FICTIONAL CHARACTERS
by
AMY RECHELLE LAWSON, B.A.
A THESIS
IN
PHILOSOPHY
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved
May, 1999
'13
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
^fjp.Z- I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my
thesis committee members. Dr. Edward Averill and Dr. Joseph
Ransdell, for their inspiration.
Many thanks to Dr.
Averill, in whose class the idea for this thesis arose and
for the many talks which showed me I had only scratched the
surface, and to Dr. Ransdell, whose ability to draw together
various lines of philosophical thought into a coherent whole
will forever astound me.
I also would like to thank the entire philosophy
department faculty and staff for their patience, constant
support and guidance.
In particular, I would like to thank
Dr. Amie Thomasson for her many contributions to this work
and for her willingness to listen and answer the infinite
number of questions I seemed to have.
Finally, my sincerest and most heartfelt thanks go to
my family and friends for being there amidst all the chaos.
To Dylan, thanks for showing me what a character really is.
11
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
il
CHAPTER
I.
INTRODUCTION
1
II.
FICTIONAL CHARACTERS' DEPENDENCIES
4
III.
CONSTANT A N D HISTORICAL DEPENDENCE
13
FICTIONAL CHARACTERS A N D NAMING
26
IV.
V.
INTENTIONAL OBJECT THEORY OF INTENTlONALITY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.. 37
47
111
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
How can we make sense of our practices with regards
to fiction?
Fictional characters are seemingly referred
to, talked about, compared to real people.
Fiction is
often used to make social commentary, to present a picture
of what the future might look like, to examine the
implications of advances in science and technology.
The
claim ^^Big Brother is watching" invokes comparisons of the
present political and social climate to Orwell's negative
Utopia in
1984.
Insisting that fictions are not real, that what goes
on in a work of fiction does not really exist, seems to
provide at least a little comfort.
There are no Count
Dracula's, no run amok computers, no asteroids at present
hurtling towards this planet that could wipe out all life
on this planet.
Those trivial points aside, insisting
that fictions are not real, on the other hand, seems to
put us in somewhat of a bind.
something that does not exist?
Is it possible to refer to
How is it possible to talk
about Nancy Drew as a detective who lives with her father
in River Heights?
Possible or not, it seems we actually do make
reference to and talk about the fictions that we read.
Moreover, we sometimes sympathize and empathize, admire or
condemn.
In criticisms, some authors are berated for
creating characters that seem too contrived, that are not
real or believable.
to others.
Characters from one work are compared
Sherlock Holmes is compared to Peroit.
It is these practices that are at stake, in some
sense.
If we accept these practices as an irrational, or
perhaps non-rational, imaginary exercise or categorize
fictions in with delusional behaviors or even take them to
be some form of misrepresentation, then these practices
will always be suspect.
Claiming that fiction is any of
the above, furthermore, seems to lead us away from any
positive evaluation of our practices.
I really do not
think literary critics are being delusional or irrational
when they write about a work of fiction.
I do not believe
that I am misrepresenting when I talk about Sherlock
Holmes.
I am not even sure exactly what I could be
misrepresenting in talking about Holmes.
In light of making sense of our practices with
regards to fiction, I will examine Amie Thomasson's
artifactual theory about fiction.
She argues that
''fictional characters are abstract artifacts — relevantly
similar to entities as ordinary as theories, laws,
governments, and literary works, and tethered to the
everyday world around us by dependencies on books,
readers, and authors."^
Fictional characters are created,
depend for their continued existence upon real things and
people, and may be destroyed.
^Thomasson, Fiction
and Metaphysics,
xi
CHAPTER II
FICTIONAL CHARACTERS' DEPENDENCIES
For the most part, beginning with the practices of
authors, it seems that we do consider authors to be
creating when they write a short story or a novel.
They
are introducing us to people and places that perhaps never
existed before.
When readers and critics thus talk about
characters, they seem to speak in ways that recognize that
creative process.
Suppose that we take those practices
with regards to fiction as the starting point.
From those
few practices we can begin to draw out Amie Thomasson's
artifactual theory of fiction which explains what
fictional characters are by explaining how they depend
upon those practices for their existence.
The first dependency of fictional characters is a
dependence upon authors' creative acts.
Fictional
characters, Thomasson argues, '"should be considered
entities that depend on the particular acts of their
author or authors to bring them into existence" (7). That
is, fictional characters are not discovered by their
authors; they do not exist in some Platonic realm waiting
for some author to write about them.
On the contrary.
fictional characters are created entities.
They are
brought into existence by the particular acts of authors.^
For their continued existence, it cannot be that
fictional characters depend upon their authors to remain
in existence.
If so, then Dr. Frankenstein and his
monster would no longer exist.
Sherlock Holmes would have
ceased to exist in 1930 when Arthur Conan Doyle died.
Thus, fictional characters, for their continued existence,
depend upon literary works.
This second dependence
ensures that, as Thomasson notes, "a fictional character
can go on existing without its author or his or her
creative acts" (7). Furthermore, it is not that any
particular literary work must survive.
In order for a
character to continue to exist, it need only be that some
work in which the character appears survive.
Literary works, in addition, also depend upon the
acts of authors.
Just as characters depend upon authors
to bring them into existence, the literary works in which
those characters appear "must be created by an author or
authors at a certain time in order to come into existence"
(8).
Thus the creation of a literary work and a character
-^Thomasson points out that fictional characters may
also be created over a length of time by more than one
author. These cases, where "the process of creating a
fictional character may be diffuse [do] not disrupt the
general point that, whatever the process of creation for a
given character may be, for coming into existence it
depends on those particular creative acts" (7).
is often, but need not be, simultaneous.
Characters may
be conceived of prior to the writing of a story.
The plot
of a story, on the other hand, may be conceived first.
Or, over the course of the development of a novel,
characters may be introduced.
Thus, just as characters
are not Platonic entities waiting for some author to
instantiate them into a story, "a literary work is not an
abstract sequence of words or concepts waiting to be
discovered" (8) .-^
The dependence of fictional characters on literary
works for their survival seems to suggest that characters
and literary works may cease to exist.
Thomasson points
out that "if we take seriously the view that literary
works are artifacts created at a certain time, it seems
natural to allow that, like other artifacts from umbrellas
to unions to universities, they can also be destroyed"
(9).
As cultural artifacts, literary works can succumb to
the fate that also befalls many cultures.
Just as
cultures die out, cease to exist, so may the fictional
tales from those cultures.
In cultures where stories are
kept alive through the telling of those stories, kept
alive through the oral tradition, if no record of those
^A literary work need not be conceived of as a
written manuscript. In cultures where stories are passed
along in an oral tradition, the memory and telling of
those stories are copies of the literary works.
stories survives, when the people of that culture cease to
exist, so do the stories and characters.
The denial that literary works can cease to exist,
Thomasson attributes to
a hangover of a Platonism that assimilates all
abstract entities to the realm of the changeless
and timeless, and in particular a consequence of
viewing literary works roughly as series of
words or concepts that can survive the
destruction of any collection of copies of them.
(9)
That is, according to this Platonistic view, once created,
a literary work must exist for all time, unchangeable even
if no copy of the work remains.
Thomasson also notes that
the denial that a literary work can cease to exist can be
attributed to perhaps an optimism.
If the survival of a
literary work does not depend on some particular copy of
the work to survive, only that some copy survive, then "it
is hard to be certain that there is not some copy of the
work, somewhere, that has survived, and with it the work
of literature" (10). That we may lack certainty, however,
says little about the existence of the literary work
itself.
If there is no record or copy of the literary
work, either in memory or in a manuscript, in that all
copies have been destroyed and memories have faded, the
literary work has ceased to exist as well."*
"^Thomasson notes that literary works are generally
"maintained in existence by the presence of some copy or
other of the relevant text (whether on paper, film, tape.
In the same vein, characters which appear in those
literary works may also cease to exist.
If all copies of
literary works about a particular character are destroyed,
then "she has fallen out of existence with those works and
become a ^past' fictional object in much the same way as a
person can become a dead, past, concrete object" (10).
Just as other cultural artifacts may be destroyed, so may
literary works and the fictional characters they contain.
And, just as persons can die, characters can cease to
exist.
The survival of a copy of the literary work, however,
is not enough to ensure the survival of the literary work
itself.
If there happens to survive some copy, but there
are no surviving individuals who can understand the work,
then "nothing is left of fictional works or the characters
represented in them but some ink on paper" (11).
Consequently, in addition to the literary work, there
needs to be a competent audience.
Thomasson points out
A literary work is not a mere bunch of marks on
a page but instead is an intersubjectively
accessible recounting of a story by means of a
public language. Just as a language dies out
without the continued acceptance and
understanding of a group of individuals, so do
or CD-ROM)" (11). Thus, with the advent of new
technology, different ways of keeping copies of literary
works can be accepted as legitimate ways of preserving
literary texts. Copies, on the other hand, need not have
some type of written form. Works may be preserved in
memory, in cultures with an oral tradition, for example.
8
linguistically based literary works. A literary
work as such can exist only as long as there are
some individuals who have the language
capacities and background assumptions they need
to read and understand it. (11)
Thus, it seems that in order for copies of literary works
to preserve those literary works, there needs to be
competent audiences who can appreciate those works.
It
need not be that these individuals accept these literary
works as great works or even significant works, only that
these works be accepted as works of fiction.
The
practices regarding fiction, then, have to survive.
Consequently, Thomasson says, "for its maintenance, a
character depends generically on the existence of some
literary work about it; a literary work, in turn, may be
maintained either in a copy of the text and a readership
capable of understanding it or in memory" (12).
Does positing that fictional characters and literary
works are cultural artifacts really help us make sense of
our practices regarding them?
Thomasson points out that
ordinary artifacts, from cars to paper clips to sofas,
"share with fictional characters the feature of requiring
creation by intelligent beings" (12). The fact that cars
and sofas cannot be created by putting words to paper and
fictional characters can be created in such a way,
however, speaks to an important disanalogy between
fictional characters and other artifacts.
While it may be
important that a blueprint of some sort exist prior to the
building of my car, it would be a mistake to call that
blueprint "my car."
If anything, my car seems to be a
token of the car-type on the blueprint.
On the other
hand, describing a character is exactly what brings that
character into existence.
Franz Kafka, when he wrote the
following sentences, brought Gregor Samsa into existence:
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy
dreams he found himself transformed in his bed
into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his
hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he
lifted his head a little he could see his
dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched
segments on top of which the bed quilt could
hardly keep in position and was about to slide
off completely. His numerous legs, which were
pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk,
waved helplessly before his eyes.^
Taking those words as genuinely creating, however,
seems at least problematic.
There is no spatiotemporal
insect named Gregor Samsa.
But, to say that, to say that
there is no spatiotemporal insect misses the point.
Certainly, we would not say that Kafka was creating a
genuine insect with the thoughts of Samsa.
Instead, when
authors are said to be genuinely creative, it must be
understood that they are creating characters.
Additionally, Thomasson argues that simply because
characters depend on linguistic acts for their creation,
they should not be considered as strange ontological
entities.
She points out that "it has long been noticed
^Kafka, The Basic
Kafka,
1
10
that a common feature of so-called conventional or
effective illocutionary acts such as appointing,
resigning, adjourning, and marrying is that they bring
into existence the state of affairs under discussion"
(12).
When someone pronounces a couple husband and wife,
that pronouncement has a certain force.
Namely, it
conveys the status of being-married upon the two persons.
Additionally, what gives the minister or
justice-of-the-peace the authority to marry the couple is
that they have attained some status by some other
pronouncement.
Many other speech acts are similar in their effect.
People make promises to do or not to do some act.
These
utterances take many different forms, including the
signing of business contracts or agreeing to meet someone
for lunch.
Corporations are brought into existence
through the use of business contracts or by filing some
set of papers in a tax attorney's office.
These
corporations are even recognized as "persons" under the
law with the ability to sue and be sued.
In some sense,
what allows corporations to exist and to function in the
manner that they do, are our practices regarding
corporations.
We recognize their existence, thus they, at
least in practice, exist.
Consequently, if we recognize the existence of
corporations and marriages, it is but a small step to
11
recognizing the existence of fictional characters "that
depend upon creative acts of authors to bring them into
existence and on some concrete individuals such as copies
of texts and a capable audience in order to remain in
existence" (12). Just as marriages and corporations
cannot exist without people and practices which recognize
and take part in those establishments, fictional
characters cannot exist without literary works and
audiences which recognize them.
It is in this light, in the taking into account the
acts of authors and the recognition by audiences that
Thomasson wishes to argue for the existence of fictional
characters.
In order to make sense of our practices
concerning fictional characters including our sympathetic
and empathetic responses, our admiration and condemnation
of their traits, we must take "authors to be genuinely
creative as they make up fictional characters" (6) . We
must accept that fictional characters are cultural
artifacts much like corporations, marriages, governments
and universities.
Like any of these social institutions,
characters are "constructed on top of the independent
physical world by means of our intentional
representations" (13). They depend upon our practices
governing them.
12
CHAPTER III
CONSTANT AND HISTORICAL DEPENDENCE
In the previous chapter, I discussed what Thomasson
takes to be the major dependencies of fictional
characters:
dependence on the creative acts of authors
and dependence upon copies of the literary work.
In this
chapter, I shall more closely examine what types of
dependencies these are and how these dependencies can be
used in possible worlds theory.
Specifically, Thomasson addresses existential
dependence:
Necessarily^
if
A exists
then B exists.
The
relation between A and B which Thomasson wishes to exploit
is that the "conditional seems to place a useful necessary
condition for [A] depending on [B]" (25). Though Thomasson
recognizes that the counterfactual may be true, given that
B could be a necessary existent, she argues that
working from the counterfactual definition of
dependence should provide a useful approximation
of the idea of dependence that can be used to
spell out important variants of the basic
dependence relation and should not lead us
astray if we bear in mind that it is only a
formal approximation of what is at bottom a
metaphysical relation. (25)
If we take it that necessarily, in order for A to exist B
must exist, or that necessarily if B is absent then A is
absent, we then have a working model we can use to explain
various dependence relations.
13
As Thomasson notes.
necessarily^
if
A exists
then B exists,
dependence.
Unspecified, are the times at which A and B
is a weak form of
must exist; "all it requires is that, if [A] exists at
some time, then [B] exists at some time (which may be
prior to, coincident with, or even subsequent to first
time)" (29).
Two of the notions of dependence that fall under the
general existential dependence, which set out some time
conditions for the dependence relation, are constant
dependence and historical dependence.
First, constant
dependence is "a relation such that one entity requires
that the other entity exist at every time at which it
exists" (29). Basically, constant dependence can be
defined as "necessarily, whenever A exists, B exists".
Objects are constantly dependent upon themselves, such
that identity could be subsumed under this category of
dependence.
If the constant dependence is upon a particular
individual, then the relation is rigid (30). An entity or
object may be rigidly constantly dependent upon part of
itself.
A book is rigidly constantly dependent upon the
pages that contain the text; necessarily, whenever that
book exists, the pages exist.
In such a case, when B "is
a proper part of [A], we may call [BJ an ^essential part'
of [AJ" (30). In other cases, A may be rigidly constantly
dependent on something other than itself or a part of
14
itself:
"Such constantly dependent individuals might
include particularized properties, as these are often said
to be constantly dependent on the objects they determine:
Necessarily, whenever this redness (of this apple) exists,
this apple exists" (30). Thus, properties which make up
entities can be said to constantly depend on those
entities.
Dependencies between states of affairs and between a
state of affairs and an object may also obtain.
The state
of affairs of my being a car owner is constantly dependent
upon the state of affairs of my having a car.
If we are
considering objects being rigidly dependent on states of
affairs, an example could be Hillary Clinton being rigidly
constantly dependent on the state of affairs Hillary
Clinton's being human.
Or, if the relation of dependence
is reversed, the state of affairs Hillary Clinton's being
a woman depends on Hillary Clinton.
It need not be that constant dependence always be
rigid.
If the constant dependence is "on something or
other of a particular type," and not on some particular
individual, then the dependence is generic (27) . For
Canada to exist, then at every moment of its existence,
there must be some Canadian citizen who exists.
For the
Republican Party to exist, there must be some person who
instantiates the properties of being a Republican
(whatever those may be).
It is not that a specific
15
Canadian citizen or a specific Republican exist, only that
some person who has those properties exist.
And, just as
rigid constant dependence may apply to objects, properties
and states of affairs, so may generic constant dependence.
The second major type of dependence to be considered
is historical dependence.
Historical dependence exists
"in cases in which one entity requires another in order to
come into existence initially, although it may be able to
exist independently of that entity once it has been
created" (31). Children are rigidly historically
dependent on their parents.
That is, a child depends on
those particular individuals, those particular parents,
for his or her existence.
Once created, however, the
child may continue to exist without them.
The case for generic historical dependence, on the
other hand, is a little harder to make. As Thomasson
notes, it could be argued "that any created entity must be
created by a specific individual, not just some individual
of a specified type, for the particular source of a
created being's existence is part of its very essence"
(32).
Thus, it is argued that the source of existence is
an essential p];-operty of that being.
Without that very
source, the being would be something else other than a
being from that very source.
Though it is a difficult
case, Thomasson says that generic historical dependence
"may be understood as the kind of dependence an entity has
16
on some of the necessary conditions for its creation that
are not implicated in the identity of the created entity"
(32).
Thomasson notes that catalysts to reactions and
suntans fall into this category of dependence.
My having
a sunburn may depend on my having been outside this
weekend at a softball tournament, but the sunburn did not
depend on any particular ultraviolet light.
In order to get a clearer picture of these
dependencies, it is also important to note how they relate
to one another.
The first relation is that constant
dependence necessitates historical dependence (33). If
the Democratic Party requires persons who are Democrats to
exist, then it also requires that those persons come into
existence.
Second, both historical and constant
dependence each entail a more general sense of dependence.
Third, rigid dependence (constant or historical) "on a
particular state of affairs involving a property entails
generic dependence (of that type) on something
instantiating that property" (34). Thus, if the state of
affairs of my being a Tech student is rigidly constantly
dependent on my being enrolled at Tech, then my being a
Tech student is generically constantly dependent on
something that instantiates the property of being enrolled
at Tech.
Finally, Thomasson concludes, each dependence
type is transitive (34). If I am historically dependent
on my parents and they are historically dependent on their
17
parents, then I am historically dependent upon my
grandparents.
Now, it seems that we can elaborate on the
dependencies of fictional characters which should have
already suggested themselves.
First, Thomasson argues
that fictional characters' dependence on the creative acts
of authors is a rigid historical dependence.
Sherlock
Holmes rigidly historically depends on the creative acts
of Arthur Conan Doyle.
Clearly, Thomasson takes it that
the author is essential to the character and to the
literary work.
Even if two authors were to coincidentally
write word for word the same text, it would not be that
they had written the same literary work.
Thomasson notes
that
by virtue of originating in a different place in
literary, social, and political history, at the
hands of a different author, or in a different
place in an author's oeuvre, one and the same
sequence of words can provide the basis for two
very different works of literature with
different aesthetic and artistic properties. (8)
Thus, it is not simply the words and word order that
matters, it is the author and the context which surrounds
the writing of those words.
The historical dependence of a fictional character
also plays another role, namely it "signals it [a
fictional character] as an artifact, an object created by
the purposeful activity of humans (or other intelligent
18
beings)" (35). Since, the creating of a fictional
character is an intentional act, then fictional characters
should be incorporated into a view about other
intentionally created objects.^
Second, fictional characters generically constantly
depend on some literary work about it.
The fictional
character is only generically dependent because it only
depends on some copy, and not any particular copy, of a
literary work to exist.
It is constantly dependent
because the fictional character only exists insofar as
some literary work about it exists.
In turn, literary
works, are also rigidly historically dependent on the
creative acts of their authors.
They depend on the
specific acts of a particular author or authors to come
into existence.
Additionally, literary works are
"generically constantly dependent on there being something
with the relevant characteristics to count as a copy or
memory of it" and their being a competent readership (36).
That is, literary works do no depend on any particular
copy of the work, nor on any particular reader, they
simply depend upon there being some copy or memory and
some reader.
Thus, the immediate dependencies of
fictional characters are on literary works and authors,
^I will address the problems surrounding
intentionality in a later chapter.
19
and the dependencies on authors, copies or
memories, and a competent readership in turn
exhaust the immediate dependencies of literary
works. Naturally that may not be the end of the
line regarding the ultimate dependencies of
fictional characters if, as seems plausible,
competent audiences and copies of a literary
work in their turn depend on other sorts of
entities. (36)
While the immediate dependencies of fictional characters
on authors and literary works, and literary works on
copies and competent readers of those works, are
exhaustive, it seems that the existence of an audience and
copies of the work have dependencies themselves.
Thomasson also points out that though fictional
characters, according to her view, are considered to be
artifacts, we should not mistakenly consider them to be
concrete artifacts, "for despite their dependencies on
ordinary entities like copies of texts and authors,
fictional characters lack a spatiotemporal location and
thus are abstract in that sense" (36). It would be a
mistake then to look for Nancy Drew in River Heights, and
perhaps to look for River Heights at all.
Empirically
investigating her existence in that city, if there were
such a city, would be to commit a category mistake, in
that we would be looking for a spatiotemporal entity and
not a fictional character (36).
If perhaps we feel compelled, in some sense, to
locate a fictional character, that is to place it
somewhere, "the only other obvious candidate for the
20
spatiotemporal location of a fictional character is to say
that it is 'in' the literary work and so is wherever the
work is" (36). The most obvious problem with this attempt
is the location of a
literary work.
Since a copy of the
literary work is not identical with the literary work
itself, then we should not say that the literary work is
located wherever a copy is.
Furthermore, since a literary
work is only generically dependent on some copy of the
work, again not identical with any particular copy, the
work may survive the destruction of one such particular
copy (if there exist other copies of the work) (36-37).
Finally, a fictional character cannot "be classified as a
scattered object present where all of its copies are,
because the work itself does not undergo any change in
size, weight, or location if some of its copies are
destroyed or moved" (37). It would be strange, to say the
least, to claim that Sherlock Holmes moved every time a
publishing warehouse shipped copies of the works in which
he appears to other locations for distribution.
If we did
make such claims, we would be mistaking rigid dependence
for generic dependence, associating the literary work with
each particular copy of it.
Since literary works
only
generically constantly depend on copies, Thomasson points
out that we have "no reason to associate them with the
spatiotemporal location of any of their supporting
entities" (37).
21
Consequently, if we cannot locate fictional
characters in the places they are said to be in stories or
where copies of the works are, then
it seems best to treat fictional characters
simply as entities that lack a spatiotemporal
location. Indeed this is just what we do in
practice: Sophisticated readers treat fictional
characters as lacking any spatiotemporal
location, and thus as abstract in that sense.
Thus fictional characters may, in brief, be
characterized as a certain kind of abstract
artifact. (37)
Fictional characters have fictional locations but no
spatiotemporal locations.
Even though some authors may
write about such real locations in their fictions, as
Doyle did with London in the Holmes stories, it would be a
mistake to look for a particular character in that real
place (e.g., looking for Holmes in London).
Thus, the
London in the Holmes stories should be treated as being
abstract, in the sense that it lacks a spatiotemporal
location, just as Sherlock Holmes lacks such a location.
Returning to the claim that fictional characters are
rigidly historically dependent on the creative acts of
authors, furthermore, gives us some clues as to how to
handle modal questions.
Since Thomasson rules out
fictional characters as being necessary entities (since
they depend on contingent entities like authors, audiences
and copies of literary works and can change and cease to
exist), it does not seem that they need to occupy any or
22
all possible worlds, even given the claim'that fictional
characters are abstracta of sorts."^
Accordingly, since fictional characters are rigidly
historically dependent on their supporting entities, "each
of our familiar (actual) fictional characters is a member
of the actual world and of those other possible worlds
that also contain all of its requisite supporting
entities" (38) . Thus, in a world or worlds without Jane
Smiley, there would be no Chairman X or Cecelia Sanchez,
in worlds without Tom Robbins, there would be no Plucky
Purcell, Princess Leigh-Cheri or Madame Devalier.
As
Thomasson says, "only if we allow that some of their
actual supporting entities appear in other worlds can we
allow that actual fictional characters do so as well"
(38) .
The rigid dependence of fictional characters on the
creative acts of authors, then, sets out some conditions
for the appearance of a fictional character in a possible
world.
Only in those worlds where the author exists and
where his or her creative acts have taken place or are
taking place, can we say that a particular fictional
character exist.
A world where Arthur Conan Doyle's
medical practice kept him quite busy such that he had no
"^Thomasson notes that in traditional modal
metaphysics, when abstracta are included, it is generally
argued that they exist in all possible worlds.
23
time to create the Holmes stories, is a world without
Sherlock Holmes.
Adding to these conditions, a fictional
character's constant dependence on literary works ensures
that in a world with a particular fictional character
there will also be some literary work about it (39). In a
world with the character Gregor Samsa, there also exists
some work about him.
In that world, the literary work may
be Kafka'a Metamorphosis,
as it is in the possible world;
or the literary work may be one in which Kafka wrote a
different story (which would not be in the actual world).
Thomasson points out that "assuming that an author's
creative acts and a literary work about the character also
jointly sufficient for the fictional character, the
character is present in all
and only
those worlds
containing all of its requisite supporting entities" (39).
If the world contains no intelligent beings who are also
competent readers of fiction, then any such copies of
literary works are just copies of ink on so many pages.
Neither literary works nor fictional characters can be
said to exist in that world.
Thomasson also argues that the artifactual theory
allows for the speculative nature of some of our fictional
discourse.
Critics and readers can appreciate the boredom
of Doyle's medical practice which allowed him to write the
Holmes stories.
If conditions were otherwise, the stories
may have never been written at all, or Holmes could have
24
appeared as a plumber from Jersey, a fictional plumber
from Jersey.
In a world where Franz Kafka was a staunch
defender of government and capitalism, then it is possible
that he wrote about a Gregor Samsa who was a successful
business executive (a possible fictional character).
25
CHAPTER IV
FICTIONAL CHARACTERS AND NAMING
Having set out more clearly the dependencies of
fictional characters, I shall now attempt to explicate
some of the problems of reference and naming.
As
Thomasson does, I will now turn to Saul Kripke's theory of
naming in Naming
and
Necessity.
According to Kripke, proper names, names that name
actual persons or places, are rigid designators.
A name
is a rigid designator
if in every possible world it designates the
same object, a nonrigid
or accidental
designator
if that is not the case. Of course we don't
require that the objects exist in all possible
worlds. . . . When we think of a property as
essential to an object we usually mean that it
is true of that object in an case where it would
have existed. A rigid designator of a necessary
existent can be called strongly
rigid.
(Kripke
48)
Kripke argues that there are accidental properties and
essential properties.
How a property is
described
determines the meaningfulness of that property (Kripke 42,
footnote).
What Kripke "means" by described
involves "the
distinction between using a description to give a meaning
and using it to fix a reference" (5). What Bertrand
Russell uses as a definite description for an actual
person, Kripke uses to "fix the reference" for the rigid
designator.
In this, it is not that Russell was wrong
26
about the descriptions, they were just being used in the
wrong way with respect to actual persons.
What becomes essential
then to that person are those
properties contained within the description that could not
have been otherwise.
As Kripke argues, "if we can't
imagine a possible world in which Nixon doesn't have a
certain property, then it's a necessary condition of
someone being Nixon.
Or a necessary property of Nixon
that he [has] that property" (46). It does not seem
necessary then for Nixon to be Nixon for him to have been
President of the United States.
It may not be necessary,
Kripke also concludes, for Nixon to have been called
"Nixon" (48) .
The name Nixon,
then, rigidly designates the one,
unique object that is Nixon.
The name Nixon does not
necessarily refer to the 37th President of the U.S.,
though it happens that is the office that Nixon held.
But, Nixon holding that office is a contingent property
(if "holding a particular office" can properly be called a
property), therefore, not what is necessary for the rigid
designator to pick out the Nixon-object.
In fact, if we
want to use "the 37th President of the U.S." as a name,
though it will pick out Nixon, thus it "designates a
certain man, Nixon," it is not that the '37th President'
name is a rigid designator.
It is not rigid, but
27
accidental, because someone else might have won the
election, becoming the 37th president instead of Nixon.
Do we now need some theory about identity, or at
least some sort of criteria, that will tell us
specifically which properties are necessary and which are
contingent in a particular possible world?
If Nixon, in a
possible world, had not gone into politics (therefore, not
becoming the 37th President, not having to resign due to
Watergate, etc.), how are we to pick out which object in
that world would be Nixon?
How are we to know if Nixon
exists at all in this possible world?
Granting what
Kripke says about rigid designators, first, we know that
the name Nixon must pick out the same object in the
possible world that it picks out in the actual world.
But, if we cannot use the 37th President-property as a
guide in a possible world where Nixon was not involved in
politics, nor the color of his suit on some particular
day, what shall we use?
What would count as necessary and
sufficient conditions for identifying Nixon, or another
object that we had rigidly designated?
Suppose that we treat possible world theory as simply
describing another place (in a loose sense of existence,
as an existing
place), or, as Kripke supposes this type of
analysis would go, as "a distant country," then we are
taking the wrong approach to the theory.
A possible world
is not another country, or even another world; a possible
28
"A possible world is given
world is a theoretical tool:
by the descriptive
conditions we associate with it"
Possible worlds, then, are stipulated
not discoverable
facts
(44) .
states of affairs,
(44). By stipulating certain
things about the possible world, for instance I stipulate
that "Nixon became a gardener, not President," I am,
first, stipulating the existence
of Nixon in the possible
world and, second, I am stipulating some criteria by which
Nixon may be picked out in that possible world.
In a
sense, I am setting up some identifying criteria by which
to pick out Nixon.
I am still talking about Nixon.
As
Kripke says:
I have the table in my hands, I can point to it,
and when I ask whether it might have been in
another room, I am talking, by definition, about
it. I don't have to identify it after seeing it
through a telescope. If I am talking about it,
I am talking about i t . . . . Some properties of
an object may be essential to it, in that it
could not have failed to have them. But these
properties are not used to identify the object
in another possible world, for such an
identification is not needed. (53)
As was said earlier, possible worlds are stipulated.
If we talk about what would happen in another possible
world to Nixon, we are still talking about
Nixon.
Moreover, it is the way in which we talk about Nixon that
gives us the necessary help in determining whether we need
to check facts about the actual world to verify some claim
or if we need simply to look for the stipulated states of
29
affairs to verify the claim.
For instance, if I say,
"Suppose Nixon had not resigned, he probably would have
been impeached" then you can tell that you do not have an
actual world to go exploring through to find out if the
statement is true or not.
You simply need to look at the
state of affairs stipulated by the possible world and go
from there.
Thomasson notes that given that fictional characters
have no spatiotemporal location, "it seems they must also
be causally inert, making it inconceivable how causal or
historical circumstance could play any role in the
reference of fictional names" (Thomasson 43).
Thus if we
cannot refer to fictional characters in the Kripkean
sense, abandoning fictional characters to a descriptive
theory of naming, then Thomasson says it may also be
futile to postulate them.
If we may only refer to
fictional characters via descriptions, then it seems
unnecessary to allow that they are anything but those
descriptions.
On the other hand, even though fictional characters
lack spatiotemporal location, it is not that they exist
completely severed from the spatiotemporal world:
But if fictional characters are conceived as
historical entities closely connected to the
spatiotemporal entities on which they depend,
entities as ordinary as copies of texts, then a
role can be provided for causal or historical
circumstance in the reference of fictional
30
names. Although the name cannot be directly
causally related to its referent if the referent
is a fictional character, it can be causally
related to a foundation
of the referent (namely
the text), to which in turn the referent is
connected by the relation of ontological
dependence, enabling one to refer to these
abstracta via their spatiotemporal foundations.
(44)
By maintaining the historical dependence relations of
fictional characters on acts of authors and literary works
and the constant dependence of literary works on copies,
Thomasson has provided for a foundation through which the
character may be referenced. Though the fictional
character may lack spatiotemporal location, copies of
literary works and authors (not to mention readers) do not
lack such location.
If reference to fictional characters can work, as
Thomasson outlines above, in order to understand how this
attachment would work, it seems necessary first to
consider how those names initially get attached.
By
returning to Kripke, we can get some sense in how
spatiotemporal objects get their names and consequently
may have a clearer picture of how names can be attached to
fictional characters.
Kripke argues that names are attached to concrete
objects through a baptism process:
"Here the object may
be named by ostension, or the reference of the name may be
fixed by a description" (Kripke 96). Taking into account
the social nature of language, baptisms also seem to have
31
a public component.
To count as a baptism, the name must
be somehow fixed publicly, or fixed in such a way that
others have access to the name at a later time.
name their children.
later in life.
Parents
Some persons are assigned a nickname
We sometimes teach children the names of
things ostensively, by pointing at objects (e.g. "that
thing over there is a camera").
Unlike Russell's theory,
the given name is not a synonym for the description, but
fixes
the
reference
for the description.
The description
does not mean the same as the name, but picks out to whom
or to what the name applies.
Since fictional characters lack any spatiotemporal
location, naming characters in this way seems impossible.
There is nothing at which I can point or George Orwell can
point and say "This is called Winston Smith."
Thomasson
says that this point, "however, shows not that there is no
baptism process for fictional characters, but only that it
must be conceived of differently than that for
spatiotemporal objects" (Thomasson 47).
A fictional
character is dependent on its textual foundation and it is
this foundation which
serves as the means whereby a quasi-indexical
reference to the character can be made by means
of which that very fictional object can be
baptized by author or readers. Something
counting as a baptismal ceremony can be
performed by means of writing the words of the
text or it can be merely recorded in the text,
or (if the character is named later, for example
32
by readers), it can remain unrecorded in the
text. (47)
Thus the naming ceremony generally is a part of the
writing of the text.
When Kafka wrote the words, "As
Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found
himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect,"
Thomasson argues that it was as if he were proclaiming
"the character founded on these very words is to be called
['Gregor Samsa']" (48). Using the name in the text serves
as the "official and public record" of the naming ceremony
(48).
Thomasson notes that during the writing of the
text, or during the revision stages, an intratextual
naming ceremony can occur.
to a character.
A name may be changed or given
At any rate, the recording of a naming
ceremony seems to satisfy the requirement that such
ceremonies be public (48).
Once the name is attached to a character via its
being founded on the words of a text, it seems that the
name may be passed along chains of communication like
other names.
Just as we learn names through communicating
with other individuals, including learning the names of
those individuals, we can learn the names of fictional
characters through talking to other persons.
Even if I
had never read a Sherlock Holmes story, I could still have
learned the name and something about the character by
listening to other persons who perhaps had read the
stories or who had listened to yet other persons who had
33
read them.
Given that I have read some of the Sherlock
Holmes stories, then it seems that I have learned the name
directly from those works.
Additionally, Thomasson points
out, chains of communication can be maintained through
chains of publication which also lead back to the creating
of the character and the baptism process (49-50).
Within a community where fictional works are written
and discussed, a distinction can be made between two kinds
of users of fictional names.
Those who are competent
readers of a text, who have learned the name of a
character by reading the text, are producers
practice.^
in the naming
Parasitic, in some sense, upon the naming
practice, are consumers,
who learn names from producers
and other consumers.
Now, even in conversation about spatiotemporal
objects, shifts of reference can occur.
Links in the
chain of communication can only hold, it seems, in the
event that the speaker intend
to use the name in the same
way that the name was originally acquired.
Kripke notes,
the phenomenon is perhaps roughly explicable in
terms of the predominantly social character of
the use of proper names. . . . We use names to
communicate with other speakers in a common
language. This character dictates ordinarily
^I take it that Thomasson would also consider the
author of a particular text to also be a producer because
it seems obvious that in order to write the text, the
author would have necessarily have had to read the text in
the process of writing.
34
that a speaker intend
to use a name the same way
as it was transmitted to him. (Kripke 163,
emphasis added)
Accordingly, with the use of speaker's intent, we now
have a way to account for mistakes in reference.
Gareth
Evans has pointed out that Madagascar originally was the
name for a part of Africa.
Currently, the name is applied
to an island off the coast of Africa.
In essence, Kripke
seems to believe that when Marco Polo mistakenly used the
name as the name of the island, he initiated a new chain
of reference.
Given present usage, the social character
of language "dictates that the present intention to refer
to an island overrides the distant link to native usage"
(Kripke 163) . When the name Madagascar
is used now it is
not necessary that the speaker combine the name with an
explicit reference to the island.
That the speaker is
referring to the island should be understood by competent
users of the language.
It is only when a speaker is using
the name in some new manner, or old manner if the speaker
is referring to the original use of the name, that the
name must be explicitly linked to whatever she is
referencing.
In a similar fashion, reference shifts may occur with
regards to fictional names.
Thomasson notes that the name
"Frankenstein" is now commonly used by American children
(and some adults) to refer to a monster and not to the
35
scientist who created the monster.^
To guard against such
shifts, Thomasson suggests that it is probably best to
keep
the name usage chain closely tied to the chain
of publication. . . : Shifts from a fictional
to an imaginary character are most likely to
occur if the name usage practice is distanced
from the practices of actual producers who have
read the relevant book and instead are left in
the hands of consumers, who are far more likely
to spread false information along the naming
chain. (51)
For the most part, it seems that usage chains are closely
tied to publications.
Though children and a few adults
may use the name "Frankenstein" to refer to the monster
(or perhaps to an imaginary monster), competent readers
exist who use the name as it is used in the text (to refer
to the scientist).
^It could be argued that this shift of reference is
not from one fictional entity to another fictional entity,
but from a fictional entity to an imaginary monster.
Given that the portrayal of the monster by children (and
sometimes to children in Halloween costumes and the like)
is of a "stupid green monster with a bolt through its
neck" (not at all resembling the monster in the Mary
Shelley's novel), I really have no objection to
characterizing the shift in such a manner.
36
CHAPTER V
INTENTIONAL OBJECT THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY
What remains to be examined seems to be the idea that
writers are genuinely creating when they write stories.
It seems rather fanciful to suppose that words could have
such an effect.
As Thomasson has noted, however,
fictional characters are not alone in being created
through the use of words.
In this chapter, I will examine
both a content theory of intentionality and Thomasson's
intentional object theory of intentionality in hopes of
putting these fanciful criticisms to rest.
It seems, initially, that the stories authors write
are about
something.
Their works exhibit at least some
form of intentionality.
In addition, when we read their
stories, we are not simply reading some set of words put
together in some particular order.
To the contrary, we
seem to be reading about Alice's adventures in a place
called Wonderland or about Doctor Paul Proteus' life in
one possible future or about Brother William of
Baskerville's trials as a detective seeking to uncover the
mysteries of an Italian abbey.^°
^^Respectively, Alice's
Lewis Carroll, Player
Name of
the
Rose
Adventures
in
Wonderland
by
Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and The
by Umberto Eco.
37
How can this be?
How can it be that these stories
are about these characters' lives, if it is that these
characters do not have a spatiotemporal location?
One
possible explanation, offered by content theorists, is
that even though there are no spatiotemporal persons Paul
Proteus or Brother William, sentences about these
characters have content or sense but lack object or
referent.
Content theorists allow that sentences about
fictional characters have content, even without there
being some object of reference.
According to a Fregian
analysis, a sentence like "Ten years after the war--after
the men and women had come home, after the riots had been
put down, after thousands had been jailed under the
antisabotage laws—Doctor Paul Proteus was petting a cat
in his office"-'--'obviously has a sense. But since it is doubtful
whether the name [ 'Paul Proteus' ], occurring
therein, has a Bedeutung,
it is also doubtful
whether the whole sentence does. Yet it is
certain, nevertheless, that anyone who seriously
took the sentence to be true or false would
ascribe to the name ['Paul Proteus'] a
Bedeutung,
not merely a sense; for it is of the
Bedeutung of the name that the predicate is
affirmed or denied.^^
The sentence has a sense, according to Frege, but it has
1 o
either no meaning or no reference [Bedeutung)
i^Vonnegut, Player
i^Beaney, The Frege
Piano,
Reader,
.
9.
157.
i^see Beaney, pages 36-46, for a detailed explanation
38
Notably, content theorists do not reduce the content
of the conscious act of perceiving or thinking, nor do
they reduce either of these to the object itself.
In
effect, however, by some theorists taking it that, in
order for intentionality to have an object, that object
must be a spatiotemporal object, they may be limiting
meaningful discussion about aboutness.
I do not mean to
imply here that prepositional attitudes about, say, this
car or that atom or this cat are not interesting cases to
discuss.
What does it mean to say that my attitude is
about that thing? seems to be at least one question
deserving of an answer.
Quine notes that "if we are limning the true and
ultimate structure of reality, the canonical scheme for us
is the austere scheme that knows no quotation but direct
quotation and no prepositional attitudes but only the
physical constitution and behavior of organisms. "^"^ That
is, if we take such a physicalist route, the mental,
including intentionality, will be either ultimately
reduced to the physical or eliminated all-together.
We
may be able to keep properties like spin, charm and
about the translation of Bedeutung.
For my particular
purposes, I understand Bedeutung,
in this quotation, to be
about the referent of the name. Since Frege would argue
that there was no Bedeutung called 'Paul Proteus' the
sentence lacks reference, perhaps meaning, though it does
have sense.
I'^Quine, Word and Object,
221.
39
charge, but aboutness
probably will not survive the
physicist ax; "intentionality simply doesn't go that
deep."^^
Suppose we take it, however, that part of what is
real, part of what constitutes reality, is mental.
If
mental events are events, if intentionality can be
considered as a part of what really goes on in the world,
then it seems that an ontology that admits their existence
offers us a better picture, in fact a truer picture of the
world.
In such a case, our ontology would be able to
account for features of our experience which are not
strictly physical, nor adequately reducible to the
physical. -'-^
Accordingly, instead of supposing that objects are
not necessary for an intentional relation, Thomasson takes
it as necessary that the three basic parts (conscious act,
object and content) of intentional relations obtain.
Thomasson calls this the intentional
intentionality.
object
theory
of
The theory is
l^Fodor, Psychosemantics:
The Problem of Meaning in
the Philosophy
of Mind, 97.
i^Other than my claim that broadening our ontological
outlook beyond the merely physical offers us a truer
account of reality, I have no argument for why we should
do this. I take it that as a consequence of this more
robust view, we can give a better account of fictional
characters because existence becomes something other than
mere spatiotemporal existence.
40
based in the idea that all intentional acts have
both a content and an object, which in no case
may be identified with each other. So unlike
pure content theories, the intentional object
theory maintains that there is always an object
of the intentional act. (Thomasson 88)
These objects can either be spatiotemporally located
objects, such as cars or buses or staplers, or they can be
fictional characters, imaginary objects, hallucinatory
objects.
Thus, it is no longer the case that
prepositional attitudes fail to have an object if there is
no spatiotemporal object.
simply not about any thing,
These intentional acts are
conceived of as a
spatiotemporal thing.
A fictional character presents us with an example
where "the object of the intentional act need not exist
independently of intentional acts being directed towards
it; indeed it may even be created in the act itself" (88).
If there were no preexistent entity "Sherlock Holmes"
before Arthur Conan Doyle thought about him, "a
mind-dependent intentional [Sherlock Holmes was] generated
by that act" (88). The character was created by the
intentional act itself.-^"^
Thomasson says that the basic structure of the
intentional relation "is a nonsymmetric mediated relation
^"^Thomasson notes, following Roman Ingarden, that
fictional characters are a subclass of purely intentional
objects, which "are quite literally figments or
fabrications of the mind" (89).
41
between a conscious act and the object of which it is
conscious.
A relation K. is nonsymmetric if aRb neither
entails that bRa holds nor that it does not hold" (89).
If I think about my friend Jason, that relation neither
entails that Jason thinks about me nor entails that he
does not.
For the relation to be mediated, two or more
terms are related in virtue of another entity in such a
way that if the relational entity changes, so does the
identity of the relation (89). If Carol is my
mother-in-law, then there must be some person, say Jason,
to whom I am married, who is Carol's son.
If Jason is not
my husband, then that relation between Carol and me, her
being my mother-in-law, would not exist.
If we conceive of intentionality as this mediated
relationship, Thomasson argues that we can explain
the phenomenon that the objects of our
intentional acts 'need not exist' in part by
rewriting this claim. The objects of our
intentional acts need not be physical,
spatiotemporal, or ideal entities, and they need
not exist independently of intentional acts.
This is because one term (the object term) may
depend in a variety of ways on the other term
(the intentional act) and may even (in cases of
creative acts of fictionalizing or
hallucinating) be brought into existence by that
very intentional act. (90)
In this sense, then, intentionality can be a creative
relation, in that one term, an object, can be brought into
existence by the other term, an intentional act. And,
though this relation applies readily to hallucinations and
42
the creating of fictional entities, the relation seems to
apply to ordinary speech acts.
Thus, the pronouncement,
"I hereby proclaim you as husband and wife," brings into
existence a married couple.
So, Thomasson concludes, it
is not that "the object of an intentional act need not
exist, but only that it need not exist independent of
human intentionality" (90).^^
Combining this intentional object theory of
intentionality with the dependence relations of fictional
characters allows for some explanations about our
practices regarding fictional characters. My thoughts
about the detective who lives at 221B Baker Street in
London and about the friend of Watson have in common the
fictional character Sherlock Holmes, which is their common
object.
Additionally, if some other author had written
(coincidentally) about a detective by the name of Sherlock
Holmes, I can differentiate the content of my thought
<Holmes the detective> according to the context out of
which the thought arises.
When reading, thinking, or
talking about Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, "the object of my
act is the [Holmes of Doyle] because the copy of the text
^^Intentional acts may also serve to pick out the
object of an intentional relation. In this case, the
object, say my car, of my thought is simply picked out by
that intentional act.
43
that is causally related to my act is also causally
derived in an appropriately preserved chain of publication
derived from [Doyle's] original text" (91). Since the
chain of reference is preserved through the publication of
copies of the text, the text which is causally related to
my intentional act (my thought about the character) seems
to act as a mediating relation between my thought and the
fictional character.
Furthermore, it cannot be considered to be
coincidental that my thought is like the character
portrayed in the text when I am situated in front of the
text.
As Thomasson says,
the content of my thought in this situation may
contain an implicit indexical element such as
<this character that I am reading about right
now. . .> and hence have a content that cannot
be satisfied by any Lear-like imagining but only
by the fictional character King Lear himself,
founded on this very literary work of which I
have a copy before me. (91)
Consequently, since for any intentional act, there is an
object, we now have a basis for comparing fiction-based
intentional acts.
By holding that there is an object, we
can tell what Nancy Drew-type acts have in common.
These
acts are about the same character.
So, when Doyle conceived of Sherlock Holmes, he was
actually bringing a fictional person into existence.
It
is not the case that we have to posit a realm of Platonic
44
fictional beings waiting to be instantiated into soiTLe
text, nor is it that we have to grant that Sherlock Holmes
is spatiotemporally located, nor is it that Holmes is some
unactualized possibilia.
Based upon intentionality.
Holmes, Nancy Drew, Gregor Samsa and the like were simply
brought into existence by their respective authors
intentional acts.
They are brought into existence by
authors literally creating them.
Additionally, an intentional object theory seems to
avoid what is problematic about pretense theory, ascribing
a particular intent to authors.
It is the intentional
acts of authors that are taken to be the creating force.
It is not the particular intent to pretend to be the
narrator or some other character that makes fictions. It
is conceiving of characters (and literary works) that
makes fictions.
Most importantly, though, intentional object theory
provides us the crucial link needed to sustain reference
to fictional characters.
Perhaps the most important
objection to positing that there can be reference to
fictional characters is the view that in order for there
to be reference, some object must be referred to.
If we
concede that there is no object, it seems that there can
be no reference.
It could be that something like
reference is taking place, say, when we talk about or
refer to Nancy Drew; but, the lack of an object prohibits
45
that something
like
reference
from being reference.
The
intentional object theory handles such objections by
positing that objects can be created by intentional acts
46
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beaney, Michael (ed.). The Frege
Blackwell Publishing, 1997.
Reader.
Oxford:
Fodor, Jerry A. Psychosemantics:
in the Philosophy
of Mind.
The MIT Press, 1993.
The Problem of
Meaning
Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Kafka, Franz. The Basic Kafka.
Square Press, 1958.
New York:
Washington
Kripke, Saul. Naming and Necessity.
Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1980.
Quine, Willard Van Orman. Word and Object.
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1960.
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