Thomasson’s ontology

In Chapter 1, I spent some time on the creationist ontologies of Kripke, Van Inwagen, and Searle, with the promise that I would devote considerable discussion to Amie Thomasson’s ontology in this chapter. Though I do not endorse the whole of Thomasson’s view on fiction, I think her argument that takes us from accepting fictional works to accepting fictional objects is correct, and that her ontological categories are the best way to understand the nature of abstract artifacts.

She begins her inquiry into fictional objects by considering actual practices, conforming to the pragmatic constraint and avoiding the error of trying to fit fictional objects into a “ready-made ontology.”268 _{She takes stock of important ways that fictional objects seem to} be, with the intent that preservation of these features be a priority of theorizing about them. Some such important features include that they are literally created and that, after creation, they continue to exist only if certain other things exist, namely works and audiences

capable of understanding the works.269 _{Turning the focus to creatability and dependence on} other entities is no accident, as this sets the foundation for her system of ontological

267 _{Ibid., 100.}

268 _{Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics, 5.} 269 _{Ibid., 12.}

categorization based on structures of dependencies. These are systems of special, existential relations that individuals have to other individuals.270 Simply put, A is

existentially dependent on B if necessarily, if A exists then B exists. Fictional objects are existentially dependent entities, and the structure of their dependencies both determines their ontological category and is essential to their nature.

Though there are many types of dependency in Thomasson’s theory, two distinctions are required to understand the dependencies of fictional objects: constant versus historical dependency and rigid versus generic dependency. If A is constantly dependent on B, then A will cease to exist when B ceases to exist. This is the kind of dependence that one has on their own brain. If A is historically dependent on B, then A requires B to have come into existence but can continue to exist after B no longer does. This is the kind of dependence we all have on our parents. If A is rigidly dependent on B, then A is dependent on B in

particular – no other object can play B’s role in A’s dependency structure. We are all

rigidly constantly dependent on our brains, as some other brain existing does not mean we will exist. We are also rigidly historically dependent on our parents, as it is those exact individuals, rather than any individuals like them, that were required to create us. If A is generically dependent on B, then some other object relevantly like B could play the same role for A’s existence. Thomasson uses catalysts as an example of this. While a particular sample of alcohol is rigidly historically dependent on the particular sample of sugar it’s made from, it is generically historically dependent on the yeast that was used as a catalyst. Any sample of yeast would have resulted in that particular sample of alcohol; hence its existence on the sugar sample is rigid while its dependence on the yeast is generic. With these distinctions in mind, we can get an idea of what ontological category ficta belong to, using our intuitions about them as a guide. According to Thomasson, ficta are rigidly historically dependent on the particular creative acts of their makers. That is, they depend on their particular creators to come into being but can continue to exist once the creative acts are over and once the creator no longer exists. This is because it is part of our 270 _{I’m following Thomasson here in my use of ‘individuals,’ intended to “refer to individual objects, tropes,} events, processes, and states of affairs,” as these are all things for which dependency relations can hold. Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics, 27.

practice to acknowledge fictional objects as literally created and created essentially by their actual creator. While this may seem like a strong modal condition, it is supported by our intuition that two authors who coincidentally write identical stories with identical characters, they will neither produce the same work nor the same fictional objects. As objects “created by the purposeful acts of humans,” this dependency makes them artifacts.271

They are also generically constantly dependent on fictional works. They are only

generically dependent because multiple works can involve the same fictum, the survival of any of which is sufficient for its own survival. Yet they are constantly dependent on some work because a fictum exists only as long as at least one work about it exists. If we again take Paul Atreides as our example and suppose that, for whatever terrible reason, all works of fictional literature are lost, Paul Atreides will still exist as long as, say, Lynch’s 1984 film version of Dune exists. If another great disaster erases all works of film from existence, only then will Paul Atreides cease to exist. Given our arguments from last chapter, this means ficta are dependent on a kind of abstract artifact as well as on particular human acts.

We cannot conclude from the dependency relation alone that, because the work is an abstract artifact, the fictum is as well. However, the only conceivable, actual ‘place’ where a fictum might exist is in the work. Even if this was not merely metaphorical, the work itself has no spatio-temporal location, so this does not provide us with concreteness. So, the argument for ficta being abstract piggy-backs on previous arguments for works being abstract, not because of their dependence relation but because they were created by the same acts and because ficta simply cannot be spatio-temporally located. There are also positions available for what kind of artifacts fictional objects might be. For example, I made a tentative suggestion in the previous chapter that fictional works may be something

like Levinson’s indicated types. Happily, a similar position exists for fictional characters, argued for by Peter Lamarque in Work and Object.272

Thomasson notes that accepting abstract artifacts is a break with some long-held

philosophical traditions in which only material objects or, at the most, material objects and necessary abstract objects (such as mathematical objects) are allowed.273 _{However, as we} are following in the footsteps of those such as Levinson and Kripke who find contingent abstracta unproblematic, I shall not devote space to a defense of abstract artifacts generally here.

Being abstract artifacts is not the only thing ficta have in common with fictional works according to Thomasson. Fictional works have a dependence structure of their own. They are rigidly historically dependent on the creative acts of their makers, generically

constantly dependent on some copy or memory of them, and generically constantly dependent on a competent audience. Dependence is transitive, so ficta are also generically constantly dependent on a copy or memory of some work that features them and on an audience to comprehend that work.274 Because they have the same kind of dependencies, they occupy the same place in her ontological categorization system, illustrated by the charts below.

272 _{Lamarque, Work and Object, 188-207.} 273 _{Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics, 37.}

274 _{For arguments establishing the transitivity of dependence, see Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics, 33-} 34.

Figure 2 Thomasson's ontological categories by dependence. 275

In this figure, the acronyms refer to types of dependence – ‘RHD’ is ‘rigid historical dependence,’ ‘GCD’ is ‘generic constant dependence,’ and so on. Every entity will fit into one and only one of the boxes on each of these charts, and the ‘box’ it occupies is its ontological category. According to Thomasson, categorizing entities according to their existential dependencies is truly systematic, rather than simply abstracting from particular things arbitrarily according to certain properties. So, rather than saying simply that one might as well accept ficta if one accepts fictional works because they are both abstract artifacts, Thomasson makes a stronger claim: that positing ficta is no addition at all to the ontology, because ficta and fictional works are the same category of thing. Both ficta and fictional works occupy the second box down in the left-hand column of both the ‘Real Entities’ and ‘Mental Entities’ charts. They are ontologically equivalent. Thus, to deny ficta while accepting fictional works is truly false parsimony.

5.3 Ficta

Considering our view of fictional works and practices, we get a synthesis of creationist views. The general picture articulated by Kripke remains – that there is some sense in which fictional objects exist, and that this ontology of fictional objects consists of abstract

artifacts that would never had existed if fictional practices had not existed.276 As Van Inwagen argues, it is the practice that has the power to create abstract entities like characters, plots, and so on, and that, following Searle, the rules that govern the practice are essential for this creation. Finally, Thomasson’s ontological analysis gives us a deeper understanding of the nature of these entities and a system of categorization that demystifies them and guarantees their existence if we grant the existence of such everyday things as fictional works.

These ficta fit neatly into the analysis given in previous chapters; in fact, it would be very odd to have gotten to this point only to argue that there is no such thing as fictional objects. We retain one of the essences of fictional practice: that it is literally creative as well as imaginative. Perhaps most importantly, we get the expected truth values for extrafictional sentences without endless ad hoc paraphrases. Paul Atreides really was created on Earth by Frank Herbert. Sherlock Holmes really has acquired a cult following. As created objects, they are the kinds of thing that can be based on other things, that can symbolize something else, or that can be a plot device. We can do away with awkward category mistakes in addition to eliminating paraphrases because ficta are the referents for fictional terms in extrafictional claims only. In the next section, I will clarify how the union of possibilism and creationism works by way of solving the central paradox and showing how dualism gets the best of monist accounts without inheriting their biggest flaws.