Publication Date
2014
Faculty Department
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Document Type
Article
Abstract
In my “Creatures of Fiction, Objects of Myth” (2014), I present and defend an argument for thinking that mythical creationism – the view that mythical objects like phlogiston and Vulcan are abstract artifacts – is false. One intriguing sort of objection to my argument has been recently put forth by Zvolenszky (2016); she claims that a crucial premise is seen to be unjustified once one considers the phenomena of inadvertently created abstracta, specifically, inadvertently created fictional characters. I here argue that even if we admit inadvertently created abstracta into our ontology, my argument survives. I ultimately defend a view on which fictional characters (if real) may be countenanced as created abstracta, whether purposefully created or not, yet mythical objects are best taken to be discoverable, Platonic abstracta (if real). We can see that such a hybrid ontology is justified once we take proper note of the nature of the sorts of authorial activities involved in fictional storytelling and scientific hypothesizing.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
“On Inadvertently Created Abstracta, Fictional Storytelling, and Scientific Hypothesizing,” Res Philosophica, Vol. 94, No. 1 (2017)
