This challenging study places fiction squarely at the centre of the discussion of metaphysics. Philosophers have traditionally treated fiction as involving a set of narrow problems in logic or the philosophy of language. By contrast Amie Thomasson argues that fiction has far-reaching implications for central problems of metaphysics. The book develops an 'artifactual' theory of fiction, whereby fictional characters are abstract artifacts as ordinary as laws or symphonies or works of literature. By understanding fictional characters we come to understand how other cultural and social objects are established on the basis of the independent physical world and the mental states of human beings.
| ISBN: | 9780521065214 |
| Publication date: | 12th June 2008 |
| Author: | Amie L Texas Tech University Thomasson |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 188 pages |
| Series: | Cambridge Studies in Philosophy |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Philosophy: aesthetics |