Richard Woodward

Richard Woodward

Universität Hamburg

Presentation:

Incomplete Fictions
Wednesday, 2 December 2015
16:00 Room 246, Senate House

Abstract

It is widely accepted that there is an important normative connection between the imagination and the fictional, one that is analogous to the normative connection between belief and truth. That is, just as one ought to believe what is true, one ought to imagine what is fictional. But it is well-known that fictions are typically incomplete insofar as there are propositions that are neither fictionally true nor fictionally false. In the talk, I examine the significance of fictional incompleteness with respect to the normative profile of fictionality. On the pluralistic view to be developed, there is no once and for all answer to the question of which imaginings are appropriate when faced with an incomplete fiction: different norms are operative in different cases. However, whilst the view is pluralistic at its edges, it is evidentialist at its core: in standard cases of fictional incompleteness, appreciators should match their imaginative credences to the fictive evidence.