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need not enter these arguments here. One can find a more rigorous and detailed attempt to give an analysis of the similarity relation in [Lewis1979a].

Given such a selection function, here is the formal definition of the truth-conditions for counterfactual statements:

[[φ > ψ]]_w ={w:f(w,[[φ]]_w)⊆[[ψ]]_w} So much for counterfactuals.

Lewis claims that fictional statements like (1) and (2) are the same as counterfac-tual statements and should thus be analysed in the same manner. But there is one immediate problem for this claim: fictional statements and counterfactuals do not seem to have the same logical form. Indeed, a counterfactual statement φ > ψ is a complex formula which is easily cut into two articulated propositions which are tra-ditionally called the antecedent and the consequent of the counterfactual. Fictional statements, on the other hand, appear in one piece.

To handle this problem, Lewis postulates a covert “fictional operator”:

Let us not take our descriptions of fictional characters at face value, but instead let us regard them as abbreviations for longer sentences be-ginning with an operator “In such-and-such fiction ...”. Such a phrase is an intensional operator that may be prefixed to a sentence φ to form a new sentences. But the prefixed operator may be dropped by way of abbreviation, leaving us with what sounds like the original sentence φ but differ from it in sense.⁴

The detailed analysis of the fictional operator is the concern of Lewis’s article and all its unforeseen developments.

In order to guide him in this definition, Lewis states the general idea very clearly which fastens the similarity between fictional and counterfactual statements. Here is Lewis’s idea in his own words:

... we might proceed as follows: a prefixed sentence “In the fiction f, φ ” is true (or, as we shall also say, φ is true in the fiction f) iff φ is true at every possible world in a certain set, this set being somehow determined by the fiction f.⁵

Hence, just as there is a selection function whose role in the semantic analysis of counterfactuals is to select the worlds at which the antecedent is true, there should

4[Lewis1978], p. 37-38.

5[Lewis1978], p. 39.

be a selection function whose role in the semantic analysis of fictional statements is to select the worlds at which all the “truths” in that fiction are truths simpliciter.

Evaluating a fictional sentence amounts to checking whether that sentence is true simpliciter in the fiction-selected worlds, just as evaluating a counterfactual amounts to checking whether the consequent is true in the antecedent-selected worlds.

So Lewis should say something about how we can get the relevant selection func-tion from the ficfunc-tional text. At this point Lewis considers and dismisses the idea that it should be the simple conjunction of all the explicit fictional sentences consti-tuting the story. This is, in essence, explicitism as discussed above and Lewis gives the traditional counterarguments to such a view. Lewis’s own proposal to avoid the problems of explicitism is to appeal to the act of storytelling:

The worlds we should consider, I suggest, are the worlds where the fiction is told, but as known fact rather than fiction. The act of story-telling occurs, just as it does at our world; but there it is what here it falsely purports to be: truth-telling about matters whereof the teller has knowledge.⁶

The remainder of the article is an attempt to formalise this informal solution to the problem of fictional “truth”.

Following Lewis’s idea, we now have a general recipe to rewrite any fictional statement in a counterfactual paraphrase. First, one makes overt the covert fictional operator so that (1) and (2) become (3) and (4). Then, one develops the fictional operator in the manner presented above so as to get:⁷

(5) If Shakespeare’s Hamlet were told as known fact rather than fiction, Hamlet would be a human being.

(6) If Shakespeare’s Hamlet were told as known fact rather than fiction, Hamlet would be a crocodile.

Both (5) and (6) have the logical form of a counterfactual. So one can give their truth-value, applying Lewis’s theory of counterfactual. (5) is true because all the worlds in which Hamlet is told as known fact and Hamlet is a human being are closer to the worlds in which Hamlet is told as known fact and Hamlet is not a human being. (6) is false because there is a world in which Hamlet is told as known fact and Hamlet is not a crocodile which is closer to the worlds in which Hamlet is told as known fact and Hamlet is a crocodile, namely a world in which Hamlet

6[Lewis1978], p. 40.

7This corresponds to Lewis’sAnalysis 0.

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is a human being. Given any reasonable definition of similarity across worlds, such reasoning holds. Consequently, (1) is “true in Hamlet” and (2) is “false inHamlet”.

There are problems and debate about what “told as known fact” precisely means here, which are the object of Lewis’s discussion of his own Analysis 1 and 2.⁸ I need not go into the detail here, for the objections to the modal account apply to the counterfactual account of fictional sentences in general.

2.2 On the kinds of counterarguments to the modal account

2.2.1 Some terminology

A modal account of fiction is a theory which claims that fictional “truth” is a kind of modal truth; hence, that the semantic analysis of fictional statement is akin to the semantic analysis of modal statements. Given that it is very common to give the semantic analysis of modal statements within the possible-world framework, modal theorists usually try to give a semantics for fictional statements using possible worlds.

Lewis’s counterfactual account of fictional statements is a paradigmatic example of a modal account, since counterfactual statements are a particular kind of modal statements.

The arguments given below target all modal accounts, and especially criticise the idea of using possible worlds to give a solution to the problem of fictional “truth”.

So Lewis is only a paradigmatic target for such arguments.⁹ It will be useful to have his theory in mind for the developments, though.

2.2.2 Indirect and direct arguments

The modal account faces two well-known objections in the literature. Both objections focus on the fact that possible-world semantics is too strong for the analysis of truth in fiction. The possible worlds of possible world semantics are necessarily complete and consistent. But fictions are generally thought of as often incomplete

8[Lewis1978], p. 42; p. 45.

9At least, Lewis’s theory as I have presented it. For the record, my rendering of Lewis’s theory of “truth in fiction” is a simplified version which may not be very charitable to Lewis. Indeed, I crucially avoid all mention of pretence which is, arguably, at the core of Lewis’s theory. Consequently one could argue that I discuss a shallow version of Lewis. If that is the case, I hope Lewis would have forgiven my thus shallowing him.

and sometimes inconsistent. Here are two examples of these classic objections. In [Currie1990], p. 54, Currie writes:

Possible worlds are determinate with respect to truth; [...] they are consistent [...] but fictional worlds are always indeterminate and some-times inconsistent.

In [Walton 1990], p. 64, Walton writes:

[...] fictional worlds are not possible worlds. Two differences, es-pecially, have been discussed elsewhere: fictional worlds are sometimes impossible and usually incomplete, whereas possible worlds (as normally construed) are necessarily both possible and complete.

Therefore, so the argument goes, the standard possible world semantic framework is not fit for fictions.¹⁰

I call these objections “indirect arguments”. Indeed, the structure of the argu-ments is that of areductio: one assumes that the central claim of the modal account is correct so that we can use possible-world semantics, and then one shows that possible-world semantics is not fit for the job. As a result, one concludes that the modal account is not a good theory of fictional “truth”. Such arguments have received an enormous amount of attention in the literature, since they have been replied to in various ways. Interestingly, to reverse Smart’s saying, it appears that one’smodus tollens is another’smodus ponens. Indeed, some philosophers, in order to meet these indirect arguments, have taken on board the fact that fictional worlds are neither consistent nor complete by extending the standard possible-world framework into including incomplete, inconsistent worlds. These are called “impossible” or “non-normal” worlds. They are still modal theorists about fictional “truth”, but they can be called non-normal modal theorists, since they accept non-normal worlds into the picture. In chapter 4, I will engage with non-normal modal theorists.

But one can also produce “direct arguments” against the modal account. Such arguments deny the central tenet of the modal account, namely that fictional state-ments are a kind of modal statestate-ments. These argustate-ments are very rare in the philo-sophical literature. In chapter 5, I will argue that although it is true that fictional statements are similar to counterfactuals, we need to have a fiction-first perspective on this similarity. In other words, I think that it is true that counterfactuals and

10I will use the term “incompleteness” and not “indeterminacy” in this part. Nothing hinges on this choice of words. The reason why I distinguish between these terms is because I will use the term “indeterminacy” to denote another phenomenon discussed inpart 2.

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fictional sentences should share characteristic semantic features, but I think counter-factuals should be theorised after a proper theory of fictional “truth”, not the other way around. Such direct arguments will motivate the alternative account of fictional

“truth”, namely the functional account.

2.3 Aside on the literary minded modal theorists

Before I argue against the modal account, I want to dispel a possible confusion about modally minded theorists. What I have said so far might suggest that the modal account is designed for logically minded philosophers and formal linguists since possible-world semantics has become a second nature to them. This is not true. Many literary theorists went for the modal account too.

In [Lavocat 2010b], Lavocat gives a detailed overview of the main contributions and interests of literary theorists when it comes to the notion of possible worlds.

Three major figures of literary theories stand out by using a version of the modal account: Thomas Pavel especially in [Pavel 1975] and [Pavel 1986], Umberto Eco in [Eco 1979] and Marie-Laure Ryan in [Ryan 1991]. All used a theory of fictional

“truth” using possible worlds and went on theorizing about narratological problems using this new theoretical framework. Following these pioneers, many other literary theorists followed in adopting a version of the modal account. The recent collabora-tive work [Lavocat2010a] shows that the modal account is still living in the literary studies.

Pavel’s reasons for adopting a modal account of fictional “truth” are interesting to spell out, for he was deliberately trying to apply the logical framework to literary problems, thus putting forward the idea of literary criticism as applied philosophy.

One of his original motivation was constructive. He thought structuralist approaches to narratology became too stiff in the seventies and took possible-world semantics to be a good candidate for giving a semantics to the syntactically minded approach of structuralist narratology. Another motivation is polemical. He wanted to use possible-world semantics to argue against historicism whose main contender is that the interpretation of fictional texts was first and foremost given by the knowledge of the author’s historical background. Possible worlds, indeed, do not depend on his-torical features: they represent some abstract semantic content which is independent of the circumstances of utterance of modal statements.

Apart from literary theorists, some novelists also were interested in the modal account. Milan Kundera, for instance, is a very eloquent advocate of the modal account. In several places, both in his fiction and non-fiction, Kundera argued that fictionalia are possibilia, that is the idea that one should think of the fictional as a

subset of the possible. This claim is, in essence, the modal account. Here is, for instance, a excerpt from The unbearable lightness of being, part 5, ch. 15:

And once more I see him the way he appeared to me at the very beginning of the novel: standing at the window and staring across the courtyard at the walls opposite.

This is the image from which he was born. As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.

But isn’t it true that an author can write only about himself?

Staring impotently across a courtyard, at a loss for what to do; hearing the pertinacious rumbling of one’s own stomach during a moment of love;

betraying, yet lacking the will to abandon the glamorous path of betrayal;

raising one’s fist with the crowds in the Grand March; displaying one’s wit before hidden microphones – I have known all these situations, I have experienced them myself, yet none of them has given rise to the person my curriculum vitae and I represent. The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own “I” ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. The novel is not the author’s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become. But enough. Let us return to Tomas.

Therefore, one should not think that the modal account is a mere logistic frenzy.

On the contrary, it should be thought of as intuitive and appealing. However, I shall now argue that it does not give an adequate solution to the problem of fictional

“truth”.

Chapter 3

Indirect arguments against the