Abstract
In this paper I argue for a fictional and ludic realism (“realism” in the sense that referring to and quantifying over fictional and ludic objects is seen as meaningful) which gives fictional and ludic entities the ontological status of being purely intentional objects in Roman Ingarden’s sense. I employ a model-theoretic approach, exploiting the possible world semantics of modal logic. My version of realism recognizes as objects of actual reference only fictional and ludic entities that are individuated as intentional objects, refusing to recognize entities that are in lack of a clear identity. It is shown that this position is immune to Anthony Everett’s arguments against fictional realism. I also argue that my approach to games and fiction is superior to Peter Ludlow’s contextualist approach. Comparing entities in videogames, especially in MMORPGs, to traditional ludic and fictional objects, I conclude, in lack of evidence for the opposite, that there is no difference in ontological status between them.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. Kendall Walton’s discussion of dreams and daydreams (Walton 1990, pp. 43–51).
- 2.
For a brief, good quality introduction to Ingarden’s philosophy see Thomasson (2008).
- 3.
Like autonomy and heteronomy, to be discussed later.
- 4.
For an exposition and discussion of his view see Thomasson (2005).
- 5.
In particular I am interested in objects in videogames that are representational in a way for instance Tetris is not, so that a pattern of light on the screen is meant to represent something essentially different from the visual patch it is, say a young wolf or a dragon in World of Warcraft. Can the dragon even so be identical to the bit pattern? Or is it perhaps to be identified with part of the data structure or the program code that creates this bit pattern?
- 6.
Cf. (Aarseth 2005). Aarseth distinguishes between simulated or virtual objects, real objects, and fictional objects. Objects of all three kinds can be present in a computer game at the same time.
- 7.
Compare this to the importance of causation in the metaphysics of mind. In the ever ongoing debate about the reality of consciousness as separate from the reality it is consciousness about, mental causation and psychophysical interaction are key concepts. In this connection we should not ignore the puzzling fact that fictional objects and events often have a strong emotional effect on us, maybe stronger than the emotional effects computer-based ludic objects have. Walton’s attempt to explain the reader’s (or player’s) emotional responses as indulgence in make-believe emotion (Walton 1990, pp. 241–255) is not satisfactory as I see it, but I have no better solution to the problem myself. It is also of some interest that the third and last volume of Ingarden’s The controversy over the existence of the world is On the causal structure of the real world (Ingarden 1974). Ingarden holds, first, that the causal relation must be a relation between events in one and the same world, second, that it is a relation that can only hold between real beings {reale Gegenständlichkeiten}, and, third, that it is different for instance from the relation between an author of fiction and the purely intentional objects in his fictional work—in general the relation between creator and creature is not a causal relation according to him (Ingarden 1974, p. 1n).
- 8.
That would be to assume a realist solution to the problem of the existence of the world from the outset. “[I]t is still not ruled out that the real world, whose existence is what the controversy is about, at the end of the day turns out to be purely intentional after all {doch letzten Endes bloß rein intentional ist}” (Ingarden 1965b, p. 199).
- 9.
Purely intentional objects make up the only subcategory of the category of existentially heteronomous objects discussed by Ingarden, but it is interesting that he mentions merely possible objects as a possible additional subcategory (Ingarden 1964, p. 87).
- 10.
“A being {eine Gegenständlichkeit} (in the sense of anything whatsoever) exists autonomously (is existentially autonomous) when it has its fundament of being in itself. And it has it in itself when it itself is an immanently definite something {etwas immanent Bestimmtes}. A being {eine Gegenständlichkeit} is existentially heteronoumous (exists heteronomously), on the other hand, when it has its fundament of being outside of itself” (Ingarden 1964, p. 79—my translation).
- 11.
“The purely intentional beings {die rein intentionalen Gegenständlichkeiten} are ‘transcendent’ relative to the corresponding acts of consciousness and generally to all acts of consciousness {den entsprechenden und überhaupt allen Bewußtseinsakten gegenüber} in the sense that no real {reelles} element (or moment) of the act is an element of the purely intentional being {der rein intentionalen Gegenständlichkeit} and conversely” (Ingarden 1960, p. 123—my translation).
- 12.
“One should distinguish [being a purely intentional object] from those other ways of being an object that are also often called ‘intentional’ {von denjenigen, oft ebenfalls ‘intentional’ genannten Gegenständlichkeiten}, which are indeed concerned {betroffen} by the intention of an act of consciousness, but for which this concern {dieses Betroffensein} is completely accidental, since they—in the case that they exist at all—exist in themselves without this concern, and are what they are” (Ingarden 1964, pp. 82–83—my translation). He attributes the distinction between purely intentional objects {rein intentionale Gegenstände} and objects that are also intentional {auch intentionale Gegenstände} to Max Scheler (Ingarden 1960, p. 123n).
- 13.
“Not every purely intentional object has its immediate fundament of being in an act of consciousness. … [The meaning of a sentence that belongs to a literary work of fiction] defines {bestimmt} of itself {von sich aus} the objects depicted by it (people, things, animals, events etc.) which are also purely intentional” (Ingarden 1964, p. 86—my translation).
- 14.
I first made use of this concept in my (1992) where I argue that beliefs about objects that apparently don’t exist, like the belief of a young child that Santa Claus will bring her gifts on Christmas Eve (example here borrowed from John Perry (2001, pp. 153–156) who doesn’t share my view), are beliefs about purely intentional objects, and also that a directly referring term that apparently fails to refer, like the name “Santa Claus”, may actually refer to a purely intentional object. I am not at all sure that Ingarden would agree.
- 15.
It is interesting to compare this to John Searle’s view (Searle 1995).
- 16.
See Priest (2008) on fictional objects as supervening on the activities of cognitive agents.
- 17.
This is so because Croft and Holmes are individuated as purely intentional objects. Many fictional objects are not individuated at all. See my (1996).
- 18.
See Quine (1961a). They meet his requirement in so far as apparent reference to them and quantification over them cannot be eliminated from a theory, to put it roughly.
- 19.
“N” for “noetic”, “neutral”, and “neutralizing”.
- 20.
- 21.
Cf. Walton’s distinction between work worlds and game worlds (Walton 1990, pp. 58–63).
- 22.
A fiction operator of a similar type was first introduced (as far as I know) by John Woods (1974). However, Woods emphasizes that his fiction operator does not reduce to the adverb “fictionally”. The question of quantification into fiction contexts, which is of central interest to me, is not raised in his book.
- 23.
Walton sees it as literally meaningless, I see it as literally false.
- 24.
Anthony Everett holds a similar view. He sees the assertion (β) as implied in a way by pretending to assert (α) (Everett 2005, pp. 638–643).
- 25.
See my (1996).
- 26.
- 27.
This type of model-theoretic semantics is commonly associated with Kripke. However, it was first developed by Stig Kanger (1957).
- 28.
David Lewis’s modal realism (Lewis 1968) is in several respect different from the treatment of modality in standard Kripke type semantics.
- 29.
Situation semantics is a small worlds semantics.
- 30.
- 31.
Also “s knows that”.
- 32.
Alternatively: the step from “s knows that” to “s believes that”.
- 33.
Similarly, as we all know, it is not true that what ought to be is actually the case. This means that doxastic logic and deontic logic are both paramodal logics.
- 34.
This text as a whole is incoherent. “Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four describes Watson as limping because of a war wound in his leg. In A Study in Scarlet, however, Watson has no wound at his leg (for it is located in his shoulder), and he doesn’t limp.” (Berto 2009, p. 18.) In a case like this we can limit S to a coherent part of the whole text, say to one of the two books if they are separately coherent. In this case the inconsistency seems to be unintended; it is not part of the Sherlock Holmes fiction that the laws of logic are suspended in it. Essentially incoherent fiction will be discussed later.
- 35.
This doesn’t mean much if the text is incoherent, and no logically possible world can be compatible with it.
- 36.
That is, if the fiction is consistent. Cf. (Walton 1990, pp. 61–62).
- 37.
This is clearly Anthony Everett’s preference (Everett 2005).
- 38.
This is different from David Lewis’s view. His modal realism requires that the realm of the quantifiers comprises all denizens of all the parallel worlds there are according to him (Lewis 1978).
- 39.
The sentences used to make these assertions are examples of what Everett talks about as “Fictional Object Sentences” (Everett 2005, p. 625). See discussion below.
- 40.
Peter Ludlow talks about “quantifying out” (Ludlow 2006, p. 168).
- 41.
I don’t find Yagisawa’s arguments quite convincing. The question of substitutional quantification is interesting, but since the focus of this paper is more on entities in videogames than on literary characters, I will not discuss it here. Instead I shall later go into the related question whether ludic entities can be identified with bit patterns or program code.
- 42.
Walton seems to hold a similar view.
- 43.
There are several, quite different varieties of fictional realism. However, acceptance of reference to and quantification over some purely fictional entities seems to be common to fictional realists.
- 44.
- 45.
Such contexts can be nested. There can be a fiction within a fiction, a fiction within a game, a game within a fiction, or a game within a game. And there can be even more nesting. This creates many additional problems that cannot be addressed in this paper. See Le Poidevin (1995).
- 46.
Because of these problems, Peter Ludlow warns against introducing an operator of pretense. His arguments are really arguments against any similar operator too (Ludlow 2006, pp. 168–171).
- 47.
This is a variant of one problem Peter Ludlow raises for a pretense theory (Ludlow 2006, pp. 169–170).
- 48.
Sherlock Holmes can (perhaps) be identified as the most famous protagonist in detective stories. But this description clearly presupposes fictional properties. Besides, the description expresses an intentional property itself.
- 49.
Being a character in a fiction is not what I call a “natural” property. This one of the intentional properties Holmes and Karenina share.
- 50.
The same is true of objects in videogames. I shall return to them.
- 51.
Arguably, no purely fictional or ludic object is present in every world compatible with a story. If that is true, quantification into N-contexts will never be quantification over purely fictional or ludic objects, and there will be no commitment to (strong) N-realism. But I will show later that ludic objects that become real, like Norrathian Platinum Pieces, must have been present as ludic objects in all worlds compatible with the ludic story from the beginning.
- 52.
The concept of a guise is borrowed from Hector-Neri Castañeda. Guises are central in his ontology. See Castañeda (1977). A guise is a cluster of properties.
- 53.
Adopting a Castañedian ontology of guises we could maybe do away with ordinary objects. Some of the problems with quantification into N-contexts would then disappear. In return we would get a lot of new problems which I cannot go into here.
- 54.
These MMORPGs have a lot in common with virtual meeting places like Facebook.
- 55.
What we really interact causally with in an MMORPG are other active players and the machinery of the game. There are mechanical operations performed by computers connected in a global network, with input from and output to the environment through interfaces, and there is the distributed program execution, influencing and influenced by the behavior of the players. Seen in this perspective, the feeling we have of interacting with ludic objects, including avatars, is an illusion. That what happens to ludic characters depicted on a screen in a videogame is sometimes dependent on the players’ action while what happens to fictional characters depicted in a novel is not, is interesting enough in itself, but this does not make ludic characters more real than characters of fiction.
- 56.
As to the latter example see Ludlow (2006, p. 163).
- 57.
- 58.
This clearly has a bearing on the question whether ludic objects are identical to props. I will return to that and the related question whether players are identical to their avatars.
- 59.
It is interesting that Ludlow does not distinguish between computer games and traditional fiction and game-play in this connection.
- 60.
Ludlow writes “hyperintentional”.
- 61.
Ludlow’s PRETEND can be seen as an interpretation of my N-operator.
- 62.
Maybe Ludlow takes exception to quantification over properties while finding quantification over numerical quantities more palatable.
- 63.
By quantifying in over qualities, as before.
- 64.
For a new and very interesting approach to comparisons of this kind, see Wehmeier (forthcoming).
- 65.
In Russell (1905).
- 66.
This move is a simplification of Quine’s strategy in Quine (1956).
- 67.
Substitution in a quotation is simply not allowed.
- 68.
See Carston (2002).
- 69.
Like in Thomas Bernhard’s play Ritter, Dene, Voss.
- 70.
See Sageng (2007).
- 71.
The bit pattern for Lara Croft is two-dimensional and not a human being. But ludically Lara Croft is three-dimensional and a person.
- 72.
- 73.
“different actors can be Hamlet” (Ludlow 2006, p. 179).
- 74.
What is important to Ludlow, however, is not whether this relation really is identity. His concern is how to avoid reference to purely fictional and ludic objects, so if Sara Michelle Geller can go proxy for Buffy Summers in statements about what happens in the show, he is probably happy with that.
- 75.
See Juul (2008).
- 76.
Take football as an example.
Games
Everquest. 1999. Sony Online Entertainment, PC.
JFK: Reloaded. 2004. Traffic Games, PC.
Second Life. 2002. Linden Lab, PC.
Tetris. 1984. Alexey Pajitnov.
The Sims Online. 2002. Electronic Arts, PC.
Tomb Raider. 1996. Eidos Interactive, PC.
World of Warcraft. 2004. Blizzard/Vivendi, PC.
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Asheim, O. (2012). Reality, Pretense, and the Ludic Parenthesis. In: Sageng, J., Fossheim, H., Mandt Larsen, T. (eds) The Philosophy of Computer Games. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4249-9_16
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