Search Results

Naturalized Ontology

Mary Leng

in Mathematics and Reality

This chapter considers the question of how we are to uncover our ontological commitments, on the assumption that even our best scientific theories may include hypotheses adopted for reasons other ... More

This chapter considers the question of how we are to uncover our ontological commitments, on the assumption that even our best scientific theories may include hypotheses adopted for reasons other than their literal truth. Stephen Yablo's use of Kendall L. Walton's notion of the metaphorical content of theoretical hypotheses, adopted as part of a prop oriented make‐believe, is presented as an account of the way that theoretical hypotheses can be descriptively valuable even if not literally true. The question of how to distinguish the metaphorical from the literal amongst our theoretical assumptions is considered, and Yablo's own scepticism about the possibility of drawing such a distinction is rejected as depending on an overly hermeneutic understanding of the requirements of naturalism. An alternative explanatory characterization of the project allows for the possibility of uncovering, through our reflective understanding of our scientific theories, genuine ontological commitments from amongst our various theoretical hypotheses.Less

Mathematics and Make‐Believe

Mary Leng

in Mathematics and Reality

This chapter presents in detail Kendall L. Walton's account of metaphor as prop‐oriented make‐believe, and discusses how this account can be used to provide an anti‐realist account of the ideal ... More

This chapter presents in detail Kendall L. Walton's account of metaphor as prop‐oriented make‐believe, and discusses how this account can be used to provide an anti‐realist account of the ideal models used in empirical science. It goes on to consider how, specifically, the mathematical assumptions of our scientific theories could be considered to be fictional in the context of a make‐believe, and how such hypotheses can be used to represent, indirectly, how things are taken to be with non‐mathematical ‘props’. It is suggested that, if we take the assumptions of set theory with non‐mathematical urelements as generative assumptions of a fiction, utterances that are fictional against the backdrop of these generative assumptions will have some objective metaphorical content, as claims about the non‐mathematical realm. It is argued that we should view scientific inquiry in the context of mathematically stated scientific theories as inquiry into what is fictional in this game.Less

The Fictional and the Real

John Gibson

in Fiction and the Weave of Life

This chapter presents some general observations on the notion of fiction. It uses a discussion of two positions from extreme corners of currently fashionable theories of fiction as an occasion for ... More

This chapter presents some general observations on the notion of fiction. It uses a discussion of two positions from extreme corners of currently fashionable theories of fiction as an occasion for these reflections. These are poststructuralist anti-realism or ‘textualism’, and the ‘mimesis as make-believe’ theory that is so influential in analytical aesthetics. These positions were chosen because they are considered excellent representatives of two popular ways of approaching the relationship between reality and fiction: the ‘radical’ one of dismissing the distinction altogether and the ‘conservative’ one of accepting it wholeheartedly and then going on to contrast them such that fiction is turned into an imaginary version of the real world. In explaining why these two approaches are inadequate, the chapter brings into view a few basic constraints on how to explain what we are saying when we describe a work of literature as fictional. It concludes with a call to ‘openness’ in the theory of fiction — that is, with an invitation to explore the various ways in which the frame of the fictional can be, or should be, understood to keep open a window on the real.Less

On Looking at a Picture

Malcolm Budd

in Aesthetic Essays

This chapter begins with an exposition and critique of Ernst Gombrich's illusionistic theory of the experience of realistic pictures. It then modulates to its main theme — a critical examination of ... More

This chapter begins with an exposition and critique of Ernst Gombrich's illusionistic theory of the experience of realistic pictures. It then modulates to its main theme — a critical examination of Richard Wollheim's view of pictorial perception as a matter of seeing one thing in another — which is considered in both its early and late forms. Each of these forms is shown to be markedly deficient. The chapter then lays down guidelines for a correct theory and scouts a number of candidates. It concludes by articulating worries about Kendall Walton's ‘make-believe seeing’ conception of pictorial perception.Less

Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?

Stephen Yablo

in Things: Papers on Objects, Events, and Properties

A line of research aimed at determining whether Chicago, April, Spanish, etc., really exist can seem naive to the point of comicality. It's as though one were to call for research into whether April ... More

A line of research aimed at determining whether Chicago, April, Spanish, etc., really exist can seem naive to the point of comicality. It's as though one were to call for research into whether April is really the cruellest month, or Chicago the city with the big shoulders, or Spanish the loving tongue. It turns out the analogy is not entirely frivolous. Quine objects to Carnap that he assumes a clear line between analytic and synthetic. But Quine himself assumes that literally true existence claims can be told apart from ones that are only figuratively true. Analytic vs. synthetic may be a problematic distinction. But compared to literal vs. figurative, it is a marvel of clarity and precision.Less

Apriority and Existence

Stephen Yablo

in Things: Papers on Objects, Events, and Properties

Quineans think that to establish the existence of so and so's, one must take a holistic a posteriori indispensability argument. Rationalists think that the existence of so and so's follows from a ... More

Quineans think that to establish the existence of so and so's, one must take a holistic a posteriori indispensability argument. Rationalists think that the existence of so and so's follows from a priori bridge principles such as: ‘An argument is valid if and only if it has no countermodels’. The reason this is a paradox and not merely a contradiction is that Quineanism is received opinion in philosophy, while Rationalism is a straightforward consequence of received opinion, viz., the opinion that we are capable in some cases of a priori insight into truth-conditions, and can a priori ‘see’ that an argument is valid if it lacks countermodels, that S is possible that if an S-world exists, and so on. The best explanation of our seemingly a priori entitlement to such bridge principles is that their felt content is not their literal content; the first is a priori but ontologically neutral, the second is ontologically committal but not a priori knowable.Less

Abstract Objects: A Case Study

Stephen Yablo

in Things: Papers on Objects, Events, and Properties

Numbers have many puzzling features. Their properties are mostly essential to them, but they exist in all possible worlds. Number theory seems a priori, yet it makes existence claims and existence ... More

Numbers have many puzzling features. Their properties are mostly essential to them, but they exist in all possible worlds. Number theory seems a priori, yet it makes existence claims and existence (setting aside the Cogito) is not supposed to be a priori knowable. If-thenism can perhaps explain the felt a priority, but it makes numerical truth relative where it seems absolute. A figuralist solution is proposed: ‘2 + 3 = 5’ seems necessary, a priori, and absolute because it has a logical truth as its assertive content. A rule that associates logical truths with each arithmetical truth is given, and also a rule that associates a logical truth (modulo concrete combinatorics) with each truth about hereditarily finite impure sets. The view that emerges takes something from Frege and something from Kant; one might call it Kantian logicism. The view is Kantian because it sees mathematics as arising out of our representations. Numbers and sets are ‘there’ because they are inscribed on the spectacles through which we see other things. It is logicist because the facts seen through our numerical spectacles are facts of first-order logic.Less

FICTION AND FICTIONAL TRUTH

Paisley Livingston

in Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study

Intentionalist assumptions are relevant to three inter-related topics pertaining to fiction: the distinction between fiction and non-fiction, the nature and status of fictional truth, and the ... More

Intentionalist assumptions are relevant to three inter-related topics pertaining to fiction: the distinction between fiction and non-fiction, the nature and status of fictional truth, and the determination of fictional truth (or the content of a fictional utterance or story). Livingston argues that to produce a work of fiction or fictional utterance is to express imaginings and to invite others to engage in correlative make-believe or imagining. Intentions regularly contribute decisively to the determination of the story a work of fiction conveys, especially with regard to implicit content. This is crucial for readers or viewers who want to understand the story told, as opposed to making up a new story of their own. These and related contentions are grounded in a discussion of the 1991 film Meeting Venus, which is especially pertinent with regard to the problem of the conditions under which intentions are and are not successfully realized.Less

‘Fearing Fictions’

Derek Matravers

in Art and Emotion

Solutions to the definitional problem are defined largely in relation to Kendall Walton's view on the subject. His book, Mimesis as Make-Believe, presents a general theory of representation of which ... More

Solutions to the definitional problem are defined largely in relation to Kendall Walton's view on the subject. His book, Mimesis as Make-Believe, presents a general theory of representation of which a solution to the definitional problem forms a part. Walton's basic insight may be expressed as follows: children ‘feel emotions’ as part of their games of make-believe. However, they are not really feeling emotions; they are merely in some state which makes it true that in the game they are feeling emotions. Walton argues that our reaction to fiction can be explained by construing it as a sophisticated game of make-believe. According to Walton, one of the games of make-believe we play with fiction is to imagine that the novel is a true report of the activities of a person (or a thing, or whatever). Reading this report arouses states which have the phenomenological and physiological appearances of emotions, but which are not emotions because they do not include the requisite belief.Less

Make-Believe Play: Wellspring for Development of Self-Regulation

LAURA E. BERK, TRISHA D. MANN, and AMY T. OGAN

in Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth

The early childhood years are a crucial time for the development of self-regulation — an array of complex mental capacities that includes impulse and emotion control, self-guidance of thought and ... More

The early childhood years are a crucial time for the development of self-regulation — an array of complex mental capacities that includes impulse and emotion control, self-guidance of thought and behavior, planning, self-reliance, and socially responsible behavior. Self-regulation is also essential for children to meet the academic and social requirements of school. The human need for complex, flexible regulatory systems that can cope with a wide array of environmental conditions means that the development of self- regulation begins early, takes place over an extended time period, and requires substantial external support. Early childhood is also the “high season” of imaginative play, when make-believe evolves from simple imitative acts into elaborate plots involving complex coordination of roles. This chapter presents wide-ranging evidence that pretense is pivotal in children's advancing mastery over their own thinking, emotions, and behavior. The data are based on the sociocultural theory of Russian developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who viewed social experiences such as make-believe play as prime catalysts of development.Less

My Magic Story Car: Video-Based Play Intervention to Strengthen Emergent Literacy of At-Risk Preschoolers

HARVEY F. BELLIN and DOROTHY G. SINGER

in Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth

This chapter focuses on My Magic Story Car, a video-based program that strengthens emergent literacy skills of at-risk preschool children from low-income families through one of the most effective ... More

This chapter focuses on My Magic Story Car, a video-based program that strengthens emergent literacy skills of at-risk preschool children from low-income families through one of the most effective available modalities — make-believe play. Research shows that make-believe play, a natural feature of early childhood development peaking at ages 3 to 5, is an intrinsically motivating modality for engaging preschoolers in activities to enhance a plethora of cognitive, socioemotional, and motor skills. Through play, children practice vocabulary and new ways to express themselves. They verbalize plot sequences with increasingly complex situations that often evoke correcting responses from adults or peers. The narrative sequences of imaginative play can also enhance socioemotional skills such as cause-and-effect thinking, empathy, cooperation, patience, civility, and self-regulation. Singer and Singer (2001) developed a comprehensive set of learning games to strengthen these skills among 3- to 5-year-olds. Several of these games were adapted into My Magic Story Car.Less

‘Divine Games’: Nabokov between Faith and Make-Believe, 1918–1925

Thomas Karshan

in Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Play

This chapter identifies two major themes in Nabokov's earliest writings on play, from 1918 to 1925. The first is Nabokov's exploration, beginning with his 1918 poem ‘Childhood’, of play as an ... More

This chapter identifies two major themes in Nabokov's earliest writings on play, from 1918 to 1925. The first is Nabokov's exploration, beginning with his 1918 poem ‘Childhood’, of play as an alternative to faith, and his shift away from the stable assertions of religious art to the playful ironies and inversions which would characterise his mature writing. Nabokov was encouraged in this direction by translating Carroll's Alice in Wonderland in 1922, and in his stories, play, and essays of 1923 he developed the idea in two different ways, showing that aesthetic make-believe can be mistaken either as faith or as deceit. The second is his development of the antithesis between the potential violence and aesthetic chaos of free play and its containment in the demarcated boundaries and rules of a game, and of form-governed art—an antithesis symbolised early on in his Cambridge poems by the contrast between football and tennis, and throughout the important unpublished long poem of 1921, ‘Olympicum’. Both themes are combined in 1925 in ‘Play’, which turns out to be an artful, fictive, and deceitful work, not a straightforward manifesto statement.Less

An Attitude Towards the Possible: The Contributions of Pretend Play to Later Adult Consciousness

Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer

in The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology

Make-believe play in children starts from about two years of age with attachment to transitional objects, play with soft toys, or imaginary playmates. The roles of pretending and story-telling play ... More

Make-believe play in children starts from about two years of age with attachment to transitional objects, play with soft toys, or imaginary playmates. The roles of pretending and story-telling play contribute to enjoyment and to cognitive, social, and emotional skills. Adults are often the nurturers and enhancers of such play. The features of childhood play may well foreshadow an array of functions of ongoing adult conscious thought. Aspects of adult consciousness are wakeful perception, identification, labeling, and encoding, guided imagery, mental trial actions, and playfulness. Childhood pretending may relate especially to the narrative components of adult consciousness. This leads to a discussion of Baars’ theory of the role of consciousness as a “theater” for prioritizing, decision-making, aesthetic appreciation, and creativity in its everyday expression, as well in the emergence of scientific or artistic products.Less

Mourning & Cheerfulness

in Living Up to Death

This chapter presents Paul Ricouer's essay Up to death. Mourning and Cheerfulness. It highlights the author's fear of being the dying person for those who will visit him and suggests that there is an ... More

This chapter presents Paul Ricouer's essay Up to death. Mourning and Cheerfulness. It highlights the author's fear of being the dying person for those who will visit him and suggests that there is an element of make-believe when people reflect on death, especially for other people's death. This essay also presents a critique the narratives about a physical resurrection and the death-afterlife connection.Less