Abstrakt
Plakátek ke stažení ZDE.
According to artifactualism about fictional characters (fictional artifactualism for short), King Leontes in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale is an abstract artifact created by Shakespeare's activities. My goal is to reflect on the phenomenon of inadvertent creation and argue that—a certain objection to the contrary—it doesn't undermine fictional artifactualism.
Elsewhere I have argued that a proponent of fictional artifactualism can maintain that authors' error may plausibly result in the inadvertent creation of fictional characters; for example in certain cases when an author mistakenly thinks he is writing about a historical figure or a geographical region she creates, without intending to do so, a fictional character (a possible instance of this is Shakespeare's introduction of Bohemia in Winter's Tale).
"We don't need no inadvertent creation", someone might object to such an outcome of the fictional artifactualist stance, suggesting that the goal of avoiding inadvertent creation undermines fictional artifactualism (along with other forms of artifactualism that feature inadvertent creation phenomena). I will, accordingly, call this line the "We don't need no inadvertent creation" objection (No-IC objection for short).
In this talk, based on considerations about names introduced for hypothetical objects in mistaken theories (such as 'Vulcan'), I will show how a defender of fictional (and other forms of) artifactualism can respond to the No-IC objection.
