The present paper explores the moral psychology of fiction conceptually through the paired concepts ‘fictional relief’ and ‘reality check’. I suggest that the spectator of fictional films and television series sees himself as relieved from some of the moral obligations the spectator of nonfiction films sees himself as subject to, such as considering the consequences of a character's actions and attitudes. A fictional attitude is disturbed when elements of nonfiction are inserted into the fiction, such as (...) the documentary photographs in Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003), or when the fiction otherwise reminds the spectator of the moral and political consequences of his engagement. I call this reality check, and explore how Dr Melfi often reminds the spectator of The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007) of the consequences of having a sympathetic attitude towards the main character and gangster Tony Soprano. The related notion fictional relief captures the relief from considering such consequences, and finally I discuss how Omar Little exemplifies fictional reliefs at work in a socially realistic setting in The Wire (HBO, 2002–08). (shrink)

Alongside the direct parallels and contrasts between traditional narrative fiction and games, there lie certain partial analogies that provide their own insights. This article begins by examining a direct parallel between narrative fiction and games—the role of fictional reliefs and reality checks in shaping aesthetic engagement—before arguing that from this a partial analogy can be developed stemming from a feature that distinguishes most games from most traditional fictions: the presence of rules. The relation between rules and fiction in games (...) has heretofore been acknowledged but not examined in detail, giving an impression of a tension that is constant. However, the paired concepts of formal reliefs and representation checks, once introduced, allow us to explain how rules and fiction interact to alter the ways in which players engage with games in a dynamic but limited way. (shrink)

Humor, as a source of fun, provides panacea from stress. There are writers whowrite humorous stories, but few use humor as a literary device. Alejandro Roces isone of the few, but no literary critical evaluation is made about his fiction because heis more popular as Filipino journalist. Thus, this study, entitled “Humor in AlejandroRoces’ Short Fiction”, aims to ignite aesthetic stimulation by critical analysis toassess its literary merits. His fiction, “We Filipinos Are Mild Drinkers,” “Of Cocksand Hens,” “Of Cocks and (...) Kings,” “Of Cocks and Battle Cocks,” and “Of Cocksand Super Cocks”, as qualitative research work, leans on formalistic and mimeticapproaches to Literature. Consequently, the key findings illustrate how humordevelops an uncommon conflict of an inveterate gambler-protagonist because insteadof feeling burdensome of his struggle, readers experience relief and release of tension.Moreover, some collective satirized peculiar Filipinism include English speechaffectations, gambler’s inveteracy, Hispanic cultural attitudes and traditionalism.Hence, Roces’ characterizations and themes inherently reveal humor that satirizespeculiar Filipinism. For deeper aesthetic stimulation, this study should be comparedand contrasted with the fiction of local and foreign humorists. Keywords: Literature and Communication, humor, inveteracy and satirized peculiarFilipinism, fiction, content analysis, Philippines. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading the Mind:From George Eliot's Fiction to James Sully's PsychologyVanessa L. RyanWhat is the function and value of fiction? Debates over these questions involve considerations that range from aesthetics to ethics, from the intrinsic values of the genre to its moral effects. Recently, largely under the influence of the cognitive sciences, the question has taken on a new cast: might science give us a new answer to these long-standing (...) issues? Studies such as Lisa Zunshine's Why We Read Fiction (2006), John Carey's What Good Are the Arts? (2005), and Alan Palmer's Fictional Minds (2004) are part of a growing area of interdisciplinary work on the relationship between art and consciousness.1 This body of work asks not just how our theories of consciousness inform our understanding of the process and function of [End Page 615] reading fiction, but also whether fiction itself might provide a key to new theories about the nature of consciousness.The nineteenth-century novel is often considered the high point in the literary representation of mind. Indeed, the terms "psychology" and "novel" are explicitly yoked in the nineteenth-century with the simultaneous emergence of both as discrete forms of intellectual and artistic activity. Not surprisingly, George Eliot has come to be identified with the term "psychological novel": in fact, Nicholas Dames argues that she was the first to couple the words psychology and novel in this way in an 1855 review where she contrasted Charles Kingsley's historical romance Westward Ho! with "those 'psychological' novels."2 While George Eliot initially used the phrase in what Dames calls "mock disdain," by the end of the nineteenth century the term "psychological novel" had gained currency as a straightforward description of a type of Victorian novel: Wilbur Cross, in his summary The Development of the English Novel, for example, describes the form as "stressing an inner sequence of thought and feeling, which is brought into harmony with an ethical formula and accounted for in an analysis of motive." Along with Elizabeth Gaskell and George Meredith, Cross also cites George Eliot as one of his central examples of the "psychological novel."3It seems natural, then, when a critic asks, "what is the special distinguishing function of the modern art of fiction?" to turn for an answer to George Eliot's novels and their close connections with psychological science. It is perhaps surprising that this still-current question was posed by the nineteenth-century psychologist James Sully (1842–1923) in an 1881 article in the journal Mind on "George Eliot's Art."4 His essay offers us a Victorian contribution to questions about the relationship of literature and psychology that are being addressed today by critics such as Sally Shuttle-worth, Athena Vrettos, Kay Young, Nicholas Dames, or Rick Rylance, especially [End Page 616] with respect to George Eliot. James Sully's essay not only provides valuable insight into how the Victorians themselves understood the role of psychology in the novel, but also helps to place contemporary debates about fiction and consciousness into sharper relief.In the wake of important studies, such as Rylance's Victorian Psychology and British Culture (2000), that have brought renewed attention to nineteenth-century British psychology, recent scholarship has shown the central role of Victorian debates about the mind in shaping the fiction of the period.5 Nineteenth-century mental science provided material and inspiration for works of literature, with imaginative writers eager to exploit and develop the narrative and thematic potential of contemporary psychological discourse and probe the problems it raised. Novelists such as Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and Henry James turned to some of the most current work in the science of the mind, which they saw as the most sophisticated and credible approach to psychological realism available. These and other novelists rapidly absorbed the central terms of the new science as it considered problems of consciousness, identity, and memory, and brought them to life by dramatizing and questioning them in their fiction. James Sully's interest in George Eliot reflects this fruitful mid- to late-nineteenth-century cross-pollination between philosophers, scientists, and novelists who were interested in the nature of consciousness, psychology... (shrink)

Centrée sur la trajectoire universitaire et philosophique de Jean-Pierre Cléro, cette série d'entretiens menée par Patrice Vibert (qui fut son étudiant) revient sur une vie essentiellement occupée par l'enseignement et la recherche entre les années 1970 et 2020. Dans ces pages, les auteurs mettent en relief, sur un certain nombre de notions, les méandres d'un parcours philosophique susceptibles d'éclairer les étudiants qui se destinent aujourd'hui à une recherche comparable, mais dans des circonstances très différentes. Si l'étude des passions, puis (...) le passage de celle-ci à la logique des fictions, constituent le fil conducteur de l'ensemble, le chemin qu'il suit à travers les probabilités, la psychanalyse, la perception, la théorie des jeux et l'éthique, médicale est plus labyrinthique qu'il n'y paraît. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that Ted Chiang’s short stories offer a realist philosophy of technology, one that charts a third course between the techno-pessimism and techno-optimism that characterize the history of philosophizing about technology and much of the speculative fiction about it. We begin by surveying the history of utopian and skeptical approaches to technology in philosophy and speculative fiction. We then move to discuss two of Chiang’s recent stories and use them to articulate the author’s techno-realism. Chiang’s view, (...) as it is developed in these stories, has three features: First, technology is not merely an agent of de-skilling, it can also promote self-knowledge and insight. Second, technology is not only an agent of alienation it can also provide succor and psychological relief. Finally, technology does not necessarily remake us into new beings with new capacities and needs. In many cases, it just gives us further avenues to be what we already were - to act on the tendencies and pursue the needs we always had. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse the meaning and the implications of the comparative interpretation of Sartre’s and Ryle’s theses on imagination that Ricœur undertook in the still unpublished text of his Lectures on Imagination. These lectures were delivered at the University of Chicago in 1975. First, the article shows how Ricœur brings out a strong convergence , both in the method and in the presuppositions , of the Sartrean and Rylean conceptions of imagination : the choice of (...) a descriptive method leads the two philosophers to a common critique of the mental image . Secondly, the article analyses the properly critical side of the Ricœurian interpretation by showing how it eventually brings to light the common theoretical limitation of Sartre’s and Ryle’s theses on imagination. According to Ricœur, those theses lead to a conception of image as picture and fail to consider the image as fiction , and so they remain locked in a theory of reproductive imagination and of the primacy of perception. Résumé Cet article se propose d’analyser le sens et les enjeux de la lecture croisée des thèses de Sartre et Ryle sur l’imagination à laquelle se livre Ricœur dans le texte encore inédit des Lectures on imagination professées en 1975 à l’Université de Chicago. Dans un premier temps, il montre comment Ricœur met en relief une convergence forte , de méthode et de présupposés entre les conceptions sartrienne et rylienne de l’imagination : le choix d’une méthode descriptive conduisant les deux philosophes à une commune critique de l’image mentale . Puis, dans un second temps, il analyse le versant proprement critique de la lecture ricœurienne en montrant comment elle en vient à dénoncer une commune limitation théorique des thèses de Sartre et Ryle sur l’imagination. Selon Ricœur, ces thèses débouchent sur une conception de l’image comme tableau qui échoue à penser l’image comme fiction et elles restent de ce fait enfermées dans une théorie de l ’ imagination reproductrice et du primat de la perception. (shrink)

In the theater the fictional Dr. Kelekian’s relief that he does not have to talk to family members about his patient’s cancer treatment draws uneasy laughter from the audience. Doctors, patients, and family members alike recognize the situation, even if hearing it so baldly expressed discomfits them.Why do physicians and other health care professionals, including lawyers and bioethicists, so often view families as “trouble”? And why do families so often see medical professionals as uncaring and uncommunicative? Presumably everyone (...) wants the same goal—recovery or the best possible outcome for the patient. And yet trouble clearly exists. We do not see the problem as one of “dysfunctional families” or “callous doctors,” although there are undoubtedly many of each. (shrink)

Using a fictional but representative general practice consultation, involving the diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome in a patient who is anxious for some relief from the discomfort his condition entails, this paper argues that when both a drug fails to out-perform placebo and the condition in question is a functional illness with no demonstrable underlying pathology, then the action of the drug is not only no better than placebo, and it is also no different from it either. The (...) paper also argues that, in the circumstances of the consultation described, it is striking that current governance deems it ethical for a practitioner to prescribe either a drug or a placebo, both of which appear to rely for their effectiveness on a measure of concealment on the part of the doctor, yet deems it unethical for a practitioner openly to prescribe a harmless and enjoyable substance which is likely to be no less effective than either drug or placebo and is also likely to be better-tolerated and cheaper than the drug. (shrink)

Modal realism -- Time, space, world -- Existence -- Actuality -- Modal realism and modal tense -- Transworld individuals and their identity -- Existensionalism -- Impossibility -- Proposition and relief -- Fictional worlds -- Epistemology.

Depuis 1960, Paul Ricœur est le principal représentant de la philosophie herméneutique en France. Cet ouvrage, qui forme le troisième volet d'un triptyque dédié aux différentes expressions que l'idée de phénoménologie herméneutique a reçues dans la philosophie du XXe siècle, se donne pour tâche d'analyser et d'évaluer la contribution de Ricœur à ce courant. Il se focalise d'abord sur la percée herméneutique de 1960, qui a pour arrière-plan une phénoménologie du volontaire de l'involontaire et une anthropologie de la faillibilité. La (...) seconde partie, placée sous l'égide du " Cogito narratif ", retrace la genèse d'une herméneutique de la conscience historique sous le fil conducteur d'une analyse des opérations de mise en intrigue narrative dans le récit de fiction et le récit historique. La troisième partie dégage les principaux phénomènes qui étayent l'idée d'une phénoménologie du " sujet capable " qui domine les derniers travaux de Ricœur. Qu'il s'agisse de la capacité de se souvenir, d'oublier, de pardonner, de promettre ou de témoigner, ces recherches donnent tout son relief à la question kantienne : " Que m'est-il permis d'espérer? ". (shrink)

In cultural as well as social science studies of discourses (e.g. of discourses on climate change), the concept of narrative is used in a very broad sense – as an umbrella term that lacks analytical accuracy. From the perspective of linguistics, it seems obvious to acknowledge five elementary generic patterns. In addition to narration, linguists differentiate between argumentation, description, explication and instruction. Each of these patterns fulfils a different basic pragmatic function. This article tries to make clear and justify why (...) it is important, both theoretically and practically, to make a distinction between these five generic patterns. It is argued and shown that narrativization tends to go hand in hand with a relief of action, historicization, potential fictionalization, subjectivization and relativization. With respect to discourses on the climate crisis, these prototypical characteristics of narratives undermine both scientific attempts to justify claims of truth relating to the existence, causes and consequences of global warming as well as practical attempts to motivate people to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:119. THE IMPORT OF HUME'S THEORY OF TIME In this paper I examine the significance of Hume's theory of time for some of the more famous of the doctrines in the Treatise, and how it works as a basis for his peculiar brand of scepticism, a basis that is at least as important in this regard as his principle that all ideas are derived from some original impression. To (...) bring into relief some of the peculiarities of Hume's theory of time we may observe that it was not uncommon in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to distinguish between space and extension and between time and duration, to say, as does for example Leibniz, that "in some way extension is to space as duration is to time", and perhaps also to agree with him "that duration and extension are attributes of things, but time and space are taken to be something outside of things and serve to measure them. " Duration taken as an attribute of things or substantives connotes the permanence, or perseverance, or continuation of the existence of such substantives. Thus Descartes says, "the duration of each thing is a mode [he subsequently calls it an 'attribute'] under which we consider the thing in so far as it continues to exist" (French version) or "perseveres 2 in existence" (Latin version). Or Spinoza: "Duration is the attribute under which we conceive the existence of created things in so far as they persevere in their own 3 actuality". But though duration refers to things as persevering or continuing in existence, it applies equally, as Descartes indicates, to both changing and unchanging things. In order to comprehend the duration of all things under the same measure we usually compare their duration with the duration of the greatest and most regular motions, which are those which create years and days, and these we call time.4 Spinoza's account of duration and time are much the same. Duration is the primary notion and time presupposes it. Going beyond Hume to Kant we find that in distinguishing 120. three modes of time, namely duration, succession and coexistence, Kant argues that succession presupposes duration and that all time determinations of change (or succession) presuppose substance as that which is permanent or continuant through change. In Hume, however, we find no distinction between space and extension, nor between time and duration. These are merely two pairs of synonyms. In the case of space Hume seems to prefer on the whole to talk about extension, probably because extension lends itself more easily to discussion of divisibility. In the case of time, however, which he, defines as succession, he is indeed aware of the view which we have just been considering, according to which duration is referred primarily to an object qua con-. tinuing or persevering or enduring, whether or not undergoing successive changes. This concept of duration, he says, I take to be the common opinion of philosophers as well as of the vulgar. (T37) Duration in this common philosophical and vulgar sense is not a synonym of Humean time or succession, and it is for Hume, a "fiction", something falsely attributed to objects. Why is this so? 'Tis evident, that time or duration [Hume is here taking the two terms as synonyms] consists of different parts... 'Tis also evident, that these parts are not co-existent: For that quality of the co-existence of parts belongs to extension, and is what distinguishes it from duration. Now as time is compos 'd of parts, that are not co-existent; an unchangeable object, since it produces none but co-existent impressions, produces none that can give us the idea of time; and consequently that idea must be deriv'd from a succession of changeable objects, and time in its first appearance can never be sever 'd from such a succession (T35,36) Although Hume maintains that there is no idea which is not derived from some original impression, it would appear that this is not strictly so with the idea of time [or, for that matter with the idea of space]. Rather time is the manner or way in which impressions appear to the mind, namely... (shrink)

Resumo Na entrevista ficcional que se segue, as ideias de Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos sobre as artes de representação serão aplicadas a aspectos relevantes do cinema. Du Bos argumenta que, normalmente, as obras de ficção cinematográfica são projectadas para dar origem a “paixões artificiais”, que têm a função de fornecer alívio ao tédio, sem as consequências negativas que muitas actividades alternativas têm. Também será considerada a questão, se os filmes têm um significado filosófico. O resultado é uma perspectiva desconhecida, do (...) princípio do século XVIII, em algumas temáticas contemporâneas. Palavras-chave : catarse, cinema apocalíptico, Du Bos, emoção, paixões artificiais, paradoxo do afecto negativoIn the following fictional interview, the Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ ideas about the representational arts are applied to relevant aspects of the cinema. Du Bos argues that normally works of cinematic fiction are designed to give rise to ‘artificial passions’ that have the function of providing relief from boredom without the negative consequences that many alternative pursuits would have. Du Bos’ solution to the paradox of negative affect and his position on Aristotle’s doctrine of catharsis are also set forth in the interview. The question of whether films have philosophical significance is also taken up. The upshot is a somewhat unfamiliar early 18th-century perspective on some contemporary issues. Keywords: apocalyptic cinema, artificial passions, catharsis, Du Bos, emotion, paradox of negative affect. (shrink)

With Slavoj Zizek and Michel Foucault, this book brings into dialogue two of the most influential thinkers in contemporary critical theory. Starting from a thorough reassessment of the Foucauldian paradigm of discourse analysis, it explores the theoretical scope, empirical usefulness and political relevance of Zizek's explosive combination of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegelian philosophy and Marxist politics. The contrasting comparison between the two thinkers throws into sharp relief the commonalities and irreconcilable differences of their respective approaches to critical theory. By unmasking (...) reality as contingent symbolic fiction, the authors argue, Foucauldian criticism has only deconstructed the world in various ways; the point, however, is 'to recognize the Real in what appears to be mere symbolic fiction' (Zizek), and to change it. The analysis of key concepts is accompanied by two empirical case studies which put theory to the test. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Triumphus in PalatioJohn F. MillerAs one of the many tokens of its symbolic centrality in Roman culture, the Capitoline Hill received the triumphator at the end of his ceremonial return to Rome. For centuries generals who had been granted a triumphus concluded the elaborate sacral procession through the city with a sacrifice at the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the god most intimately associated with this religious institution.1 The (...) strongly local character of Roman cults made it nearly unthinkable to celebrate the solemn event anywhere else in Rome, but artistic imagination feels itself less bound by religious scruples. Two such ingenious revisions of the triumphal parade displace its endpoint to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill. Virgil imagines Octavian's great triple triumph of 29 B.C. taking place there, while other ancient evidence leads us to believe that the victor really proceeded to the Capitoline like countless imperatores triumphantes before him.2 The poet sets the celebration at the shrine of the deity credited with the victory at Actium, the shrine which Octavian built adjacent to his own house. The Palatine was becoming the imperial palace complex, the triumph a prerogative of the imperial family.3 When these developments had been fully realized, Nero in December A.D. 674 staged an eccentric victory procession which likewise climaxed at Apollo's Palatine temple. As returning victor in the festivals [End Page 409] of Greece he aimed to align himself with Apollo as patron of the arts, expressing now in topographical terms his frequent association with that deity.5 The lyre-playing god greeted the lyre-playing emperor, and vice versa. On the other hand, it is not irrelevant that one whom Pliny termed imperator scaenicus, "an actor-emperor" (Pan. 46.4), rode in the path of Virgil's fictional Augustus. The present essay explores the phenomenon triumphus in Palatio by explicating the two instances in the light of their ideological impulses. A further aim is to throw into relief the Augustan dimensions of Nero's triumphal ceremony, to show how the emperor in effect acted the part of Octavian riding in triple triumph.On the shield in Aeneid 8 Virgil inventively describes the triple triumph which Octavian celebrated in August 29 B.C. for victories in Illyricum, Actium, and Egypt:at Caesar, triplici invectus Romana triumphomoenia, dis Italis votum immortale sacrabat,maxima ter centum totam delubra per urbem.laetitia ludisque viae plausuque fremebant;omnibus in templis matrum chorus, omnibus arae;ante aras terram caesi stravere iuvenci.ipse sedens niveo candentis limine Phoebidona recognoscit populorum aptatque superbispostibus; incedunt victae longo ordine gentes...(8.714-22)One finds here familiar features of any triumphus: the imperator triumphans formally entering the city precinct (714-15), bystanders en route applauding the procession (717), the sacrifice of bulls (719), concluding dedications at a temple (720-22), and the display of captives, placards, and models illustrating the victor's conquests (722-28). But Virgil has also rewritten this triumph to take in a wider sacral and historical context. In verse 719 the general prayers and sacrifices and the prominent role of women suggest a supplicatio, a ritual often associated with but [End Page 410] formally distinct from triumphs.6 While triumphing commanders fulfilled vows which they made on the Capitol before their campaigns, Octavian's triumph is marked by the impressive votum of numerous mighty shrines throughout the city (715-16).7 Caesar's celebration looks ahead as well as backwards; it in effect announces the emergent leader's vast program of building and restoring temples, which was especially prominent in the period immediately after the triumph of 29.8 For Virgil, Caesar's triumphus inaugurates the religious renewal of Rome.By far the most momentous changes to the regular triumph occur in the scene at Apollo's gleaming temple, which in this context must be the new Palatine shrine.9 Whether dona... populorum (721) are the [End Page 411] ceremonial crowns which captives presented to the victor or euphemistically denote battle spoils from various peoples, the act of affixing them to the temple suggests that the triumphator has reached the triumph's end point. So does... (shrink)

In early China, was it correct for a woman to disobey her father, contradict her husband, or shape the public policy of a son who ruled over a dynasty or state? According to the _Lienü zhuan_, or_ Categorized Biographies of Women_, it was not only appropriate but necessary for women to step in with wise counsel when fathers, husbands, or rulers strayed from the path of virtue. Compiled toward the end of the Former Han dynasty (202 BCE-9 CE) by Liu (...) Xiang (79-8 BCE), the _Lienü zhuan_ is the earliest extant book in the Chinese tradition solely devoted to the education of women. Far from providing a unified vision of women's roles, the text promotes a diverse and sometimes contradictory range of practices. At one extreme are exemplars resorting to suicide and self-mutilation as a means to preserve chastity and ritual orthodoxy. At the other are bold and outspoken women whose rhetorical mastery helps correct erring rulers, sons, and husbands. The text provides a fascinating overview of the representation of women's roles in early legends, formal speeches on statecraft, and highly fictionalized historical accounts during this foundational period of Chinese history. Over time, the biographies of women became a regular feature of dynastic and local histories and a vehicle for expressing and transmitting concerns about women's social, political, and domestic roles. The _Lienü zhuan_ is also rich in information about the daily life, rituals, and domestic concerns of early China. Inspired by its accounts, artists across the millennia have depicted its stories on screens, paintings, lacquer ware, murals, and stone relief sculpture, extending its reach to literate and illiterate audiences alike. (shrink)

In recent years restitution scholars have expended considerable energy in attempting to reveal the logical structure of the law of proprietary remedies. That project advances on the assumption that the strange rhetoric that pervades this area of law can be stripped away to reveal restitutionary principles. However, the doctrines in question have proved resistant to such endeavors. An appreciation of why this is so requires recognition of the very real anxiety generated by the judicial readjustment of property rights that takes (...) place in this area of law. The use of metaphors, fictions and evidential presumptions that characterizes the law tracing, subrogation and the provision of proprietary relief for wrongs serves to assuage this anxiety by manufacturing the appearance that these remedies are perfectly conventional instances of the enforcement of pre-existing property or consensual transfers of property. However, these property rites have a logic of their own - a logic that influences and constrains the development of the law of proprietary remedies and makes it impossible to neatly reduce this field to a set of restitutionary principles. This is illustrated by the work of Professor Peter Birks, which represents the most comprehensive attempt to cut away the abstruse rhetoric found in this area and reveal the restitutionary substructure of the law of proprietary remedies and makes it impossible to neatly reduce this field to a set of restitutionary principles. This is illustrated by the work of Professor Peter Birks, which represents the most comprehensive attempt to cut away the substructure of the law of proprietary remedies. In Birks' work this process has merely resulted in old metaphors being replaced with new ones. Ultimately, we must accept that if re are to rationalize this area we must be prepared to engage directly with the policy issues that arise in this context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface This issue of Feminist Studies includes a cluster of essays that demonstrates new approaches to life writing, with special attention to unconventional women’s autobiographies. Lara Vapnek describes the historical inhibitions that shaped the self-presentation of pioneering American labor activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in the early twentieth century such that she omitted her sexual relationships with both women and men from her autobiographical writings. Overlapping with Vapnek’s historical focus, (...) Nora Doyle’s essay takes a new look at Gertrude Stein’s bestknown and most accessible work, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, seeing it as Stein’s clever reworking of the women’s genre of domestic fiction in its pairing of a domesticated wife with a “genius” husband. In her examination of Kamala Das’s Balyakala Smaranakal (Memories of childhood), Sharmila Sreekumar discusses how the memoir’s depiction of self-deferral rather than self-realization unsettles autobiographical conventions through its troubling of the relationship between “self,” “life,” and “writing” that is constitutive of the genre. In Olga Zilberbourg’s short story, two women are baffled as they contemplate a friend’s suicide: what does it say about their own accomplishments and losses? Attention to the visual aspects of women’s lives and to their embodiment is highlighted in Estelle Carol’s memoir about her time spent as a member of the Graphic Collective of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union in the 1970s. Corey Hickner-Johnson’s lyrical essay describes the first-person I of the poem as pushing herself to a physical extreme. Her autobiographical crisis-moment, depicted in acutely visceral and visual terms, wills into relief life’s underlying colors against a backdrop of otherwise drab monotony and disappointment. Feminist graphic artwork is discussed in Hillary Chute’s review essay on the newly popular genre of graphic novels by women. Alexandra Ketchum’s “‘The Place We’ve Always Wanted to Go But Never Could Find’: Finding Woman Space in Feminist Restaurants and Cafés in Ontario 1974–1982” and Samantha Pergadia’s “Geologies of 8 Sex and Gender: Excavating the Materialism of Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler” shift our attention away from individual life trajectories to broader sweeps of space and time. Ketchum’s history of feminist restaurants and cafes in Ontario, Canada, in the mid 1970s to early 1980s encourages us to consider the importance of space to the formation of feminist solidarities and political organizing, while Pergadia’s analysis of the geological understandings that undergird the work of both Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler invites us to rethink the temporalities through which gendered and sexed subjects, as well as academic disciplines, are formed. In closing, Ashwini Tambe reflects on the #MeToo movement and how we might fashion a more responsive public reckoning with sexual coercion. The issue leads off with Vapnek’s essay, “The Rebel Girl Revisited: Rereading Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s Life Story.” As Vapnek details, Flynn, an activist in the Industrial Workers of the World, chronicled her life only as far as 1926. Although she envisioned women’s emancipation as an integral component of the socialist revolution, her self-censorship reveals “how communism as well as anticommunism has limited our knowledge of the feminist past.” Flynn remained committed to socialism and women’s rights and continued to agitate for social change, but her efforts to narrate her later life were stymied by internal inhibitions and external forces. For a decade she lived with another woman at a time when leftists were not open about same-sex relationships. Nor did she wish to reveal her sexual relationships with a number of men or the psychological breakdown she suffered in 1926. Joining the US Communist Party in 1936 re-energized her career as a labor organizer and resulted in her being sent to prison from 1955 to 1957 during the period of the Red Scare in the United States. By her middle age, she had experienced not only nonconventional personal relationships but also a dramatic change in her appearance: rather than the slim girl pictured on the cover of songs designed to encourage the labor movement, she was a stout, matronly woman. Inhibited from revising her autobiography to account for her later life... (shrink)

While the story of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio engaging in a friendly contest, at the behest of Pope Urban IV, to compose the Mass and Office of Corpus Christi is likely a pious fiction, one can still ponder the fascinating hypothetical scenario: had such a contest taken place, who might have won? To consider that question, this paper embarks on a close reading of Bonaventure's hymns in his Office of the Passion, comparing his poetic approaches to those of (...) Aquinas in the hymns for Corpus Christi. After an introductory historical examination into the supposed involvement of both friars in the composition of the Corpus Christi liturgy, this article proceeds in three sections. First, a look into select excerpts from Bonaventure's Office of the Passion will establish his general poetic technique. In the transitional second section, a direct comparison between Bonaventure and Aquinas on the composition of the final doxological verses of their respective hymns will place their different poetic styles into greater relief. Third, a broader reading of Aquinas's Eucharistic hymns will highlight the unique qualities of his versified praises. Finally, in light of the foregoing analyses, a prospective winner of the hypothetical contest will be suggested. (shrink)

Cet article tente de démontrer la cohérence des contes de Diderot envisagés sous le point de vue d’un programme étho-poétique englobant, au centre duquel se trouve la notion de caractère. Le caractère chez Diderot semble donner un fondement quasi physique, en tout cas naturaliste à la morale, mais il est lui-même miné par des tensions (entre forme et force, être et paraître, fiction et morale etc.) que met en relief l’article. Après une première réflexion sur la critique du jugement (...) moral effectuée par les contes, qui permet de relever les ‘vertus’ du caractere du point de vue de la pensée morale, s’approfondit l’analyse des enjeux littéraires des contes. Il s’avère que plutôt qu’un fondement stable de la morale, le caractère (littéraire), grâce à ses ambivalences mêmes, constitue le médium privilégié de la stratégie esthétique de Diderot en tant qu’elle vise essentiellement à une compromission éthique du lecteur. (shrink)

“Lambeth Palace is my Washpot. Over Fulham have I cast my breeches.” So declared the novelist and secularist H. G. Wells in a letter to his mistress, Rebecca West, in May 1917. His claim was that, because of him, Britain was “full of theological discussion” and theological books were “selling like hot cakes”. He was lunching with liberal churchmen and dining with bishops. Certainly, the first of the books published during Wells’s short “religious period”, the novel Mr. Britling Sees It (...) Through, had sold very well on both sides of the Atlantic and made Wells financially secure. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (“Woodbine Willie”) wrote that, “Everyone ought to read Mr. H. G. Wells’s great novel, Mr. Britling Sees It Through. It is a gallant and illuminating attempt to state the question, and to answer it. His thought has brought him to a very real and living faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ, and has also brought relief to many troubled minds among the officers of the British Army.” Yet, Wells’s God was explicitly a finite God, and his theology was far from orthodox. How can we account for his boast and for the clerical affirmation which he certainly did receive? This article examines and re-evaluates previous accounts of the responses of clergy to Wells’s writing, correcting some narratives. It discusses the way in which many clergy used Mr. Britling as a means by which to engage in a populist way with the question of theodicy, and examines the letters which Wells received from several prominent clerics, locating their responses in the context of their own theological writings. This is shown to be key to understanding the reaction of writers such as Studdert Kennedy to Mr. Britling Sees It Through. Finally, an assessment is made of the veracity of Wells’s boasting to his mistress, concluding that his claims were somewhat exaggerated. “Lambeth Palace is my Washpot, Over Fulham have I cast my breeches.” Mit diesen Worten erklärte der literarisch außergewöhnlich erfolgreiche und entschieden säkular denkende, kirchenkritische Schriftsteller und Science-Fiction-Pionier Herbert George Wells seiner Geliebten, dass seinetwegen Großbritannien “full of theological discussion” sei. Nicht ohne Eitelkeit schrieb er es seinem im September 1916 mit Blick auf den Krieg geschriebenen und stark autobiographisch gefärbten Roman Mr. Britling Sees it Through von knapp 450 Seiten zu, dass theologische Bücher reißenden Absatz fänden. Auch war er stolz darauf, liberale Kleriker zum Lunch zu treffen und von Bischöfen zum abendlichen Dinner eingeladen zu werden. In einer kurzen Phase seines Lebens war – oder inszenierte sich – Wells als ein frommer, gläubiger Mensch. Sein damals veröffentlichter Roman Mr. Britling Sees It Through verkaufte sich sowohl in Nordamerika als auch im Heimatland so gut, dass der Autor nun definitiv finanziell gesichert war. Der anglikanische Priester und Dichter Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, der im Ersten Weltkrieg Woodbine Willie genannt wurde, weil er verletzten und sterbenden Soldaten in den Phasen der Vorbereitung auf den Tod Woodbine-Zigaretten anbot, empfahl die Lektüre von Wells’ “great novel” Mr. Britling mit den Worten: “It is a gallant and illuminating attempt to state the question, and to answer it. His thought has brought him to a very real and living faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ, and has also brought relief to many troubled minds among the officers of the British Army.” Allerdings war H. G. Wells’ Gott ein durchaus endlicher Gott, und seine Theologie war alles andere als orthodox. Wie lassen sich dennoch seine evidente Prahlerei und die emphatische Zustimmung zu seinem Roman in den britischen Klerikereliten erklären? Im Aufsatz werden zunächst einige ältere Deutungen der Zustimmung führender Kleriker zu Wells’ Roman untersucht und einige der dabei leitenden Deutungsmuster kritisch infrage gestellt. Deutlich wird, dass nicht wenige anglikanische Geistliche Mr. Britling dazu nutzten, um höchst populistisch das umstrittene Theodizeeproblem anzusprechen. Auch werden die Briefe prominenter Geistlicher an Wells analysiert, mit Blick auf ihre eigenen Publikationen. Diese Reaktionen haben stark Studdert Kennedys Haltung zu Mr. Britling Sees It Through beeinflusst. Besonders aufrichtig war Wells mit Blick auf sich selbst allerdings nicht. Die Selbstinszenierung gegenüber seiner Geliebten war einfach nur peinliche Übertreibung. (shrink)

The question of the so-called collective hallucination is neither as arcane nor as irrelevant to everyday life as it might first appear. On the contrary, it illuminates a much larger philosophical issue. In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, his 1921 book devoted to the relationship between individual and group psychology, Sigmund Freud lamented that there was still “no explanation of the nature of suggestion, that is, of the conditions under which influence without adequate logical foundation takes place.”2 (...) What the science of psychology lacked, in other words, was an understanding of ideological transference—the process by which one individual imposed his or her beliefs and convictions on another. How did an idea spread, so to speak, from one person to the next, resulting in the formation of a group consciousness? The phenomenon of the collective hallucination puts the issue starkly—if ambiguously—in relief. If a ghost or apparition can be said to represent, in Freud’s terms, an idea “without adequate logical foundation,” a delusion, then the process by which two people convince each other that they have seen one—and in turn attempt to convince others—might be taken to epitomize the formation of ideology itself.In what follows I shall examine a case of collective hallucination—certainly the most notorious and well documented in the annals of modern psychical research—precisely as a way of spotlighting this larger problem. My goal in so doing is not so much to expose the folly of people who claim to see ghosts but the difficulty that inevitably besets anyone who attempts to debunk such claims on supposedly rationalist grounds. For in the absence of any satisfying explanation of how such “folly” spreads—how a private delusion becomes a folie à deux —the labors of the skeptic are doomed to result only in a peculiar rhetorical and epistemological impasse. 2. Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, trans. and ed. James Strachey , p. 22. Terry Castle is professor of English at Stanford University and the author of Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction . She is currently working on a new study entitled Lesbians and Other Ghosts: Essays on Literature and Sexuality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Sources of MemoryJeffrey Andrew Barash“What does it mean to remember?” This question might seem commonplace when it is confined to the domain of events recalled in past individual experience; but even in this restricted sense, when memory recalls, for example, a first personal encounter with birth or with death, the singularity of the remembered image places the deeper possibilities of human understanding in relief. Such experiences punctuating (...) everyday life highlight the central place of memory as a source of human identity.With a few notable exceptions, such as Henri Bergson or Maurice Halb-wachs, this central role of memory was rarely a topic of interest in the theoretical orientations of our century. It played only a peripheral role in the different philosophical orientations and in the human sciences of this century until, very recently, new attempts have been made to comprehend the significance of memory, above all in the fields of intellectual history and philosophy. Without dealing exhaustively with the bibliography of works on memory, I will mention what seem to me to be the signs of a recent renewal of questioning in this area of interest to historians and philosophers alike. This will lead me to the specific problem I will address in the pages that follow.One of the chief sources of the historian’s recent interest in memory has been the historians’ conflict (Historikerstreit) of the 1980s concerning the interpretation of the German and European past since the rise to power of Nazism and in the aftermath of World War II. As the generations who lived through and—from a given perspective—remembered these events increasingly disappear, the question concerning their precise historical meaning has reemerged with a new urgency. In this vein, for example, as the relatively new periodical History and Memory: Studies in the Representation of the Past and the collection of essays Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution,” edited by Saul Friedlander, amply attest, the relation of memory to historical narrative is as important as it is problematic: to the extent that eyewitness memory claims a status of objectivity beyond the fictional sphere of [End Page 707] the imagination, its role in informing historical narrative involves the very issue of objectivity itself. 1Independently of this query concerning the relation of memory and history in recent scholarship focusing on the twentieth century, a number of studies have attempted to place the idea of memory in historical perspective during premodern periods. In this regard, we may cite Janet Coleman’s recently published work, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past and Mary Carruthers’s treatment of the subject of memory in the medieval period in The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. 2 A number of other recent works in the field of intellectual history have attempted to grapple with the intriguing problem of the historicity of the phenomenon of memory in the West. This idea of the historicity of memory has been inspired at least in part by Pierre Nora’s essay, “Between Memory and History,” which introduced the multi-volume series he directed, Les Lieux de mémoire. In this vein, Patrick H. Hutton’s History as an Art of Memory, Matt K. Matsuda’s The Memory of the Modern, and Richard Terdiman’s Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis all center on the historical transforma-tions to which, according to the different perspectives of their works, “memory” has been subject. 3 Like Nora, they link this historicity of the social and cultural role of memory to the radical transformations that Western civilization has undergone in the modern period.In a philosophical perspective David Farrell Krell’s work, Of Memory, Reminiscence, and Writing: On the Verge, presents a very different idea of the phenomenon of memory. 4 Where the intellectual historians of modernity stress the mutations in the role of memory, Krell, following in the footsteps of Jacques Derrida, emphasizes one essential line of continuity that, to his mind, has tied [End Page 708] together the tradition of philosophical reflection on memory from Plato and Aristotle up until Freud: the metaphoric reference to memory as the faculty... (shrink)

Introduction Paul Boshears The following excerpt from Paul Amitai's In Between States: Field notes and speculations on postwar landscapes (2012) confounds its reader. Presenting an alternate history of the State of Israel as a space station orbiting Earth, the excitement of possibilities crackles across the texts and images. Like Chris Marker's La Jeteé , the accompanying static images distort the viewer's temporality: are these archaeological items, images from a past, or a future? Why isn't this our future? In Between States (...) can also be seen as complementing Larissa Sansour's provocative science fiction works, Space Exodus (2009) which "documents" the Palestinian space program, and her Nation Estate (2012), in which Palestine is relocated into a skyscraper. Amitai's vision opens onto an intergalactic diaspora, wherein the refugees of World War II are given the stars as Western Europe continues to fight over terrestial colonies. —PFB Auditorium, Hoechst AG headquarters, Industriepark-Höchst, 2011. In 1941 an investigation by the US Justice Department exposed a marriage cartel between John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil (now ExxonMobil) and I.G. Farben. The two corporations had formed a joint operation in 1927 called Standard IG Farben. It was revealed that the two had shared patents in order to control prices and markets in their respective regions. Standard was accused of hiding patents from the US Navy and supplying fuel to German submarines, which lead to charges of criminal conspiracy. The Pentagon intervened, requesting that President Roosevelt stop the investigation in order to protect war production and oil supply. Roosevelt agreed, and the Senate committee investigating the matter, headed by Senator Harry Truman, was halted. Standard Oil paid a fine of $5000 and promised to stop supplying fuel to the enemies. Auditorium, Hoechst AG headquarters, Industriepark-Höchst, 2011. Furious at the decision to terminate the investigation of acts he considered treason, Truman initiated a new inquiry into Standard Oil’s war-time practices after succeeding Roosevelt as president in 1945. With the chief executives of I.G Farben simultaneously on trial at Nuremburg, Truman brokered a deal with the Allies that reduced or withdrew criminal charges leveled against both corporations in exchange for Standard Oil and I.G. Farben’s sponsorship of one of Truman’s most ambitious postwar projects—the relocation of the Jewish people. Detail, Sanofi-Aventis advertisement, 2011. The third critical player in this bold experiment was the nascent North Atlantic Space Agency. Formed by Allied forces using the seized assets and engineering expertise of Hitler’s hitherto classified space program (conquer Earth, then the stars), the North Atlantic Space Agency was a pre-NATO foray into interstellar nation building, with orbital occupation as the first point of order. By 1947, NASA was nearly ready to deploy the first manned space station. Standard Oil and I.G. Farben’s advanced fuel refinement capacities and deep, war-enriched financial resources allowed NASA to speed up their launch schedule significantly. Detail, Sanofi-Aventis advertisement, 2011. Diplomatic efforts to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine were failing to gain traction, while post-colonial England held its ground on immigration restrictions and bands of Jews and Arabs battled over territory on the ground. More immediate was the issue of temporarily housing Holocaust survivors and refugees across scorched Europe. Leaders of the continental nations demonstrated, at best, reluctance to accommodate the Jews, who in turn were, at the least, resistant to returning to the same bloody cocktail from which they had fled. Truman used the impasse to advance a plan for NASA’s space station to be put to use as a temporary Jewish outpost, an orbital displaced persons camp, to be operated by the US Army. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. Final preparations advanced rapidly. Viewing the orbital displaced persons (ODP) camp as a solution to their immigration problem both at home and abroad, England came on board as a willing partner. Spaceship Exodus was positioned for takeoff on German farmland 20 kilometers southwest of Frankfurt. On December 30, 1947, one month after the UN General Assembly voted down the separation plan for Palestine, Exodus rocketed into the atmosphere hauling the first module of barracks designed to house 1,500 refugees. Transport vehicles arrived shortly thereafter, loaded down with leftover wartime military rations and 3,000 Jews of Russian and Polish origin. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. "The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule."—Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer , trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 96. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. The ODP camp proved to be a longer-term solution than originally envisioned. Additional installations were positioned to form swollen clusters of interlocking units – sleeping quarters, schools, clinics, canteens. The UN was brought in to monitor the camp following two chaotic years of US Army control in which food shortages, pandemic diseases, and rampant black market trade had brought the camp to near total collapse. No less bureaucratic or ineffectual, the UN relief agency at least had prior experience facilitating contexts of a similar magnitude and could potentially predict outcomes. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. What had been unexpected was the degree to which the camp would evolve into its own self-regulated, hive-like ecosystem where previously accepted rules of conduct were not applicable. The ODP camp was an exceptional space, a riverboat casino, an offshore research lab of social experimentation and entrepreneurial innovation. No longer Earth-bound, touching soil knotted by prescripts of Talmudic law, the camp residents were able to rationalize loopholes and detonate barriers standing in the way of absolute production. The Jewish archipelago was renamed Israel after the ancient homeland. If the temple couldn’t be rebuilt in the motherland, a post-national rhizome would sprout up in its stead. Eyes everywhere, beyond all borders. More information on the project at the author's site. (shrink)

American in rem, or civil, forfeiture laws seem to implicate constitutional concerns insofar as such laws may authorize the government to confiscate privately owned property, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the owner. Historically, the justification of in rem forfeiture law has rested on the legal fiction that “[t]he thing is . . . primarily considered as the offender, or rather the offense is attached primarily to the thing.” Last Term, in Bennis v. Michigan, the Supreme Court upheld the (...) constitutionality of a public nuisance statute that authorized the government to abate a car-owner’s property interest, even though there had been no showing of negligence or wrongdoing on the part of the owner herself. Referring to this country’s “longstanding practice” of in rem forfeiture proceedings, the Court held that abatement under the Michigan statute neither offended due process nor violated the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against takings without just compensation. By basing its decision on precedent, the Court prudently resisted the temptation to legislate from the bench. The Court also reached the right result in denying relief to Mrs. Bennis. Unfortunately, the Court’s appeal to past practice did not adequately address the constitutional concerns raised by the case. If the Court had said more about the traditional purpose and limits of in rem forfeitures, it could have addressed these concerns, while still avoiding the dangers of judicial activism. (shrink)

In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion has forcefully criticized both Donnellan's and Evans’ claims on the contingent a priori, and she has developed an “acquaintanceless” account of singular thoughts as an alternative view. Jeshion claims that one can fully grasp a singular thought expressed by a sentence including a proper name, even if its reference has been descriptively fixed and one’s access to the referent is “mediated” by that description. But she still wants to reject “semantic instrumentalism”, the view (...) that “there are no substantive conditions of any sort on having singular thought. We can freely generate singular thoughts at will by manipulating the apparatus of direct reference.” Her account of singular thoughts is a psychological one, rejecting any epistemic requirement. Having singular thoughts is for her a matter of deploying “mental files” or “dossiers” that play a significant role in the cognitive life of the individual. This paper elaborates on an alternative descriptivist-friendly view, which has important points of contact with Jeshion’s. It differs, particularly in that it is an epistemic view; it is only a broadly understood acquaintance view, as it will transpire, but this does not make it a mere terminological variation on Jeshion’s acquaintanceless one. To argue for it, the paper discusses some relevant aspects of the semantics of fictional discourse. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish scientific models in three kinds on the basis of their ontological status—material models, mathematical models and fictional models, and develop and defend an account of fictional models as fictional objects—i.e. abstract objects that stand for possible concrete objects.

The “paradox of fictional emotions” involves a trio of claims that are jointly inconsistent but individually plausible. Resolution of the paradox thus requires that we deny at least one of these plausible claims. The paradox has been formulated in various ways, but for the purposes of this chapter, we will focus on the following three claims, which we will refer to respectively as the Response Condition, the Belief Condition and the Coordination Condition.

Charles Crittenden here offers an original solution to one of the traditional dilemmas of philosophy—whether there can be any thing not existing, since to say that some thing does not exist seems to presuppose its existence. Drawing on the tools of Wittgensteinian philosophy and speech act theory, Crittenden argues that we can and often do make reference to unreal objects such as fictional characters, though they do not exist in any sense at all.

In this article, I will discuss some differences between empathy with real persons and empathy with fictional characters. Philosophers who have thought about th.

In this paper I argue against the theory--popular among theorists of narrative artworks--that we must posit a fictional narrative agent in every narrative artwork in order to explain our imaginative engagement with such works. I accept that every narrative must have a narrator, but I argue that in some central literary cases the narrator is not a fictional agent, but rather the actual author of the work. My criticisms focus on the strongest argument for the ubiquity of (...) class='Hi'>fictional narrators, Jerrold Levinson's ontological-gap argument. Finally, I outline an alternative "minimal theory" of narrators, and some consequences thereof. (shrink)

There has recently been considerable interest in accounts of fiction which treat fictional characters as abstract objects. In this paper I argue against this view. More precisely I argue that such accounts are unable to accommodate our intuitions that fictional negative existentials such as “Raskolnikov doesn’t exist” are true. I offer a general argument to this effect and then consider, but reject, some of the accounts of fictional negative existentials offered by abstract object theorists. I then note (...) that some of the sort of data invoked by the abstract object theorist in fact cuts against her position. I concludle that we should not regard fictional characters as abstract objects but rather should adopt a make-believe theoretic account of fictional characters along the lines of those developed by Ken Walton and others. (shrink)

This paper gives an introduction to the interdisciplinary special section. Against the historical and ethical background of reproductive technologies, it explores future scenarios of human reproduction and analyzes ways of mutual engagement between fictional and academic endeavors. The underlying idea is that we can make use of human reproduction scenarios in at least two ways: we can use them to critique technologies by imagining terrible consequences for humanity but also to defend positions that favor scientific and technological development.

Are virtual objects real? I will claim that the question sets us up for the wrong type of conclusion: Chalmers (2017) argues that a virtual calculator (like other entities) is a real calculator when it is “organizationally invariant” with its non-virtual counterpart—when it performs calculation. However, virtual reality and games are defined by the fact that they always selectively implement their source material. Even the most detailed virtual car will still have an infinite range of details which are missing (gas, (...) engines, pistons, fuel, chemical reactions, molecules, atoms). This means that even the most detailed virtual object will still have fictional aspects. Rather than argue that virtual objects are, or aren’t, real, it is preferable to think of overlaps and continuities between the fictional and the real, where even the most painstakingly detailed virtual reality implementation of a non-virtual object is still art: a human process of selection and interpretation. Virtual reality should therefore not be philosophically understood just as a technological implementation on a trajectory to perfection, but as a cultural artifact which derives its value in part from its simplification and difference from its source material. (shrink)

This paper deals with the phenomenon of retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, in which the truth-value of a proposition in an established fictional work is changed later. The primary aim of this paper is to provide the most compelling explanation for retroactive continuity. I first defend the metaphysical view about fiction, according to which when retconning occurs, a fictional work changes its property of containing a proposition while preserving its identity. I then argue that this view is (...) theoretically preferable to all other competing approaches. (shrink)

Fictional realism, i.e., the view that because fictions exist, fictional characters exist as well, has recently been accused of leading to inconsistency generated by phenomena of indeterminacy and inconsistency in fiction. We examine in detail four arguments against fictional realism, and present a version of fictional realism which can withstand those arguments.

Literature is a complex and multifaceted expression of our humanity, one dimension of which is ethical content. This striking collection of new essays pursues a fuller and richer understanding of five of the central aspects of this ethical content. These aspects are: the question of character, its formation, and its role in moral discernment; poetic vision in the context of ethical understanding; literature's distinctive role in self-identity and self-understanding; patterns of moral growth and change that emerge from the philosophical reading (...) of literature; and the historical sources and genealogies of some of our most central contemporary conceptions of the ethical dimension of literature. The volume engages with literary work from Homer to J. M. Coetzee, Shakespeare to David Foster Wallace, and explores the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Levinas, and others. This rich collection presents some of the best new thinking about the ethical content that lies within literature, and it shows why our reflective absorption in literature is the humane--and humanizing--experience many of us have long taken it to be. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Anthony Everett has mounted a very serious attack against realism with respect to fictional entities. According to Everett, ficta raise deep logico-ontological worries, for they violate some basic logical laws and are problematically indeterminate with respect to both their existence and identity. Since an antirealist account for sentences apparently committing us to ficta is available, no such committment is really needed. In this paper I will try to show, first, that the antirealist account Everett proposes (...) for those sentences is not convincing. Moreover, by relying on the Meinongians’ distinctions between i) predicative and propositional negation and ii) either modes of predication or kinds of property, I will argue that the logico-ontological problems Everett arises against ficta can be solved. Finally, I will try to show that both the ‘modes of predication’- and the ‘kinds of property’- distinctions (especially the first one) are not so problematic as Everett holds. (shrink)

The challenge of handling fictional discourse is to find the best way to resolve the apparent inconsistencies in our ways of speaking about fiction. A promising approach is to take at least some such discourse to involve pretense, but does all fictional discourse involve pretense? I will argue that a better, less revisionary, solution is to take internal and fictionalizing discourse to involve pretense, while allowing that in external critical discourse, fictional names are used seriously to refer (...) to fictional characters. I then address two objections to such realist theories of fiction: One, that they can’t adequately account for the truth of singular nonexistence claims involving fictional names, and two, that accepting that there are fictional characters to which we refer is implausible or ontologically profligate. (shrink)