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Fictional Migration and the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis Before addressing what it is to say that a fictional character migrates from one work of fiction to the next, it’s imperative to clarify the identity conditions for a fictional entity. How one ultimately characterizes fictional entities often becomes a matter of deciding what commitments one is willing or unwilling to give up. I am unwilling to give up a commitment to poetic license with a vengeance. Coined by Harry Deutsch, a “principle of poetic license” captures the intuition that absolutely anything can be a story. As a loosely-constructed comprehension principle for story generation, a principle of poetic license shows the logical basis for the claim that any proposition can constitute a story1. In endorsing poetic license in its fullest, it follows that any theory of fictional entities that requires poetic license to be restricted ought to be rejected. A commitment to unrestricted poetic license precludes an object-theoretic analysis of fictional entities. That is to say, fictional entities cannot be construed as objects without restricting poetic license. An object theory of fiction has to provide an account of how a fictional object has the properties it has. Fictional objects have both the properties ascribed to them in the work in which they appear and also the properties they possess actually. A strong, unrestricted comprehension principle of object generation holds that for any conditions on properties C, there is an object that possesses all and only those properties satisfying C. Traditionally there has been two ways in which object-theorists have dealt with the problem of accounting for the properties the fictional object has relative to the story and relative to the actual world. One approach involves positing two distinct kinds of properties and the other approach involves positing two 1 Deutsch 1 distinct modes of predication. The first approach involves the claim that there are different kinds of properties, for example internal properties or external properties. The second approach holds that there is only one kind of property, but an object can have its properties in different ways, for example by either encoding or exemplification. In the end, it doesn’t make a difference whether one adopts a kinds of properties distinction or a modes of predication distinction. Any fullfledged object-theoretic comprehension principle leads to paradox. This paradox is similar in nature to the Russell paradox. The Russell paradox showed a problem with naïve set-theory, in that the “set of all sets that do not contain themselves as members” would be a member of itself if and only if it was not a member of itself. In order to avoid paradox, restrictions must be placed on the comprehension principle so that not every object can be generated via the comprehension principle. But this violates the principle of poetic licenses that holds that we can make up absolutely anything we want to make up. And so, to maintain poetic license with a vengeance, object-theoretic analyses of fictional entities are rejected. Now, it is not crucial at this juncture to endorse a positive account of fictional entities. One might remain ontologically neutral while maintaining that whatever fictional entities may be, they are definitely not objects. In fact, it is probably most wise to remain ontologically neutral, as a full account of fictional entities may require very difficult problems in the philosophy of mind, intentionality in particular, to be solved. For now it will suffice to say that fictional entities are intentional “objects” (for lack of a better word), whatever they might be according to a complete theory of mind. I suspect that fictional entities are best defined as concepts and that our intentional attitudes toward fictional entities are a matter of quantifying over properties. But again, at this point, it will be enough to maintain a stance of ontological 2 neutrality toward fictional entities while maintaining that they are not objects, as object-theoretic approaches to fictional entities require restricting poetic license to avoid paradoxical objects. Returning to the phenomenon of fictional migration, as fictional entities are not objects, the identity conditions for fictional entities across works cannot be a matter of sameness of object. So when we ask what makes the fictional entity in fictional work A the same fictional entity in fictional work B, we cannot answer by saying that they are the same object. We can, while still maintaining neutrality, say that the same concept picks out both entities. And we can also hold that fictional “worlds” are a type of fictional entity and thus the identity conditions for fictional worlds are also a matter of falling under the same concept. It’s important to be clear on what is meant by fictional “worlds” when accounting for fictional migration. When claiming that a fictional character migrates from one fictional world to another or that two works of fiction take place in the same fictional, it requires that we give an account of what makes fictional worlds distinct or what makes them the same. But even if we hold that fictional world identity is a matter of sameness of concept, questions still arise. We need to address the question of whether distinct fictional worlds can combine, a phenomenon I’ll call ‘fusion’. If fusion is possible, we need to stipulate the conditions under which two distinct fictional worlds may or may not successfully fuse. Additionally, we need to address the question of whether fictional migration is possible in the absence of fusion. Given that we are loosely defining fictional entities (thus fictional characters and fictional worlds) as concepts, it might strange to talk of two concepts fusing or one concept migrating from another concept. If they are concepts, fictional entities are, or at least can be, highly complex concepts. But when we consider simpler concepts, fusion and migration don’t seem all 3 that strange. For example, the concepts ‘unmarried’ and ‘male’ fuse in the concept ‘bachelor’. Likewise, we can abstract the concept ‘unmarried’ from the concept ‘bachelor’ and in that sense ‘unmarried’ migrates out of ‘bachelor’. With an intuitive sense of fusion and migration, we can now provide a more formal account that specifies the conditions for successful fusion and successful migration. Once again, we need to consider whether our analysis of fictional fusion or fictional migration requires us to sacrifice any commitments we might be unwilling to sacrifice. As fusion of fictional worlds involves combining the propositions that are true in those worlds, the issue of truth in fiction becomes central to the discussion. While providing a thorough account of truth in fiction is outside the scope of this paper, the question of how to handle contradiction is highly relevant when considering the conditions under which we can successfully combine fictional worlds. On most accounts of truth in fiction, more is true in a given fiction than is explicitly stated. Not only are the propositions stipulated as true in the fiction true, but so are the propositions entailed by those propositions. Now when fictional world are combined, it might be the case that a contradiction arises in either the explicitly stipulated propositions or in the propositions that are true by entailment. So, we might ask what happens when fictional worlds combine and a contradiction arises. We might first ask why it matters if combining fictional worlds generates a contradiction. We might ask why we should care about contradictions. We should care about contradictions because in logic, everything follows from a contradiction. This is called explosion. If we don’t block explosion, we have to allow that in contradictory fiction, everything is true. Some philosophers, David Lewis for instance, take the position that it is the case that in contradictory fiction (a type of impossible fiction), everything is true. This seems unappealing. Lewis does 4 make accommodations for venially impossible fiction, in which the impossibility that arises from the contradiction is a matter of oversight on the part of the author. His accommodation involves appealing to revised, contradictory-free versions of the fiction2. This latter approach compromises poetic licenses. It also raises the question of whether we need to allow for impossible fiction to avoid constraining poetic license. The answer is yes. If we simply stipulate that fiction must be possible, we constrain poetic license. We should be free to make up any story we want, possible or impossible. But what should we do with contradictions? As embracing contradictions would involve sacrificing rules of logic I refuse to sacrifice, I suggest that the best option for dealing with contradictions is to adopt a relevance logic in regard to fiction. Relevance logic will allow us to bracket contradictions to avoid explosion but falls short of embracing contradiction at the expense of classical logic. In respect to fusion, we can hold that the degree to which fusion is possible is relative to the amount of bracketing that would be required to fuse the fictions. We’ll now look at some possible instances of fusion, in the context of the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis. Tommy Westphall is an autistic child character on televisions St. Elsewhere. The last episode of St. Elsewhere suggests that the entirety of the show took place in the imagination of Tommy Westphall. St. Elsewhere shared characters with other shows, for instance Homicide: Life on the Street, which shared characters with other shows, which shared characters with other shows… If we hold that in virtue of shared characters, the fictions in question take place in the same fictional world, we can reach the ridiculous conclusion that all these television shows 2 Lewis 5 actually take place in the mind of Tommy Westphall. Philosopher Brian Weatherst3on came up with six objections to the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis. I’m not going to address all six, but his sixth objection is relevant to the discussion of fictional fusion and migration. Weatherson’s sixth objection simply states that just because a fictional character appears in two different shows, it doesn’t follow that the shows take place in the same fictional world. This seems to imply that fusion is not necessary for migration, and migration is not sufficient for fusion. If we deny that migration is sufficient for fusion, the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis falls apart. Though the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis falls apart, it does provide a good source of examples of fictional migration. Let’s consider the fictional character John Munch. Munch first appeared in Homicide: Life on the Stree and later transitioned to Law and Order: SVU. As the worlds of Homicide: Life on the Street and Law and Order: SVU are similar and combining the two doesn’t generate any glaring contradictions I’m aware of (as we can allow for insignificant contradictions to be bracketed), we can say that this is an instance of fictional migration and successful fusion. Munch also appeared in an episode of The X-Files. Since The X-Files involves a lot of weird, paranormal stuff, we could say that to try to combine the world of The X-Files with the worlds of Homicide: Life on the Street and Law and Order: SVU would require extensive bracketing. So here we would have an instance of fictional migration but not of successful fictional-world fusion. To conclude, fictional migration is not sufficient to entail fictional fusion. Just because two fictions share the same fictional character, it doesn’t follow that they share the same fictional world. They might share the same fictional world, but fusion of fictional worlds requires that 3 http://tar.weatherson.org/2004/10/04/six-‐objections-‐to-‐the-‐westphall-‐hypothesis/ 6 bracketing be kept to a minimum. As fictional entities are not objects, an account of fictional migration that characterizes successful migration in terms of object-identity across fictions is problematic. And if one wants to block explosion so as not to have it be the case that everything is true in an inconsistent fiction, adopting a relevance logic is the best option. So, a successful account of fictional migration needs to reject an object theory of fiction and ought to adopt a relevance logic with respect to the realm of fiction. These considerations are not merely interesting in the context of the philosophy of fiction. ‘Fictionalism’ is adopted as a methodological approach to ontological issues in the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of science, ethics and other areas. As treating entities as “useful fictions” gains popularity, the more important it becomes to construct a complete theory of fiction not just for philosophy, but for a wide range of disciplines. 7 References: Deutsch, Harry “Making up Stories” Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-‐Existence Anthony Everett and Thomas Hofweber (eds) 2000, CSLI Publications Lewis, David “Truth in Fiction.” American Philosophical Quarterly 15, (1978), 37-‐46 http://tar.weatherson.org/2004/10/04/six-‐objections-‐to-‐the-‐westphall-‐hypothesis/ 8