Abstract
In this chapter I want to hold that contextualism—the position according to which wide context, i.e., the concrete situation of discourse, may well have the semantic role of assigning truth-conditions to sentences in context—may well accommodate (along with some nowadays established theses about the semantics of proper names) three data about fiction, namely, the facts that as far as discourse involving fiction is concerned, (i) sentences about nothing are meaningful (ii) they may be true in fiction (iii) yet they may also be true in reality. Moreover, I also want to hold that such a contextualist accommodation does not depend on endorsing a realist stance about fictional entities, although such a stance gives the best truth-conditional explanation for such data, in particular (iii).
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Notes
- 1.
For instance, both so-called semantic minimalism—cf. e.g. Cappellen and Lepore (2005)—and a certain kind of indexicalism—e.g. the one defended by Predelli (2005)—fall under traditionalism, while both a moderate form of contextualism, i.e., indexicalism à la Stanley (2007) and a radical form of contextualism à la Recanati (2004a), are forms of contextualism.
- 2.
For this whole picture on indexicals, cf. Kaplan (1989a, b); see also Predelli (2005). Recanati (2004b: 1) claims that the character of an indexical is given by a token-reflexive rule. He frames this idea precisely by saying that such a character automatically obtains a truth-conditional contribution for that indexical in a certain narrow context by pointing to a given parameter in that context.
- 3.
As Recanati (2004a: 116) claims.
- 4.
- 5.
Someone would add that, in order for such a traditionalist explanation to work, a sentence like (1) has to be considered a (hidden) indexical sentence, in order for truth-conditions to be assigned automatically to utterances of it. In such a case, it would suffice that proper names like “Werther” and “Charlotte” were taken to be indexicals of some sort. I have strong inclinations for such a view (cf. my Voltolini 1995).
- 6.
Of course, if the new theory of reference were not correct, there might be other semantic explanations of this datum, tracing back either to Frege’s (1892) ‘sense-and-reference’-theory of proper names or to Russell (1956) descriptivist theory of such terms. Yet as I said in the text it is nowadays a commonplace that such theories have serious drawbacks.
- 7.
This point might be alternatively formulated by claiming that one and the same utterance of (1) may count both as a pseudo-assertion, i.e., as a sentence having a fictional truth-condition in a fictional context, and as a genuine assertion, i.e., as a sentence having a real truth-condition in a real context [For this way of putting things, cf. Evans (1982: 363–364).]. Yet since for a traditionalist an utterance counts as a sentence in one context, she has troubles in accounting for such a phenomenon. I myself have put forward this line of criticism against traditionalism with respect to multistable puns, namely, funny utterances having ambiguous significance. Cf. Voltolini (2012).
- 8.
As the careful reader will have already noticed, I here draw a distinction between tales—sets of fictional contents, i.e., of fictional truth-conditions for the utterances they mobilize—and stories, sets of real propositions, i.e., of truth-conditional contributions to the real truth-conditions of the utterances they mobilize. Cf. my Voltolini (2006). More on this later.
- 9.
Normally the locution is interpreted as expressing an intensional operator, but I want to refrain “in the story S, p” from such an interpretation. Cf. Voltolini (2006: Chap. 6).
- 10.
Cf. Voltolini (2006).
- 11.
Cf. Currie (1990) and Garcia-Carpintero (2007). In point of fact, Currie’s theory defends this idea only for embedded fictional proper names. When such names occur unembedded in simple fiction-involving sentences that cannot be taken as elliptical for internal metafictional sentences, notably external metafictional sentences like “Werther is a fictional character”, for Currie they do refer to fictional entities, notably fictional roles. Given however that there are mixed contexts such as “Although he was fallen in love with Charlotte, Werther is a fictional character”, made out of both an internal and an external metafictional sentence, this position seems to me even more untenable.
- 12.
This option is envisaged by Sainsbury (2009). In point of fact, Sainsbury there and elsewhere (2011) prefers another account, according to which sentences like (1), which are really false because of the referentlessness of their names, are only true under a presupposition, i.e., accepted as true. Yet this account simply amounts to denying datum (iii). For it deals with the putative real truth of (1) in the same way as with the merely putative truth presented by datum (ii). Yet who utters (1) in an examination does not even shallowly pretend that (1) is true, as this account postulates.
- 13.
- 14.
Incidentally, even in his second approach to sentences involving fiction (cf. fn. 12) Sainsbury has somehow to acknowledge that external metafictional sentences really possess their intuitive truth-value. For, as he admits, they are not merely accepted as true, they are believed to be true. Cf. (2011:147). Furthermore, even a prima facie antirealist such as Braun, who defends a somewhat similar idea that simple sentences like (1) are false for they express gappy propositions, i.e., propositions whose ‘subject’-position is empty for the relevant proper names refer to nothing, is forced to say that external metafictional sentences are true for the names they contain refer to fictional entities. Cf. Braun (2005).
- 15.
Cf. Kaplan (1989a: 510).
- 16.
For such cases (that pace Kaplan typically involve indexicals, notably modal or temporal ones), cf. e.g. Bonomi (2008) and especially Predelli (2008). To be sure, in that paper Predelli defends a view that is more complicated than the ‘context-shift’-view I am here presenting. For one thing, according to Predelli even a sentence like (1) when uttered as a comment to Goethe’s tale has to be understood as elliptical for a complex sentence involving one such context shift for its embedded sentence, i.e., “according to Goethe’s tale, Werther is fallen in love with Charlotte”. But let me leave these complications aside. In any case, for me complex sentences of the form “according to the fiction F, p” are not sentences of the form “In the story S, p”. For according to me locutions of the “in the story S”-form are not intensional operators. Cf. Voltolini (2006). (For a less radical distinction between the “according to the fiction”—and the “in the story”—locutions, which takes both as expressing different intensional operators, cf. Sainsbury (2009: 79fn. 12).
- 17.
Incidentally, this is why the fact that, when uttered in the context of a possible world, a certain sentence is true in that world says nothing as to the fact that a corresponding modal sentence (presenting a normal intensional context), uttered in the context of the real world is true in this world. Consider a sentence like “Vulcan is a planet”. There surely is a possible world in which people successfully refer to something by using the name “Vulcan” in uttering the above sentence, which so expresses a possible truth-conditional content that makes that sentence also true in that world, if that very something is a planet in that world. However, the fact that in the unreal context that has such a possible world as its ‘world’-parameter that sentence is true does not make the case that the modal sentence “It is possible that Vulcan is a planet” is true when uttered in a real context that has the real world as its ‘world’-parameter. For, in order for this sentence to be true in the real world, it must report the content of a possibility for us, people in the real world. But this cannot be the case if “Vulcan” refers to nothing in the context of the real world, so that (given the new theory of reference) it is just a flatus vocis giving no truth-conditional contribution to the sentence in which it figures (as if we had merely said “It is possible that Xhjtz is a planet”).
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Voltolini, A. (2013). Contexts, Fiction, and Truth. In: Capone, A., Lo Piparo, F., Carapezza, M. (eds) Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01011-3_21
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