Generating and grounding fictional truth
Keywords: Philosophy.

In the first chapter ("A New Class of Fictional Truths"), I argue that our current classification of fictional truths is incomplete because it leaves out a class of fictional truths generated by formal (e.g. visual and auditory) features of the text. In appendices 1 and 2, I discuss formal features' work in different media (graphic novel, film, painting) and show how data from linguistics and experimental philosophy support the idea that form influences what is communicated. In the second chapter ("Make-Believe and Possible Worlds Approaches to Fictional Truth"), I argue that theories based on imagination or make-believe are unsatisfactory because nonfiction also routinely prescribes imaginings and fiction often prescribes imaginations that aren't ultimately true in the story. Invoking possible worlds leaves out fiction with impossible content, fails to credit authors for creating fictional worlds, and has difficulty accommodating formal features' contribution to what is true in the story. In appendix 3, I raise questions at the intersection of narrativity and temporality and begin to engage with them, drawing quick lessons and highlighting future areas of inquiry. In the third chapter ("Linguistic Theories of Fictional Truth"), I assess theories adapting tools from philosophy of language, eventually arguing that speech act theory or Gricean pragmatics can't accommodate the work done by formal features or explain nonverbal fictions. These theories also tend to conflate questions about what fictional truth is and how it's generated (the metaphysics of fictional truth) with how fictional truth is learned (the epistemology of fictional truth). In appendix 4, I discuss a few Neo-Griceans to show that theorists in both fiction and nonfiction contexts tend to minimize the work done by the manner in which something is put. Chapter four ("Narrators and Imaginative Limits") argues that narrators are not essential for analyzing fiction or fictional truth and that we've been conflating the limits of imagination with limits of fictionality. I suggest that we've come to think narrators are crucial in part because we've been analyzing a narrow set of examples. I also show that imaginative resistance does not determine (or stem from) limits to fictional content and that fictions with impossible, unlimited, or empty content can exist. In chapter five ("The Fiction/Nonfiction Distinction"), I argue that neither content, style, nor historical context are reliable indicators of a work's fictionality. There isn't a single concept "fiction" that covers all its manifestations, so I argue for pluralism regarding the concept of fiction. Finally, chapter six ("Story Artifactualism") lays out my own view of what makes fiction distinct. Story Artifactualism argues that an author really creates two things when she produces a work of fiction: a story (set of fictional circumstances) and a work (a particular telling of some set of fictional circumstances, an artifact meant to provide epistemic access to the story). Stories, as abstract artifacts, ground fictional truth, and works, as abstract or concrete artifacts, let consumers learn fictional truths when they engage with the works conveying the story. Admitting stories to exist in addition to works helps explain how the same fictional character can appear in more than one work and how vastly different adaptations of the same story can be understood to be related