The fictionality of plays

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 60, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 263-273

  Dilworth, John ^a  

^a WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61049333317     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6245.00073     Document Type: Review

References (49)

1. Such epistemic issues also arise in connection with other artworks, of course; see, for example, the discussion of artistic forgeries in painting, music, and literature in my "A Representational Theory of Artefacts and Artworks," The British Journal of Aesthetics 41 (2001): 353-370
2. Authors discussing some concept of a "fictional world" include Gregory Currie, The Nature of Fiction (Cambridge University Press, 1990), § 2.1
3. Peter McCormick, Fictions, Philosophies, and the Problems of Poetics (Cornell University Press, 1988), chap. 7
4. Thomas G. Pavel, Fictional Worlds (Harvard University Press, 1986)
5. and Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Harvard University Press, 1990), chap. 1
6. A more direct claim that they are identical might seem to imply an ontology in which there are plays and fictional worlds, so I avoid that formulation in my statement here for reasons that will become clear
7. For example, in Peter Lamarque, Fictional Points of View (Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 9, Lamarque says, "Any adequate aesthetics of literature must acknowledge that literary works are not primarily psychological objects so much as institutional objects.... Without the existence of a complex social practice or institution in which texts fulfill determinate functions bound by convention, there could be no literary works." (However, as will shortly become clear, I have a different view of the function of literary texts.)
8. On my view, this representational approach may be extended to artworks in general. See my "A Representational Theory of Artefacts and Artworks," in which I argue that paintings and other visual artworks are represented by (rather than being) artifacts and that this approach is at least initially persuasive for movies and literature in general. However, I should make it clear that it does not immediately follow from this view that all artworks are themselves fictional. That many literary works, operas, movies, et cetera, are about fictional characters or events is an undeniable fact; such works could then be argued to be fictional themselves, using similar arguments to those currently being given for plays, but substantive further arguments would be required to show that any other artworks are fictional in either sense
9. In "A Representational Theory of Artefacts and Art-works," I argue against type-token views of artworks and show how the great diversity of kinds of representation funetions as a significant source of strength for my general representational approach to artworks
10. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe
11. Walton, in his Mimesis as Make-Believe, § 1.9, attempts to minimize his own dependence on such references. Also see section III below for further discussion of my point
12. I present arguments for it, as reinterpreted in terms of my own theory, in the next two sections
13. However, as will become clear, it is my view that the prescriptive force prescribes not imaginings but rather which statements should be taken as being accurate descriptions of the work
14. Of course, each art form or medium will have its own characteristic representational conditions, so that no epistemic uniformity across the arts, or even within a given art form at different times, is to be expected. For example, presumably the standards for authentic or accurate performance in the ballet and dance world changed significantly upon the introduction of an adequate choreographic notational system
15. See my "A Representational Theory of Artefacts and Artworks."
16. "Typically" only, because, for example, a senile author might make various mistakes in some of his sentences, while a knowledgeable assistant - or a later editor - might correct these errors to produce a more authoritative text or representation, which yet is not strictly itself an originative representation of the work
17. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe, § 1.5
18. Again, for me this prescriptive force is merely that of prescribing which propositions about a fictional world should be taken as being true of it, rather than, as in Walton's case, its involving the prescription of certain imaginings. (In the next section I shall introduce the idea of the facts or factual basis of a fictional world or artwork as that which prescribes the true propositions in question.)
19. Related points are made by Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 366-367, who holds that we should not impute to the discourse of ordinary people discussing fiction excessively sophisticated theoretical views about the nature of fiction
20. and Charles Crittenden, Unreality: The Metaphysics of Fictional Objects (Cornell University Press, 1991), chaps. 2 and 3, who argues that there are undeniably references to fictional objects, no matter what further theoretical construal we might attempt to give them
21. For example, Crittenden, Unreality: The Metaphysics of Fictional Objects, pp. 94-95
22. Lamarque, Fictional Points of View, chap. 1
23. Amie L. Thomasson, "Fiction, Modality and Dependent Abstracta," Philosophical Studies 84 (1996): 295-320, esp. p. 301
24. A related distinction of referential versus formal properties of a character is provided by Dauer in Francis W. Dauer, "The Nature of Fictional Characters and the Referential Fallacy," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1995): 31-38, where formal properties relate to the function played by a character in a work of art
25. Including Currie, The Nature of Fiction
26. Lamarque, Fictional Points of View
27. Amie L. Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
28. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe; and Peter Van Inwagen, "Creatures of Fiction,"
29. American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977): 299-308
30. Crittenden, Unreality, pp. 42-44, argues for this view
31. On a charitable reading, perhaps authors such as those cited in note 22 may be taken as being engaged in some form of this activity, in spite of their denial that reference may be made to fictional characters considered internally
32. An account of the kinds of dependency involved will have to await another occasion
33. In the case of both conceptions, the explanatory priority is explained in terms of the semantic concept of truth, so that no ontological issues about fictions are raised. Of course, with truth as with reference, some might argue that at some deeper level of explanation there are not really any internal truths about fictional entities. But as before, this does not affect the current surface-level discussion of fictional entities
34. It is these internal facts that in the previous section I (in effect) argued to be the source of the prescriptivity of a play in mandating which propositions about the work are to count as being true
35. An analogy is provided by a language dictionary: Words may be defined in terms of other words, but the ultimate evidential basis for meaning is provided by so-called "ostensive definitions," in which words are linked to extralinguistic entities. In the case of fiction, it is the sayings and doings of fictional entities that, at a surface level of explanation, provide the analogous factual basis of extralinguistic entities
36. A perceptual analogy to the three stages of justification just outlined would be as follows. On one common realist view, one justifies a claim that snow is white by appeal to the fact of snow being white, which in turn is justified by an appeal to the veridicality of perception of the fact of snow being white, which veridicality itself requires some appropriate third stage of epistemic justification
37. I have adapted this general point from a related one given by Thomasson in her "Fiction, Modality and Dependent Abstracta," pp. 300-301, but her view of fictional characters (as dependent abstract entities) is very different from mine
38. Both views are very common, for example, Currie, The Nature of Fiction
39. and Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe
40. Terence Parsons, Nonexistent Objects (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), chap. 1, discusses such issues
41. Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics, e.g., pp. 36-37
42. This shows again that my account of the surface structure of fictions, and of talk about them, is able to avoid ontological issues such as that of whether fictional characters are abstract or concrete entities. I could also give a similar story-relative account of the issue as to whether fictional characters are individual versus general entities such as universals; here too I can simply reply that it depends on whether or not the relevant characters are represented as individuals or as universals, in the fictional story
43. That is, not in the standard or absolute sense of existence, as opposed to the relational sense discussed in the next note
44. This account is compatible with the standard nonrelational concept of existence, in terms of which fictions do not exist (absolutely). But my relational account is all that is needed to explain the sense in which fictional characters do typically exist "in a story," as opposed to their not existing "in reality." To be more explicit, the two concepts (of what could be called relational or R-existence, and nonrelational or NR-existence) are related as follows. R-existence in a fictional world is a nonontological concept, having no implications as to the NR-existence status of an object. R-existence (or nonexistence) in the real world for an object entails that the object also NR-exists (or does not NR-exist). Throughout the paper, whenever the term "ex-ists" is used without qualification, it is the standard concept of NR-existence that is being used
45. Of course, for reasons of space this paper has been able to do no more than provide an initial sketch of the fictionality position and of the many issues arising from it. One important issue that I shall attempt to address on another occasion is that of how my general approach could account for both representational and nonrepresentational artworks. But my discussion in note 5 that shows why I am not committed to a claim that all artworks are fictional is at least a first step in that direction
46. Such as does Thomasson's view in Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics, according to which fictional characters are existent abstract entities
47. As does, for instance, Currie's account in The Nature of Fiction
48. Such as that of Walton in Mimesis as Make-Believe
49. My thanks to an anonymous referee for very helpful comments on this paper