The Theoretical Primitives of Modal Fictionalism

Metaphysical theories often rely on resources which are taken as “primitive”: roughly, theoretical resources which are not to be further explained or analysed. Different theories of the same subject matter will often take different resources to be primitive, and while it is a difficult question to decide whether one set of primitives is better or worse than another, evaluation of the relative simplicity, naturalness, or other merits of theoretical primitives is part of the evaluation of rival theories. This sort of comparison can can be especially relevant in areas where disputes between rival theories are not to be settled easily by experiment or observation. Such disputes make up one of the battlegrounds between fictionalists and their rivals, with anti-fictionalists claiming that the unanalysed theoretical resources which fictionalists rely on render fictionalist theories unattractive, or at least relatively unattractive compared to some rival or other.

The central piece of theoretical machinery the modal fictionalist employs is the “According to PW …” operator. When it is glossed in tempting ways, as “if PW were true, then …” or “it follows from PW that …”, it seems to be a modal notion: and if this is not to be further explained, the modal fictionalist cannot use the fiction of possible worlds and its contents as the basis of an analysis of modality in terms of something else. (This sort of analysis is sometimes known as a reductive analysis.) This will only be of concern to some modal fictionalists, of course — timid fictionalists will not have been looking for a reductive analysis of modality based on their fiction in the first place — and some timid fictionalists such as Divers 1999b explicitly endorse modal explanations of the fictionalist operator (Divers 1999b, p. 335). Such fictionalists may be happy to take advantage of possible analyses of “according to the fiction” operators in modal terms, and in so doing provide an answer to the question of how to understand such expressions: but on the other hand, their position may not be attractive to someone primarily concerned to analyse modal operators. (Even timid fictionalism is compatible with a reductionist account of modality, of course, since the timid fictionalist may seek to explain modality in some other terms. It is just that it is not hospitable to reductionist accounts of modality in terms of possible worlds).
A fictionalist who wishes to provide an analysis of modality, on the other hand, had better not take their “according to PW …” operator to be analysed in terms of standard modal devices, or alternatively in terms of possible worlds (see Rosen 1990, pp. 344–345). The canonical version of the theory that Rosen presents takes the “According to PW …” operator to be a primitive one: that is, one which is not to be further analysed, in modal or non-modal terms (Rosen 1995, p. 70). Rosen points out that one might think that his favoured prefix is a modal locution, and if so even his position cannot be said to entirely reduce the modal in favour of the non-modal (Rosen 1990, pp. 344-345). Nevertheless, as he points out, it may still be thought to be some theoretical advance to be able to explain all of the other modal notions using only this one. It is hard to know how the issue of whether or not “according to PW…” should count as a modal operator is to be decided: in any case, it will not be further pursued here.
Regardless of its status as a modal locution, Rosen recognizes that it is a very unsatisfying primitive: the notion of a proposition being true according to PW is an unlikely one to be considered basic and unanalysable. Whether or not this is a fatal flaw of Rosen's proposal is, he acknowledges, “a matter of somewhat delicate judgement” (Rosen 1990, p. 349). What he does have to say about it, however, is that arguably many realists about possible worlds have also not provided a satisfactory analysis of the “according to the fiction …” operator, and so face the same challenge.[7]
The issue of whether “According to PW…” is a satisfactory theoretical primitive is presumably partly to be settled by seeing what rival theories are possible, and what primitives they need to rely on to account for modality and for fiction. Beyond that, how to settle disputes about the relative attractiveness of primitives is a difficult issue in philosophical methodology. Taking such an apparently complex operator to be unanalysable looks unattractive (Nolan 1997a, pp. 273–274), but the position is perhaps not untenable. A better option for the modal fictionalist interested in analysing modality in terms of the modal fiction might be to attempt a non-modal explanation of what is true according to fiction. In any case, this problem, like many problems for modal fictionalism, does not arise for the timid modal fictionalist. For those fictionalists for which it is a problem, however, the unattractiveness and unintuitiveness of taking “According to PW…” or a similar device to be primitive remain a largely unaddressed challenge.

4.5 The Threat from Abstractionism

For modal fictionalism to become the preferred treatment of possible worlds, it must not only be able to perform adequately the tasks assigned to talk of possible worlds, it must also do better than its rivals, or at least possess virtues that those rivals lack. However, modal fictionalism faces a close rival that apparently shares its benefits and avoids some of its vices. Instead of a fiction of possible worlds, some rival views identify possible worlds with certain maximal representations. This sort of “abstractionist” view (following the terminology of Van Inwagen 1986), or “ersatz” view (in the terminology of Lewis 1986) is prima facie committed only to representations, as a modal fictionalist must it seems also be, but the abstractionist is a realist about possible worlds, and thus has prima facie a more straightforward approach than the fictionalist's.
This is particularly true in the case of the platonist modal fictionalist. If the modal fictionalist accepts that the modal fiction is a collection of platonistic propositions, then that very collection of propositions will also do as an abstractionist's “world book”: and if the fiction provides a separate description of each possible world (or such a description can be constructed from the resources given), then these complete representations will just be those things which some abstractionists take to be possible worlds. A modal fictionalist may be driven to accept that the fiction is a collection of propositions in response to any of several objections: the worry about artificiality, the worry about incompleteness, or alternatively on more general grounds (given that taking fictions to be collections of propositions is attractive quite apart from considerations about modal fictionalism). (This worry is mentioned in Nolan 1997a, p. 272.)
Suppose that a modal fictionalist does accept an ontology of propositions rich enough to provide for maximal consistent collections of such propositions. Why then would fictionalism be preferred to abstractionism, or vice versa? Abstractionism would have the advantage of being a more straightforward treatment of normal quantification over possible worlds, since there would be no need to suppose that there is (or should be) a silent “according to the fiction of possible worlds” or “according to the presupposition that there are worlds” governing such possible-worlds talk. Nor would abstractionism face the technical challenges that fictionalism faces, since all the merely possible worlds would in fact exist; there would be no problem of switching back and forth between fictional and literal discourse. Furthermore, an abstractionist would not need to face the worries of accounting for the “according to the fiction…” operator: the abstractionist's overall theory would need to make room for this operator somewhere, but she could hold out the promise of being able to use modal locutions and talk of possible worlds in its explication without risk of circularity.
One reason that might be offered for preferring modal fictionalism to some form of abstractionism is that abstractionism faces a battery of well-known objections, levelled against it by Lewis 1986, chapter 3. (Rosen 1990, pp. 328–9 mentions this as a motivation for fictionalism against abstractionism.) It is far from clear that fictionalism avoids these objections, however: and it seems that fictionalism committed to Platonic propositions prima facie faces the same worries about representation, primitive modality, and mysterious ontology. Whether the abstractionist can answer Lewis's objections, and whether the fictionalist can answer or avoid them as well or better, is an issue beyond the scope of this entry. I merely note that the Platonist fictionalist in particular should be cautious in drawing too much comfort from these arguments.
Rosen 1990 suggests another reason. It might be thought that there are good arguments to show that possible worlds, if there are any such things, must be concrete cosmoi like the one in which we inhabit, and cannot be abstract objects, especially abstract objects like collections of Platonic propositions. (He assumes that this has been established for the purposes of his paper on p. 329.) Indeed, if there were arguments to show that collections of propositions were non-starters as candidates to be possible worlds, this would damn the project of abstractionist theories of this form. It is hard to find in Lewis, or elsewhere, arguments that our conception of possible worlds is so tied to their being concrete that we should prefer to believe that there were no merely possible worlds than to believe that they turn out to be abstract objects, however, though Armstrong 1989 (p 46, 49) offers this as a reason for being a fictionalist rather than an ersatzer (abstractionist).
Finally, a modal fictionalist might reject abstractionism because he rejects the associated ontology of abstract propositions. This move does not seem open to a Platonist modal fictionalist, since the ontology is one of collections of propositions in both cases. A non-platonist fictionalist, who is happy to rely on fictions construed as collections of marks on paper, or noises in air, or perhaps a combination of these and mental states of speakers and listeners (or writers and readers), can then reject the abstractionist accounts of possible worlds at issue precisely because they are committed to abstract representing entities. Such a fictionalist needs to deal with the worries about artificiality and incompleteness (see above), which arise in more acute forms than face the platonist. He also has a further difficulty in that many accounts of fiction themselves refer to propositions, and are committed to them. The fictionalist who eschews propositions will need to provide an account of fiction and of sentences being true according to fictions compatible with repudiating commitment to propositions. This is not an easy task. However, if it could be carried out, it would be clear that in one respect at least — the respect of ontology — the fictionalist would have a theory with definite advantages over abstractionism. Since ontological concerns are among the primary motivations for modal fictionalism, this is no doubt a path some modal fictionalists will attempt.
Turp (2011) has recently discussed a different challenge that threatens to make modal fictionalism collapse into a version of abstractionism, though he does not present the problem in this way. He points to the fact that, given many theories of fictions, we become committed to thefictional objects associated with those fictions: we do not only have Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, for example, but we also have an object, the fictional Sherlock Holmes. If we apply this understanding of fiction to the modal fiction, it would yield that there are fictional possible worlds. Turp considers various of the standard options for fictional objects: that they are created abstract objects, or that they are eternal platonistic ones, or that they are non-existent objects of a certain sort. If we take any of these options, then we would be committed to objects that are much like the kind of objects that abstractionists of various sorts took possible worlds to be in the first place. It seems that the modal fictionalist will either have to deny that there are fictional objects corresponding to the possible worlds of their modal fiction, or they will have to explain why those fictional possible worlds are not suitable to play the role of the abstract (or non-existent) possible worlds that abstractionists appeal to in their theories.

4.6 Does Modal Fictionalism Deliver Possible Worlds Semantics?

John Divers in Divers 1995 argues that modal fictionalism cannot deliver the benefits of the standard possible worlds semantics for modal discourse. There is a discussion of Divers's argument in the following supplementary document:

اقتباس :: [Modal Fictionalism and Possible Worlds Semantics]

4.7 Concern about Concern

Another worry about modal fictionalism is discussed by Rosen 1990 (pp. 349–354): the “argument from concern”. An “argument for concern” was originally developed as an objection to the (realist) theory of possible worlds proposed by David Lewis. Lewis claimed that the truth of counterfactual conditional claims could be analysed as the truth of claims about the goings-on in other possible worlds: to take the classic example, the claim “Hubert Humphrey might have won” is true because there is a possible world very similar to ours in which someone much like Hubert Humphrey did win. Saul Kripke in Kripke 1980 suggested in a footnote (p. 45) that there was a problem for this view: while Humphrey cares a great deal about the fact that he might have won, he presumably does not care about whether someone a lot like him but who is not him wins in another cosmos. (“Probably, however, Humphrey could not care less whether someone else, no matter how much resembling him, would have been victorious in another possible world”). In any case, it is hard to believe that his concern about the first fact is a concern about the second. Examples can of course be multiplied: we often care about modal features of our lives (what could have been, and what would have been), but non-philosophers perhaps seldom even think about whether people much like them have different experiences in different cosmoi, let alone care deeply about such things. So expanded, the “argument from concern” is that the analysis of the truth-conditions of modal statements about objects in our world turns matters we care about into matters we do not care about, and so fails to be a plausible analysis. (Note that Kripke himself does not expand his passing comment in this way).
The analogous “argument for concern” can be run for modal fictionalism (and indeed for almost any account of the truth-conditions of modal claims: see Lewis 1986, pp. 195-197, who argues in part that ersatzers are in the same boat as he is). Humphrey cares about whether he could have won the election, or whether he would have won if some things had been done differently, but it is hard to believe that he cares particularly whether according to a certain story people like him win in other worlds, or even whether according to a certain unusual story he himself wins in other worlds. So it seems implausible to suppose the question of whether or not he could have won is the same question as the question of whether according to the story he does win in certain other worlds.
As Rosen points out in the case of Kripke's objection to Lewis, “this by itself is not a logical objection to the claim that the facts are identical” (p. 349). One may care deeply about something, not realising that it is identical to something else one claims not to care about (just as I might greatly admire the speeches of Cicero, and honestly claim to have no time for the speeches of Tully). Even if the issue of whether Humphrey could have won is just the issue of whether the modal fiction says that counterparts of Humphrey win at other worlds, this would not mean that this philosophical analysis will be obvious to workaday politicians like Humphrey, nor need it be reflected in his views. Rosen suggests that the objection might have a more ‘pragmatic’ force (p. 350). The objection might be something like this (the way of putting it is not Rosen's, but I take it the sentiments are): we care about what might have been, and if the modal fictionalist is right, what might have been is a matter of what the fiction says about what goes on in other worlds, and what some complicated story says about other cosmoi is not something we currently have more than an academic interest in, it seems. So if we accept this theory, we should revise what we care about (since we shall think the two come to the same thing): either by becoming as indifferent to modal matters as we are to what story the modal fiction tells — or alternatively by becoming as concerned about the contents of the modal fiction as we currently are about what could have been and would have been, had we acted differently. Either option requires large revisions of our concerns, and it is a cost of a theory to require such revision.
Rosen's response to this, on behalf of the modal fictionalist, is that this price is worth paying, particularly if we extend our concern to the contents of the fiction, rather than the much harder task of ceasing to care about modal matters of fact. He then goes on to point out that this raises another worry, that of arbitrariness: why care so much about the contents of the modal fiction as opposed, say, to any other story about many worlds and what happens in each? Rosen discusses several possible replies to this question (Rosen 1990, pp. 352–353), though leaves the final answer open. It seems to this writer, however, that this might not be a particular problem for modal fictionalists: for the question of why we should care about modal facts as opposed to truths expressed with any other conceivable intensional operators looks equally pressing, and any realist who, for instance, analyses modality in terms of the nature of possible worlds will face the question of why we should care about what is true according to the various worlds, as opposed to what is “shtrue” at these worlds, where the “shtrue at” relation is some other relation between worlds and propositions. At the very least, one would want a theory of how our concern for modal truths might be justifiable before seriously worrying about whether the same sort of thing could be said about concern about the content of the modal fiction.
Finally, the whole argument from concern presented above only really gets a hold on the modal fictionalist who thinks that what is the case modally is just a matter of the contents of the modal fiction. There is no need to think this, of course, and timid modal fictionalists will reject it. (Rosen also points out that the modal fictionalist can sidestep the argument if he does not take the fiction to provide the materials for an analysis of modality.) Even strong modal fictionalists can in principle think that there is some sort of analysis or reduction of the modal to what the contents of the fiction are without taking the further step of thinking that the modal facts and facts about the content of the fiction are one and the same. (This would be one way of linking the two, but they might think that the modal facts are constituted by facts about the fiction without thereby being identical with them, for example). So the argument from concern creates problems only for some modal fictionalists.

4.8 About Aboutness

Armour-Garb (2015, 1212–1218) raises a concern for a modal fictionalist seeking an “elliptical rendering” of modal claims in terms of a claim about what is true according to a fiction of possible worlds. It is that the modal claims we begin with are not about the same things as the paraphrases in terms of a fiction of possible worlds. This is a problem, according to Armour-Garb, because the point of modal claims involves them being about the things they normally seem to be about, so the modal fictionalist's substitute is inadequate.
Armour-Garb interprets Rosen 1990 as holding that modal claims, such as “there might have been blue swans” are equivalent in meaning to a claim that explicitly mentions possible worlds. Rosen's fictionalist, then, according to Armour-Garb, proposes a reinterpretation of sentences that apparently quantify over possible worlds as instead making a claim about what is true according to the fiction of possible worlds. In effect, then, the fictionalist proposes that modal claims such as “possibly, there are blue swans” are to be reinterpreted to mean that according to the fiction of possible worlds, there are possible worlds that contain blue swans.
While Rosen does talk of “analyses”, Rosen 1990 is not explicit that this is what is being proposed. But let us consider a Rosen-style fictionalist who does have the aim Armour-Garb attributes to Rosen's fictionalist. Why worry if the fictionalist's substitute for a realist's modal claims is not about the same things as the realist's original claim? This will turn on how different the subject matter of the modal fictionalist's paraphrase is from the subject matter of the original modal claim. Armour-Garb points out that the paraphrase is about a fiction about possible worlds, while e.g. “possibly there are blue swans” is not. He also claims that a claim like “according to PW, there is a possible world containing blue swans” is not about blue swans. He draws an analogy with claims about paradigm fictions (p 1213). Armour-Garb holds that claims such as “[a]ccording to the Holmes stories, there is a brilliant detective at 221b Baker Street.” are not about detectives or 221b Baker Street: and so likewise “according to PW, there are worlds containing blue swans” should not be taken to be about worlds or blue swans. If the modal fictionalist substitute for “possibly, there are blue swans” is not about blue swans, or perhaps even about blueness or swanhood, then it is very hard to see why we would bother saying it when we want to talk about swans: or in general why the modal fictionalist's substitute for modal claims has anything much to do with non-modal claims apparently about similar matters.
Armour-Garb 2015 does not say why he thinks that the “according to the fiction...” claims are on the face of it not about matters such as detectives or blue swans. Perhaps this will be true on some theories of aboutness, e.g. those that say no claim is about blue swans unless blue swans exist. Those with accounts of aboutness of the sort Armour-Garb appears to favor had better be especially careful with fictionalist paraphrases.

Modal fictionalists in general need not take the biconditionals they endorse between modal claims, on the one hand, and claims about fictions of possible worlds, on the other, to be biconditionals that link claims that are equivalent in meaning. Those that do, however, must face the challenge to explain why it would be useful to make claims about what is true in fictions of possible worlds in the circumstances where we ordinarily think we are making claims about e.g. blue swans and what is possible for them. This can be seen as a special case of an even more general challenge for modal fictionalists of all sorts: whatever the status of the fictionalist's biconditional, why would it be useful to make modal claims that have the sort of link to a fiction of possible worlds that the fictionalist maintains? Why is making modal claims any more important than any other engagement with stories?

The Theoretical Primitives of Modal Fictionalism

4.5 The Threat from Abstractionism

4.6 Does Modal Fictionalism Deliver Possible Worlds Semantics?

4.7 Concern about Concern

4.8 About Aboutness

The Theoretical Primitives of Modal Fictionalism :: تعاليق

The Theoretical Primitives of Modal Fictionalism