictional (...) models can answer the first sort of question, they do so in an unmysterious way (contra to what one might initially think about such models). Moreover, I claim that the second question poses a dilemma for the defender of the idea that fictions can explain: either these models cannot answer these sorts of explanatory questions, precisely because they are fictional; or they can, but in a way that requires reinterpreting them such that they end up accurately representing the ontological basis of the counterfactual dependency, i.e., reinterpreting them so as to rob them of their fictional status. Thus, the existence of explanatory fictions does not put pressure on the idea that accurate representation of some aspect of a target system is a necessary condition on explaining that aspect. (shrink)

The paper is an attempt to take Ingarden’s unfinished critique of idealism one step further. It puts forward a schematic solution to the external-world realist’sproblem of how to explain the fact that we can identify and re-identify fictions, entities that in one sense do not exist. The solution contains three proposals: to accept, with Husserl and Ingarden, that there are universals with intentionality (Husserl’s “intentional essences”), to accept, contra Husserl and Ingarden, an immanent realism for universals, and to accept (...) Ingarden’s view that there is a mode of being distinct from those put forward in traditional metaphysics, that of purely intentional being. Together, these views imply that all the instances of a specific intentional universal are directed towards the same intentional object; be this object a really existing object or a fiction, a purely intentional being. (shrink)

This article argues in favour of an inferential role for fictions in scientific modelling. The argument proceeds by means of a detailed case study, namely models of the internal structure of stars in stellar astrophysics. The main assumptions in such models are described, and it is argued that they are best understood as useful fictions. The role that conditionals play in these models is explained, and it is argued that fictional assumptions play an important role as either background (...) or antecedent conditions. I then expand on the argument for the compatibility of fictions and scientific realism. I argue that realism and antirealism plausibly offer correspondingly different accounts of the semantics of these fictional conditionals. (shrink)

This essay examines the use of fictions in the reasoning of the House of Lords and United Kingdom Supreme Court in the context of two recent lines of authority on English tort law. First, the essay explores the relevance of counter-factual scenarios to liability in the tort of false imprisonment, in the light of the Supreme Court decisions in Lumba and Kambadzi. The second series of decisions is on causation in negligence claims arising from asbestos exposure. These cases have (...) revealed fundamental, ongoing judicial disagreement about the nature and extent of the exceptions made to general principles. The cases are also shown to lend force to Del Mar’s argument about the diachronicity of legal fictions. Overall, it is argued that such fictions play an important role in common law reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that scholars such as John Braithwaite and Lode Walgrave rely on fictions when presenting their utopian vision of restorative justice. Three claims in particular are shown to be fictitious. Proponents of restorative justice maintain, first, that the offender and the victim voluntarily attend the restorative conference. Second, that the restorative conference enables the offender and the victim to take on active responsibility. Third, that the reparatory tasks on which the parties agree should not be (...) understood in terms of the intentional infliction of harm. These fictions, so I argue, are not merely a mistake, but instead serve an important function: the various parties need to believe that they adequately capture the reality of the restorative conference as they are more likely to acquiesce if they believe the fictions to be true. I conclude that the fictions are the driving force within the restorative endeavour. (shrink)

While it is often assumed that fictions must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit to us, certain texts defy this assumption by functioning as training grounds for the capacities: in engaging with them, we stand to become not more knowledgeable or more virtuous but more skilled, whether at rational thinking, at maintaining necessary illusions, at achieving tranquility of mind, or even at religious faith. Instead of offering us propositional knowledge, these texts yield (...) know-how; rather than attempting to instruct by means of their content, they hone capacities by means of their form; far from seducing with the promise of instantaneous transformation, they recognize, with Aristotle, that change is a matter of sustained and patient practice. (shrink)

In his tightly argued, thought-provoking volume Interpretation without Truth, Pierluigi Chiassoni offers a groundbreaking, reductionist account of judicial fictions.1 Under Chiassoni’s view, judici...

Some philosophers of science – the present author included – appeal to fiction as an interpretation of the practice of modeling. This raises the specter of an incompatibility with realism, since fiction-making is essentially non-truth-regulated. I argue that the prima facie conflict can be resolved in two ways, each involving a distinct notion of fiction and a corresponding formulation of realism. The main goal of the paper is to describe these two packages. Toward the end I comment on how to (...) choose among them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martha Nussbaum FICTIONS OF THE SOUL* Gertrude says, "O Hamlet speak no more. / Thou turnst mine eyes into my very soul." He made her see her soul, then, with a speech. And many types of speeches try to do what Hamlet did here. They present us with accounts or pictures of ourselves, attempting to communicate to us some truth about what we really are — or (to (...) use what is already a certain sort of picture) to show us die insides of our human souls. These truths about ourselves are delivered in many different styles and forms: some through structured argument, some through more devious or more violent strategies. One distinguished thinker compared his discourse about the nature of the soul to dry translucent shafts of sunlight diat disperse the dark shadows of false belief. Another represents the recipient of a true account of the inside of her soul as crying out in pain: "These words like daggers enter in my ears." Clearly there ought to be connections between the way a drinker or writer conceives of the soul and the way he or she constructs a discourse to convey important trudis to such a soul — including, and especially, the truth about the nature of the soul. Whether we are to be approached with sunbeams or with daggers, whether we need light or violent motion to show us what we are: this seems to depend upon what, in fact, we are. On the answer to questions such as: Are our souls transparent? opaque? open? thick-skinned? And: is getting in touch with a human soul like shining light through a diamond? Like embracing a friend? Like drawing blood? To speak more prosaically, on die answers to questions such as: How does a soul arrive at truth? What elements does it have that promote and impede understanding? What is die subject matter or content of the most important truths about it? And in what sort of activity does knowing it consist? A story or account of die soul is, then, told. The telling, if the story is a good one, is not accidentally connected with the content of the told. And this * Editor's note: This article, as well as the contributions by Joseph Margolis, Félix MartínezBonati, and Sanford Freedman which follow it, grew out of a symposium on "Styles of Fictionality," held at Harvard University in 1981. Other papers from that symposium appeared in the April, 1983 issue of Philosophy and Literature. 145 146PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE ought to be so whether die teller is a literary artist, whom we suppose always to be conscious of the nature of the stylistic choices, or a philosopher, whom we often think of as avoiding or eschewing style altogether. No stylistic choice can be presumed to be neutral — not even the choice to write in a flat or neutral style. My aim in this article is to begin working on the complicated connections between a view of what a human soul is and a view about how to address that sort of soul in writing, in die communication of die view.1 I have chosen two very different views, associated with two extremely different styles. One will be an intellectualistic view of die person, expressed in a style commonly associated widi philosophical writing; the other, expressed in a literary narrative, will be severely critical of intellectualism. The philosophical view is associated with a harsh criticism ofliterary art, the literary view widi an equally harsh criticism of philosophical investigation. In each case, I want to ask how the story that is told engages, in the telling, widi the reader's soul, and how the telling and the told are matched. I have chosen two extremes not because I wish to suggest diat these positions somehow express the essence of the philosophical or the literary, but because diey speak to and criticize one another in an illuminating way. By seeing their opposing elements starkly and schematically set out, we will be in a better position, should we wish to, to imagine an alternative between them. My philosophical protagonist will be Plato — or certain aspects of Plato; the literary opponent will be Proust. I shall, in... (shrink)

*Note that this project is now being developed in joint work with Rich Woodward* -/- Some things are left open by a work of fiction. What colour were the hero’s eyes? How many hairs are on her head? Did the hero get shot in the final scene, or did the jailor complete his journey to redemption and shoot into the air? Are the ghosts that appear real, or a delusion? Where fictions are open or incomplete in this way, we (...) can ask what attitudes it’s appropriate (or permissible) to take to the propositions in question, in engaging with the fiction. In Mimesis as Make-Believe (henceforth, MMB), Walton argues that just as truth norms belief, truth-in-fiction norms imagination. Granting that what is true-in-the-fiction should be imagined, and what is false-in-the-fiction is not to be imagined, there remains the question of what to say within the Waltonian framework about things that are neither true- nor false-in-the-fiction---the loci of incompleteness. (shrink)

In this chapter we show that the characterization of certain mathematical entities as fictions, far from being an invention of Leibniz’s to deflect criticisms of his use of infinitesimals, was in fact part of a well-established tradition in the mathematics of his time. After documenting this tradition, we show how Leibniz’s use of the terms ‘fiction’ and its cognate ‘feign’ are consonant with this tradition. We then discuss the status of these fictions in his work with respect to (...) possibility, and in particular the issue of entities such as imaginary roots of equations being “accidentally impossible” (impossibile per accidens). (shrink)

Not least among the many enigmas attending the origins and development of the first vernacular lyric in the European Middle Ages is the existence of at least twenty women poets who lived in southern France from about the mid-twelfth to the mid-thirteenth century and who participated in the highly conventionalized poetic system created by the troubadours, those humble poetlovers who sang to their beloved as domna, the superior lady. In periods when the tides of feminism are high these women's voices (...) have insistently claimed our attention, as we try to understand their songs and puzzle over their very existence. Their poetic inventions require us in particular to pay close attention to the subtle, even elusive, concept of voice—its relation to the identity of the poet and the poem's speaker, the elements that characterize its expression, the multiplicity of images created by different voices, and so on. If we are willing to listen and analyze carefully, the trobairitz have much to teach us about the way women poets enter into and find their place in a traditional poetic system created by male poets. Their songs demonstrate with intricate complexity the way poetic fictions play with cultural, literary, and social definitions of man and woman, masculine and feminine; their poems offer valuable warnings about the pitfalls involved in generalizing women into woman. (shrink)

If the presence of fiction in natural sciences is sufficiently known and accepted, the same doesn’t seem to be the case when it comes to legal science. The presence of fictions in Law is unquestioned and can be traced since Roman law, even if its legitimacy remains a matter of great divergence among critics. However, the legitimacy of the use of fictions by natural sciences or Philosophy is attested by famous examples of thought experiments, for instance. Considering this (...) context, we will analyze the use of fictions made by a special kind of science dealing with the regulation of our behavior, namely legal science.Our aim is to analyze the use of fiction by the legal science under the light of the legal theory proposed by Hans Kelsen (1881–1973), especially concerning his proposal that the legitimization of the whole positive legal system is based on a fiction, called the Basic Norm (Grundnorm). The difference, we sustain, is that this “norm” must be seen as a methodological or scientific tool, and not as an ordinary norm among others in the legal system. We will try to elucidate how can a fiction display such an important function and still preserve the “principle of purity” of the kelsenian legal theory. (shrink)

There is a growing recognition that fictions have a number of legitimate functions in science, even when it comes to scientific explanation. However, the question then arises, what distinguishes an explanatory fiction from a nonexplanatory one? Here I examine two cases—one in which there is a consensus in the scientific community that the fiction is explanatory and another in which the fiction is not explanatory. I shall show how my account of “model explanations” is able to explain this asymmetry, (...) and argue that realism—of a more subtle form—does have a role in distinguishing explanatory from non- explanatory fictions. (shrink)

I have worked in the field of aging research for 35 years, as of this writing. Over that time, most academics who work in the area have become convinced that great strides have been made in solving the scientific problem of aging.

In the classical era, imagination garnered poor press: fooling the senses, perverting judgment, subverting reason, skewing social relations, and generally providing wrong ideas about the way things are; it was a faculty of which to beware. Occasionally it was recognized as not being entirely without value—Descartes, for example, insisted on its great usefulness as a figurational function in simplifying the work of the understanding in geometry. The traditional tendency in philosophy, though, was to denigrate imagination for its misleading nature and (...) negative effects and to dwell on its limits as a faculty bound to the body. Indeed, its first function is to represent to the mind things previously perceived by the senses as images in their likeness. But as imagination has neither the same vividness nor the same order as sensation, it is potentially misleading, since in fact images look only approximately the same as their models. Above all, however, imagination was reproached to be potentially misleading for its second function, the creation of images or entire fictions bearing no relation whatsoever to reality, which made it dangerously capable of nourishing all manner of superstition and fantasy. Within such a context, Berkeley’s conception of the imagination hardly seems original at first glance. But as I will propose, in its creative guidance of reason, imagination plays an important and distinctive role in Berkeley’s scientific, moral, and religious discussions. Rather than focusing solely on the representational character of imagination, then, I suggest that we attend also to the way in which Berkeley appeals to the imaginative aspects of reason itself. In this way, we can better appreciate the educational presuppositions of human freedom. (shrink)

The great irony of Nietzsche’s philosophy is that we continue to believe in the truths that he has exposed as illusions even after denying them with remarkable tenacity. Escaping from the habits of convention is no easy thing, especially for creatures like ourselves who have been cultivated to seek clarity in discourse and to eschew vagueness in judgement. As Nietzsche will repeat time and again, our thinking abounds with useful fictions without which the human animal could not survive. And (...) yet for Nietzsche, philosophy is not of this order. The great adventure of life is the departure from thinking in all predictable forms. An experiment in thinking has to be an experiment in living or it is nothing. From his idiosyncratic writings on tragedy to his late speculations on nihilism, Nietzsche explores the powers of art to transform life, to liberate life from the structures which constrain it. (shrink)

This article argues in favour of an inferential role for fictions in scientific modelling. The argument proceeds by means of a detailed case study, namely models of the internal structure of stars in stellar astrophysics. The main assumptions in such models are described, and it is argued that they are best understood as useful fictions. The role that conditionals play in these models is explained, and it is argued that fictional assumptions play an important role as either background (...) or antecedent conditions. I then expand on the argument for the compatibility of fictions and scientific realism. I argue that realism and antirealism plausibly offer correspondingly different accounts of the semantics of these fictional conditionals. (shrink)

Impossible fictions are not just the creations of puzzle-seeking philosophers or artists experimenting with the limits of fiction. Impossibilities can be found in relatively mundane fiction as well. This article argues that the device of personification, especially of abstract entities such as death or duty, yields impossible fictions, arguing against a number of strategies that might be tried to show that these cases of personification do not yield impossibilities.

En première approche, on peut définir une contre-fiction comme un récit fictionnel visant à transformer la réalité actuelle dans un projet de lutte contre la reproduction d'un donné perçu comme mutilant1. La thèse sous-jacente est que le non-lieu de la fiction constitue un opérateur de déblocage devenu central dans les conflits politiques contemporains, en ce qu'il permet d'ouvrir un espace de rejet des données, dans un monde où ce sont de plus en plus les ' données ' qui nous oppriment. (...) Par ' données ', on vise ici à la fois les data collectées, les discours d'experts qui mobilisent ces data pour nous enfermer dans l'existant, mais aussi les produits de consommation à bon marché qui nous sont ' donnés ' (vendus à trop vil prix). Le passage par la fiction devrait dès lors être assumé comme un passage nécessaire pour toute politique émancipatrice, qui comporterait inévitablement une dimension ' visionnaire '. On parlera de contre-fictions pour désigner des récits anti-systémiques dont la visée (ou l'effet) consiste à faire entrevoir un autre monde possible, afin de nous décoller des fausses évidences à travers lesquelles se reproduisent les données qui nous aveuglent et qui nous paralysent. (shrink)

How do our engagements with fictions and other products of the imagination compare to our experiences of the real world? Are the feelings we have about a novel's characters modelled on our thoughts about actual people? If it is wrong to feel pleasure over certain situations in real life, can it nonetheless be right to take pleasure in analogous scenarios represented in a fantasy or film? Should the desires we have for what goes on in a make-believe story cohere (...) with what we want to happen in the actual world? In Apt Imaginings, Jonathan Gilmore develops a new framework to pursue these questions, marshalling a wide range of research in aesthetics, the science of the emotions, moral philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and film and literary theory. Gilmore argues that, while there is a substantial empirical continuity in our feelings across art and life, the norms that govern the appropriateness of those responses across the divide are discontinuous. In this view, the evaluative criteria that determine the fit, correctness, or rationality of our emotions and desires for what is internal to a fiction can be contrary to those that govern our affective attitudes toward analogous things in the real world. In short, it can be right to embrace within a story what one would condemn in real life. The theory Gilmore defends in this volume helps to explain our complex and sometimes conflicted attitudes toward works of the imagination; challenges the popular view that fictions serve to refine our moral sensibilities; and exposes a kind of autonomy of the imagination that can render our responses to art immune to standard real-world epistemic, practical, and affective kinds of criticism. (shrink)

In "Of Personal Identity,", Hume attempts to explain how one arrives at the fiction of a substantial self which retains its numerical identity through time. In "Of Scepticism with Regard to the Senses," Hume offers a similar explanation of the origin of another fiction - that of objects which enjoy a continued and distinct existence. In this paper, I will argue that his pair of parallel explanations does not jointly account for the pair of fictions to be explained.

I would like to end this questioning of canonical origins by returning to my point of departure, [Lawrence] Lipking’s notion of a “poetics of abandonment.” Lipking’s article was included in an issue of Critical Inquiry entitled Canons, in which it seemingly was held to represent a feminist perspective on canon formation. Lipking centers his attention on literary theory, a domain that has been granted new prominence, sometimes even the status of literature, in the most recent reformulation of the canon. It (...) may be, as Viktor Shklovsky suggested in Zoo, or Letters Not about Love, that literary theory is the novel’s successor, in which case the resurrection of Ovid’s abandoned women would make generic sense. Furthermore, for the first time in the history of literary criticism, there are today numbers of influential female literary critics, many of whom have called for a major reorganization of literary canons. Given the strategies deployed during previous moments of canon formation, it is perhaps inevitable that some of today’s male literary critics would instigate a debasement of theoretical mothers. Contemporary literary critics are no longer attempting to consign women writers to abandonment. However, even as they promote the cause of women writers, some may also be responding in a manner that reveals their perception that feminist literary theory has provided the most forceful recent challenge not only to literary canons but to critical canons as well.In the final development in his attempt to prove that a mimetic investment in female pain is the basic theoretical strategy deployed by all female readers, Lipking provides an analysis of recent feminist theorists ending with this characterization of the authors of The Madwoman in the Attic: “Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar gaze at the mad and outcast heroines of the nineteenth century as if into a mirror”. Thus Gilbert and Gubar—Lipking also cites the examples of Kate Millett and Ellen Moers—become the most recent incarnations of the abandoned literary woman, the literary critic whose views originate in her fear of abandonment. If my analysis of strategies of canon formation deployed in earlier centuries is correct, then the pronouncement from Lipking’s article with which I opened this essay may be a red herring. “In the absence of mothers, a father must raise the right issues.” Lipking may be calling for “a poetics of abandonment” not in response to a perceived maternal deficiency, but in order to consign strong female critics to abandonment, out of a Phaeton complex, a fear that, unless female theorists are cast off, critical sons may have an increasingly difficult time proving their legitimacy. Joan DeJean is professor of French at Princeton University. Her most recent book is Literary Fortifications: Rousseau, Laclos, Sade, and she is currently at work on a study to be titled Fictions of Sappho: Sappho’s Presence in French Literature, 1546-1937. (shrink)

Humanitarianism has a narrative problem. Far too often, aid to Africa is envisioned through a tale of Western heroes saving African sufferers. While labeling white savior narratives has become a familiar gesture, it doesn't tell us much about the story as story. Humanitarian Fictions aims to understand the workings of humanitarian literature, as they engage with and critique narratives of Africa. Overlapping with but distinct from human rights, humanitarianism centers on a relationship of assistance, focusing less on rights than (...) on needs, less on legal frameworks than moral ones, less on the problem than on the nonstate solution. Tracing the white savior narrative back to religious missionaries of the nineteenth century, Humanitarian Fiction reveals the influence of religious thought on seemingly secular institutions and uncovers a spiritual, collectivist streak in the discourse of humanity. Because the humanitarian model of care transcends the boundaries of the state, and its networks touch much of the globe, Humanitarian Fictions redraws the boundaries of literary classification based on a shared problem space rather than a shared national space. The book maps a transnational vein of Anglophone literature about Africa that features missionaries, humanitarians, and their so-called beneficiaries. Putting humanitarian thought in conversation with postcolonial critique, this book brings together African, British, and U.S. writers typically read within separate traditions. Paustian shows how the novel--with its profound sensitivity to narrative--can enrich the critique of white saviorism while also imagining alternatives that give African agency its due. (shrink)

I critically examine some recent work on the philosophy of scientific fictions, focusing on the work of Winsberg. By considering two case studies in fracture mechanics, the strip yield model and the imaginary crack method, I argue that his reliance upon the social norms associated with an element of a model forces him to remain silent whenever those norms fail to clearly match the characteristic of fictions or non-fictions. In its place, I propose a normative epistemology of (...) fictions which clarifies a model's ontological commitments when the community of scientists lack any clear, shared norms of use. Specifically, I will introduce a variational account of fictions as an extension of Laymon's monotonic improvability account of idealizations. I will conclude by connecting this variational account of fictions to didactic fictions in general. (shrink)

Que peut-on espérer des fictions? Rien, déclare l'intellectuel traqueur d'illusions. Tout, affirme l'artiste désireux de valoriser les potentialités de son matériau. Mais est-on sûr de parler d'une même chose? À observer nos usages du terme, les fictions prolifèrent confusément à l'époque contemporaine, nichées dans nos oeuvres, nos discours, nos croyances, nos imaginations. Si bien que poser sérieusement la question des mérites et démérites des fictions passe par une clarification rigoureuse de ce qu'elles sont. Les philosophes se sont (...) depuis longtemps attelés à débattre des caractéristiques ontologiques, sémantiques, épistémologiques, ou psychologiques des fictions et à résoudre les paradoxes et difficultés qui s'y rattachent. Perspectives philosophiques sur les fictions rassemble neuf textes contribuant à cette enquête. Le recueil met l'accent sur une approche épistémologique positive des fictions, le 'fictionalisme', sur ses origines chez Hans Vaihinger, ses développements et les critiques qu'on peut lui adresser."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Le present essai part du constat que, avant d'etre theorisee dans ses divers aspects et ses applications variees, la fiction a joue des roles importants dans les sciences, les philosophies et les pratiques classiques. C'est a la fin du XVIIIe siecle que l'on cherche non plus seulement a utiliser, mais a comprendre son fonctionnement dans tous les secteurs ou l'intelligence theorique et pratique est requise. A partir du XIXe siecle, on tient, avec la fiction, une notion dont la valeur de (...) transfert, de transfusion, de transformation, de transvaluation, est generale et tres forte: la position de servante et d'intermediaire qu'on lui connaissait s'est renversee en position de maitrise. L'auteur de cet Essai sur les fictions s'efforce de faire une pesee de la valeur heuristique et epistemologique de la fiction en divers domaines. Beaucoup plus independante du kantisme que ne l'avait ete en son temps la recherche de H. Vaihinger, la presente enquete sillonne des terres que l'on a coutume de designer par les memes mots de theorie, de morale, d'ethique, de droit, de politique, d'esthetique, avec les instruments nouveaux que les chercheurs ont pu forger depuis que la theorie des fictions a acquis quelque autonomie. Peut-etre vaut-il mieux, en philosophie, des incertitudes de position que des rentes de situation. (shrink)

We defend the view that an indexical uttered by an actor works on the model of deferred reference. If it defers to a character which does not exist, it is an empty term, just as ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Ophelia’ are. The utterance in which it appears does not express a proposition and thus lacks a truth value. We advocate an ontologically parsimonious, anti-realist, position. We show how the notion of truth in our use and understanding of indexicals (and fictional names) as (...) they appear within a fiction is not a central issue. We claim that our use and understanding of indexicals (and names) rests on the fact that their cognitive contribution is not exhausted by their semantic contribution. (shrink)

In his _Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind_, Yuval Harari claims that humans are able to cooperate in large numbers because they share common beliefs in fictions or “things that do not exist at all”. Examples of these fictions are religious doctrines, nations, laws, justice and money. In my paper, I argue that Harari is right to point out the importance of social constructs, entities that depend for their existence on the beliefs of the members of a society, (...) for cooperation. But he is wrong to characterise social constructs as fictions or imagined realities. Doing so makes it difficult to distinguish between real social constructs and social constructs that are fictitious or merely imagined. Harari tries to remedy this problem calling fictitious social constructs lies; but this suggestion unhelpfully associates mere fictions or imaginings with deceptive intent. (shrink)

Abstract: It is often assumed without argument that fictionalism in the philosophy of science contradicts scientific realism. This paper is a critical analysis of this assumption. The kind of fictionalism that is at present discussed in philosophy of science is characterised, and distinguished from fictionalism in other areas. A distinction is then drawn between forms of fictional representation, and two competing accounts of fiction in science are discussed. I then outline explicitly what I take to be the argument for the (...) incompatibility of scientific realism with fictionalism. I argue that some of its premises are unwarranted, and are moreover questionable from a fictionalist perspective. The conclusion is that fictionalism is neutral in the realism-antirealism debate, pulling neither in favour nor against scientific realism. (shrink)