Against Mythical Backward-looking Creationism
Introduction
In this paper, I want to hold an original position as regards the metaphysics of mythical entities, a special kind of fictional entities; namely, those fictional entities that, at least in the standard cases, are not recognised as such by their purported authors, for such subjects entertain no relevant act of make-believe. This position can be labelled weak mythical creationism. For it lies between straightforward mythical creationism, the position holding that all mythical entities are on a par in their being created by their purported authors (Salmon 2002; Caplan 2004; Braun 2005; Zvolenszky 2016), and mythical anticreationism, which may acknowledge that mythical entities are abstracta, yet it denies that they are artefactual creations (Goodman 2014, 2017). Indeed, there is a grain of truth in Goodman’s (2014) aversion to straightforward mythical creationism. Yet this grain has not to do with the problem of ascribing to such entities inadvertent (i.e., nonintentional) creation, as Goodman himself has later (2017) acknowledged. For this form of creation (Zvolenszky 2016) may properly affect both fictional and standard mythical entities, legendary objects, as Kripke (2013) originally labelled them. Instead, the grain regards only those nonstandard mythical entities for which Kripke himself (2013) said that they are mythical just in a metaphorical sense: post-empirical posits. For, unlike both ordinary fictional entities and legendary objects, a post-empirical posit
is an abstractum that is created not by its purported author, who is for it just a merely purported author, but by a later audience of the narration that the merely purported author inaugurates. For the merely purported author instead thinks of a both numerically and metaphysically different entity; namely, a concrete entity that is merely possible. By contrast, the later audience disregards this entity, while creating an utterly new abstract entity, which is merely similar to that possible entity. This further abstract entity is mythical just in a metaphorical sense. For it is a full-fledged fictional entity that is created on the basis of an act of make-believe on that audience’s part. Thus, in defending creationism both for legendary objects and for post-empirical posits conceived as I said before, weak creationism rejects the form of mythical backward-looking creationism that straightforward mythical creationism entails. I label it backward-looking creationism, for according to it those who actually did not author post-empirical posits, their merely purported authors, are nevertheless their creators. For mythical backward-looking creationism, such people inadvertently create the mythical, actually fictional, entity that for me is instead created only later by a subsequent audience.
I will proceed as follows. In Section 1, I present the debate between creationism and anticreationism about mythical entities, and I provide an assessment of that debate, which is intended to show the pros and cons of both positions. In Section 2, I present my own proposal. By lying between straightforward mythical creationism and mythical anticreationism, the proposal deserves to be labeled weak creationism about mythical
entities. In Section 3, I try to show how weak creationism can cope with some problems and objections.
1. The Creationism/Anticreationism Debate As Regards Mythical Entities
Broadly speaking, a mythical entity is a special kind of a fictional entity that, at least in standard cases, is not recognised as such by its purported author. For on the one hand, this purported author entertains no relevant act of make-believe that there is an individual that does such and such, and on the other hand, she fails to believe that the entity that has been anyway mobilised by her story-telling is fictional. More precisely, however, one may divide mythical entities into two main subclasses. First, standard mythical entities or legendary objects, the outcome of false religious or anyway nonscientific texts (Kripke 1980, 2013). Second, nonstandard mythical entities or post-empirical posits, the outcome of false scientific theories or false experiences more in general, typically false perceptual experiences of a hallucinatory kind (Braun 2005; Caplan 2004; Salmon 2002).
Mythical creationism is the metaphysical doctrine according to which mythical entities figure in the overall ontological domain as abstract created artefacts; namely, as products of a form of narrative activity. Straightforward mythical creationism adds to the mythical creationist idea the claim that there is no significant distinction, as regards their creation, between standard and nonstandard mythical entities. Both are indeed
created by their purported authors – kinds of storytellers in the first case, scientists or self-reporting bearers of the relevant false experiences in the second case. For straightforward mythical creationism, therefore, in the second case creation is backward-looking creation. For it is traced back to such scientists, or even experience bearers. Hence, it is not ascribed to the operation of a later audience.
In what follows, I will try to show that mythical backward-looking creationism is incorrect. For the second kind of mythical entities, post-empirical posits, are nonstandard not exactly because they are the outcome of false scientific theories or false hallucinatory experiences, but because, as Kripke (2013) rightly intuited, they are mythical only in a metaphorical sense. Indeed, they are just full-fledged fictional entities in that they are not inadvertently created by what turn out to be their merely purported authors. Instead, they are created by a later audience of the narrations inaugurated by those authors on the basis of such audience’s make-believe activity that there are individuals doing such and such things. As far as I know, nobody has explicitly maintained that post-empirical posits are just the fictional entities created by a later audience.1 Yet as we will see, this idea must be flanked by the further idea that entertainers of false theories/experiences do actually refer to something, namely actually nonexistent mere possibilia. Hence, they cannot be ascribed a reference to abstract artefactual mythical entities.
1 The idea is implicit in Kripke, since in (2013) he explicitly says not only that in the scientists’ use, the relevant names (‘Vulcan’, in his example) refer to nothing, but also that such a use is not flanked on the scientists’ part (Le Verrier, in his example) by another yet fully referential use towards a mythical entity.
Before articulating my proposal, however, let us see how the controversy between creationists and anticreationists about mythical entities has been developed. In (2014), Jeffrey Goodman argued that mythical creationism in general – hence, straightforward mythical creationism as well – is false. For, says Goodman, there is a basic disanalogy between fictional entities on the one hand, the paradigmatic case of abstract created artefacts, and mythical entities on the other hand, in particular nonstandard ones.2 Unlike fictional entities, there is no modal guarantee for the creation of a mythical entity. Premise (2) of the following valid argument stresses this disanalogy:
(1) If Vulcan is a created abstractum (like a paradigmatic fictum, e.g. Sherlock Holmes), then Vulcan is created by its author, Le Verrier, in every possible world where that author performs relevantly similar activities to those he actually performed;
(2) There is a possible world where Le Verrier performs relevantly similar activities to those he actually performed and yet he fails to create the abstractum Vulcan (he rather makes a scientific discovery). Hence:
(3) Vulcan is not a created abstractum (unlike a paradigmatic fictum).
2 In what follows, I will assume that creationism as regards fictional entities is correct. This thesis has been widely criticised, most forcefully by Brock (2010). For replies against Brock, see Friedell (2016), Cray (2017), Voltolini (2020).
As I just said, Goodman’s argument is valid. Yet a defender of straightforward mythical creationism questions the soundness of Goodman’s argument. For she rejects, with Zvolenszky (2016) and especially Lundgren (2017), premise (1). Indeed, she points out that, despite the many similarities between fictional and mythical entities, there is another basic disanalogy between them as regards the form of their creation. On the one hand, that defender remarks, the fictional form of creation depends solely on authorial intentions and historical/social contexts. Yet on the other hand, the mythical form of creation depends more on the noncooperation of the physical reality to provide the relevant entity rather than on the above factors. Indeed, the fact that in the physical reality there actually is no such thing as Vulcan mainly determines that Vulcan is an abstract creation. If that reality had been more cooperative, a concrete entity would have been discovered by Le Verrier. Thus, no abstract creation would have occurred.
Yet Goodman (2014) prevents this reply by retorting that the purported rejection of (1) relies on a false assumption. Indeed, it assumes that there is something like inadvertent (i.e., nonintentional) creation, which affects mythical but not fictional entities. According to this assumption, unlike fictional entities, mythical entities come into being without any creative intention on their authors’ part. Yet, objects Goodman, there is nothing like that form of creation: creation of artefactual abstracta is always intentional.
In (2016), however, Zvolenszky rebuts that inadvertent creation applies across the board. Thus, it may concern fictional entities as well. Not only mythical entities, but also fictional entities may be inadvertently created, just as many other artefactual abstracta (for example, lyrical and musical works, words…). To stick to fictional
entities, suppose that Tolstoy erroneously thought that Andrei Bolkonsky is a real individual like Napoleon. He would have then failed to have authorial creative intentions as regards that fictum. Yet, continues Zvolenszky, in writing War and Peace he would have still created it. So, concludes Zvolenszky, pace Goodman her rejection of (1) does not rely on ascribing an inadvertent creation to mythical entities but not to ficta.
Now, Zvolenszky is utterly right in denying that authorial creative intentions are necessary conditions for fictional creation. In point of fact, pace her (2016), they are not even sufficient conditions. To mutuate an example from Sainsbury (2010), a real person may think that she is telling the story of an imaginary individual. Yet her intentions notwithstanding, for hidden psychoanalytic reasons she is telling the story of herself; obviously, a real individual.3
However, Goodman (2017) contends that this problem does not undermine his anticreationist argument. For, he argues there, even if there is inadvertent creation, it affects fictional entities, yet again, it does not affect mythical entities, which for him are uncreated abstracta. For pace Zvolenszky, inadvertent creation occurs not only when the physical reality does not cooperate, but also insofar as whatever the physical reality does is taken to be irrelevant. This irrelevance occurs only as regards fictional entities. One’s engagement with fiction is indeed accompanied by the metafictional intention of disregarding the physical reality’s contribution as far as fictional matters are concerned. In the above Tolstoy case, even if in the world out there, unbeknownst to Tolstoy, there
had been an individual having all the Bolkonskian features, War and Peace would not have concerned him, precisely because of that metafictional intention that Tolstoy would have anyway entertained. By contrast, in the case of Le Verrier, taken as a case involving mythical entities, the astronomer takes the physical reality to be relevant to his referential performances, by virtue of his different hyper-nonfictional intentions, that is, his scientific-hypothetico intentions aimed at discoveries about the physical reality. As a result of these intentions, in the possible worlds where the reality’s physical cooperation occurs, by ‘Vulcan’ Le Verrier successfully refers to a concrete Vulcanian entity he has discovered there. Yet in the possible worlds where there is no such physical cooperation – the actual one is precisely one of them! – by ‘Vulcan’ Le Verrier refers to a mythical Platonic entity he again discovers, but does not create at all.4 Hence again, according to Goodman (straightforward) mythical creationism is false.
Goodman’s final rebuttal leaves me perplexed. For, by taking mythical entities as Platonic abstracta, it forces them to be abstracta that nonspatiotemporally exist in all possible worlds. As is implicitly shown by Goodman himself when in (2017) he says that in a possible world where there is a concretum Le Verrier refers to by ‘Vulcan’, the only reason why the astronomer does not refer there to the Platonic abstractum that exists also there has just to do with his hyper-nonfictional intentions. Yet it sounds weird to equate mythical entities with Platonic abstracta. For, unlike numbers and like 4 As you will remember, the idea of a similar physical noncooperation was ascribed by Goodman also to his creationist opponent who is supposed to hold, against (1), that there is both a discovery of a Vulcanian concretum in a physically cooperative merely possible world and an actual creation of the artefact Vulcan (instead of the discovery of a Platonic abstractum).
fictional entities, mythical entities can hardly exist in worlds where there are no corresponding narrations. Granted, Goodman might add that the Platonic abstracta in question are not realised in the worlds, the actual one included, where there are no corresponding concreta one refers to;5 plausibly enough, the world where no such narration occurs is also one of such worlds. Yet again, why does one have to take a mythical entity, but not a fictional entity, as such a possibly unrealised abstractum?
Fortunately enough, there is a more natural way to account for Goodman’s idea of the physical reality’s cooperation. Hence, one may find a grain of truth in his anticreationist position, while simultaneously retaining a good deal of Zvolenszky’s criticisms. As we will see in the next Section, weak mythical creationism is precisely that way.
2. A New Intermediate Proposal: Weak Mythical Creationism
In order to present my own proposal in the debate, let me first of all focus on the standard case of mythical entities. Following Kripke (2013), these are legendary objects, whose only difference from fictional entities lies in the reason why their creation is inadvertent. They are inadvertently created, for their creation is based on no act of make-believe on their purported authors’ part. Indeed, such authors erroneously believe that their narrations concern no imaginary individuals, but supernatural ones. In actual fact, legendary objects are such that their purported authors do think of them, yet
they fail to know their nature. While thinking of them, they do not think that they are fictional. Instead, they think that they are beyond empirical nature, insofar as they are entities for which no empirical counterevidence can be ultimately provided, as ad hoc defenses of them may show. Thus, unlike the author of a fictional entity, the purported author of a legendary object can hardly acknowledge that she has created it. For, in so failing to believe that the entity she has ended up creating is a fictional entity, she does not entertain at all, even inadvertently,6 the relevant act of make-believe grounding the creation; that is, an act in which she makes believe that there is an individual that does such and such.
For example, in the case of ancient Greek mythology, the purported authors of this mythology did not entertain, even inadvertently, an act in which they made believe that there is an individual god named ‘Zeus’ who fathered all other gods. For they failed to believe that the entity they actually created, Zeus, is a fictional entity. Instead, they thought that it was a supernatural entity for which no nonexistence proof can be provided. Indeed, they thought that Zeus lives on Mt. Olympus. Yet if someone had climbed that mountain and reported that she had not seen Zeus, they would have replied that Zeus obscured the climber’s sight, or made himself invisible, or something else like that.
Yet moreover, pace straightforward mythical creationism, let me also remark that other mythical entities, nonstandard mythical entities such as post-empirical posits, are mythical only in a derivative sense. They are such ‘only in a highly extended and
perhaps even metaphorical sense of “mythological”’ (Kripke 2013, x). For their creation is not truly ascribed to the individuals that should purportedly be their authors: typically a scientist defending a false theory, or even a subject of a false experience, typically a hallucination. Indeed, such individuals are their merely purported authors. For they have not created anything.
In this respect, the issue is not that such merely purported authors create post-empirical posits inadvertently. Instead, they do not create them at all. Post-empirical posits are indeed such that their merely purported authors do not even think of them. For instead of thinking of them, they rather think of different entities for which direct evidence can be provided, hence entities of an altogether different nature: concrete entities, that is, entities that may exist, i.e., may have causal powers, or even spatiotemporal determinations (Cocchiarella 1982, Priest 2016). In this case, the concreta those people think actually fail to exist; they are mere possibilia. So, as regards such concreta, the physical reality does not actually cooperate, in the mere sense that those entities fail to actually exist. Yet in all merely possible worlds in which they exist, the physical reality would have cooperated, by bringing them into existence.
Now, given their actual nonexistence, such mere possibilia are actually physically irrelevant. This may lead some people – typically, a later audience of a narration inaugurated by a merely purported author – to mentally disregard them. People in such audience are not thinking of mere possibilia at all. This leaves room for new entities of another kind to be mentally processed by such people. Indeed, the audience in question is instead responsible for new entities whose metaphysical nature is fictional; namely,
post-empirical posits. By virtue of the relevant acts of make-believe that there are individuals doing such and such, that audience postulates such posits. That audience thereby creates them as abstracta of a particular kind; namely, full-fledged fictional entities. Such posits merely correspond to the above concreta that merely possibly exist, by having some of the properties that are ascribed, yet erroneously, to those concreta. For example, the abstract fictional Vulcan that such an audience creates merely corresponds to the concrete yet actually nonexistent Vulcan that its merely purported author, Le Verrier, thinks of. The first Vulcan is a planet, it orbitates between Mercury and the Sun, it has a mass making it responsible of the perturbations of Mercury’s orbit, etc. Thus, it has many of the features that Le Verrier ascribed to the second Vulcan, albeit erroneously. For the second Vulcan does not actually exist, hence it does not possess the above existence-entailing properties.7
The above remarks show what weak mythical creationism consists in. Like straightforward mythical creationism, weak mythical creationism claims that both standard and nonstandard mythical entities are created abstracta. Yet unlike straightforward mythical creationism, for weak mythical creationism nonstandard mythical entities, i.e., post-empirical posits, are not created by their merely purported authors. For they are created by a later audience on the basis of a typical make-believe
7 For this difference between ficta and (mere) possibilia in the possession of existence-entailing properties, cf. e.g. Williamson (2000, 2002, 2013). As is well known, having such features on a fictional entity’s part may be cashed out in various ways: either by appealing to having story properties (Thomasson 1999), or by appealing to nuclear properties (Parsons 1980), or even by appealing to internally having ordinary properties (Zalta 1983). In this paper, I will be neutral on such accounts.
activity. Indeed, that audience no longer takes into consideration the different concreta such merely purported authors instead thought of.
At this point, weak creationism enables us to assess what is the grain of truth in Goodman’s anticreationist position. Even though there is original (though inadvertent) creation for legendary objects, as Zvolenszky correctly points out for them, there is no original creation for post-empirical posits. For in this case, the merely purported authors create nothing at all; post-empirical posits are created later. Thus, for weak mythical creationism what is false is not mythical creationism as such, but the kind of mythical backward-looking creationism that straightforward mythical creationism entails; namely, the idea that those who actually did not author mythical entities, their merely purported authors, are nevertheless their original creators.
On behalf of weak mythical creationism, let us see things more in detail. To begin with, pace Zvolenszky, in Goodman’s original argument (1) is true, but vacuously, for (1)’s antecedent is false. If Vulcan were the same as a certain created abstractum, then it would have been created by its purported author – Le Verrier, say – in all worlds in which that individual performs the same narrative activity. Yet the Vulcan (1) is talking about is not that abstractum; hence, (1)’s antecedent is false. Instead, it is the concrete actually nonexistent entity originally thought-of by Le Verrier. Simply, that Vulcan has been replaced in the later audience’s minds by a created abstractum; i.e., a certain post-empirical posit, named ‘Vulcan’ as well. Thus, Goodman’s argument resists the criticisms against its premise (1), even though not for the reasons he appealed to in (2017). As I said, the Vulcan Le Verrier thought of is a concrete, though actually
nonexistent, entity. Thus, it is not even a discovered Platonic abstractum, as Goodman there says.
Yet moreover, Goodman’s argument remains unsound. For its false premise is (2), not (1). (Goodman (2017) considers this possibility but he dismisses it. For by following Braun (2005), he erroneously assumes that the denial of (2) involves saying that Le Verrier creates a mythical abstract artefact both in the actual world and in the possible worlds in question.) Instead, since the Vulcan Le Verrier thought of is a concrete actually nonexistent entity, Le Verrier has not created a mythical abstract artefact in the actual world, as on the contrary (2) implicitly says. According to (2), indeed, the abstract mythical artefact Le Verrier actually created no longer exists in the relevant possible worlds that physically cooperate with him. Yet it is false that Le Verrier has actually created any abstractum. For the Vulcan Le Verrier actually thought of is a concretum that actually fails to exist and is merely possible. Incidentally, not even in the possible worlds where his theory is successful, Le Verrier has created any abstractum, as Goodman also stresses. Yet this creation failure has a different reason from that Goodman appeals to; namely, that such an abstractum is a Platonic entity. For in those worlds, Le Verrier still thinks of the above concretum Vulcan, which instead exists there.
As I said before, all this shows that what is wrong is not mythical creationism as such, but the kind of mythical backward-looking creationism that straightforward mythical creationism entails, qua improperly addressed to post-empirical posits. For such posits are created later than what mythical backward-looking creationism assumes. Indeed,
they are created by the later audience of the relevant narrations rather than by their merely purported authors (Le Verrier, in the above case) who rather think of different entities: concreta, even if actually nonexistent.
3. Problems and Answers
At this point, it is interesting to understand why weak mythical creationism, which is not too far in spirit from what Goodman defends, has not been put forward before, in order to see whether it has problems that may be circumvented.
To begin with, are there really merely possible concreta, as weak creationism maintains? To see this problem, let us make a step backward. As I have told before, my proposal rejects premise (2) of Goodman’s argument. For according to weak mythical creationism, there is no basic difference between Le Verrier’s actual and possible performances. In both the actual and in the relevant possible worlds, Le Verrier mobilises a concrete entity that fails to actually exist, yet it exists in the possible worlds in question. Yet why in advancing (2), does Goodman on the contrary think that there is a basic disanalogy in such performances: namely, that in the relevant possible worlds, Le Verrier faces a possibly existing concretum, yet in the actual world he faces an abstractum?
Here is a possible answer to this question, which explains why the above problem arises. Goodman sticks to Kripke’s original (1980) idea that the possibility that Vulcan
exists is merely epistemic, not metaphysical. As one may remember, for Kripke, in Le Verrier’s actual use ‘Vulcan’ fails to refer, for there actually is no entity to be so baptised. Yet in a metaphysically possible world where Le Verrier’s cognitive situation were the same as his actual one but he faced a concrete Vulcan-like entity existing there, his attempt to refer by means of ‘Vulcan’ would be successful in referring to that entity. This is what the possibility that Vulcan exists being epistemic amounts to.8 In (2017), Goodman simply modifies Kripke’s account by also endorsing mythical Platonism about Vulcan. For he flanks Le Verrier’s actual failed (for Kripke) reference of ‘Vulcan’ to a concrete entity with Le Verrier’s actual successful reference to an abstract yet Platonic entity. In (2013), Kripke stresses again that in Le Verrier’s actual use, ‘Vulcan’ refers to nothing whatsoever. Yet, he adds (ib., 30-1,72,148-9), there is no further use of ‘Vulcan’ on Le Verrier’s part in which the name refers to an abstract artefact (unlike, say, what happens as regards Conan Doyle’s use of ‘Holmes’ as a name for a fictional artefact). This explains why for him Vulcan, or any other post-empirical posit, is a mythical artefact only in a metaphorical sense. Indeed, since for him there are no distinct uses of ‘Vulcan’ on Le Verrier’s part, a failed referential one where the name refers to nothing and a fully referential one where the name refers to an abstract artefact, Vulcan is not created as that artefact, not even inadvertently, by Le Verrier. So, it must be created as such later, as weak mythical creationism claims. How can this idea be strengthened?
8 Lundgren (2017, 1276 and n3) provides another similar example with a child actually failing to refer to something by the name ‘Ghosty’.
The only way I see is to suppose, pace Kripke himself and Goodman, that the possibility that the very Vulcan Le Verrier has in mind exists is a genuine metaphysical possibility. For that Vulcan is a concretum that actually fails to exist, yet it might have existed. Thus, as used by Le Verrier, ‘Vulcan’ already actually refers to it, even if it actually fails to exist. If this is the case, then no endorsement of (2) is required any longer. I will now try to show that this is precisely the case.9
In order to do so, let me start from Crane’s (2001, 2013) metaphysical thesis that intentional objects, the objects of our thoughts, are schematic objects, since they have no metaphysical nature insofar as they are thought-of. They do have such a nature, yet whatever it is, it is fixed out of their being thought-of. Thus, that nature may be various (for example, one may think both of objects that turn out to be concrete and of objects that turn out to be abstract). Besides, this metaphysical thesis may be implemented by an ontological thesis that Crane himself does not endorse as such.10 According to this thesis, one not only phenomenologically, but also really thinks about such objects, if in 9 This way of putting things prevents one from further thinking that, since the possibility that Vulcan exists is just an epistemic possibility, Le Verrier actually refers to a metaphysical impossible object. This thought is for me very weird. For it is very unlikely that the world’s actual nonphysical cooperation makes Le Verrier refer to an impossible object, while the world’s possible physical cooperation makes an epistemically identical Le Verrier refer to a possible object, If in erroneously thinking, because of the world’s actual nonphysical cooperation, that a wooden cannon made of steel existed, how could one be in the same epistemic situation and yet refer, because of the world’s possible physical cooperation, to a possible object?
10 Crane endorses the similar but different ontological thesis that the intentional objects one thinks of are ontologically genuine entities if they (actually) exist. On this, see Voltolini (2013).
the overall ontological domain, there really are objects of the particular metaphysical nature that such objects possess independently of their being thought-of.
On the basis of the above two theses, let us come back to Vulcan. First of all, Le Verrier not only phenomenologically, but also really, thinks of Vulcan. Independently of its being thought-of, Vulcan is a concretum that actually fails to exist, but it might have existed. Now, both actualised and mere possibilia indeed figure in the overall ontological domain. For admitting the former but denying the latter would be false ontological parsimony (Lewis 1986; Voltolini 2007).
Armed with this theoretical machinery, I can moreover show why the possibility of Vulcan’s existence is genuinely metaphysical, not merely epistemic. The possible world where Le Verrier is in the same cognitive state as he actually is and yet his performances are successful is not a world where some concrete mere Vulcan-like entity exists. Instead, it is a world where, unlike the actual world, the very same intentional object that Le Verrier also actually thinks of, that is, that very concretum, Vulcan itself, exists.
At this point, on behalf of Goodman’s one may wonder why Kripke did not consider the idea that the possibility that Vulcan exists is genuinely metaphysical. For Kripke is not an enemy of possibilia in itself. Whenever there is a suitable criterion of identity for them, possibilia can for him be allowed in the overall ontological domain. For example, for him (2013, 39n10) we must allow for the possible outcome of two actual gametes, that is, sperm s and egg e, as an item we actually refer to. Yet for him Vulcan cannot be
one of them. For, he thinks, it is open to the problems he raised (1980, 2013) against a possibilist treatment of ficta. First of all, the metaphysical problem of indeterminacy: which of the infinitely many possible Vulcanian things, each inhabiting a different possible world, is the Vulcan Le Verrier thinks of? Moreover, the epistemic problem of selection: how can Le Verrier select Vulcan both in his thinking and in his reference, since there admittedly is no causal-historical chain he can rely on, for Vulcan does not exist?
Hopefully, however, in the framework of weak creationism there is a chance to solve both problems. To begin with, the indeterminacy metaphysical problem does not subsist. For, as Kripke formulates it, it presupposes that one must provide a crossworld identification of mere possibilia. But this is not the case. For, just as actualised possibilia, that is, possibilia that actually exist, mere possibilia are already in the domain of the actual world, as items that do not merely exist in it, in a suitable first-order sense of existence. That is, they actually have neither causal powers nor spatiotemporal determination (Williamson 2002, 2013; Priest 2016). The world domain is indeed fixed for both (sub)kinds of entities. Thus, one does not have to look for, by means of a modal telescope so to speak, who is Vulcan across different possible worlds. For Vulcan is already there, in our world. Hence, one can track it in other possible worlds as having properties that it does not actually have (existence, first of all). Simply, it does not actually exist, in the above first-order sense that it actually has neither causal powers nor spatiotemporal determination.
However, even if one endorses a fixed domain view of mere possibilia, the selection epistemic problem arises again. How can Le Verrier select in his thinking just one of the infinitely many Vulcanian things, that is, things who perform Vulcanian deeds in the worlds in which they exist, even if they are already there, in the domain of the actual world, admittedly as nonexistent in it (Williamson 2000)? Granted, Priest (2016) tries to provide an answer to this worry. Intentionality is acquaintance with just one object, not with any of its lookalikes. Thus, in his thought, Le Verrier was just acquainted with Vulcan, not with any of its lookalikes. Unfortunately, however, this answer just pushes the problem one step forward. How can one be acquainted with Vulcan and not with any of its lookalikes, if Vulcan does not exist? To put in Recanati’s (2012) terms, no epistemically rewarding relation, such as a causally-based acquaintance, can hold between Le Verrier and Vulcan, since by actually failing to exist, Vulcan actually has no causal powers.
Yet moreover, there is another way out of the epistemic problem (Sacchi-Voltolini 2012). Intentionality does not select objects. Instead, a thought has the intentional object it thinks of. For the former is constituted by the latter, provided that, as we have seen before, it is an object whose nature is such that in the overall domain there are objects of that nature. In that case, an intentional object belongs to the thought it thinks of it just as a part of a mereological sum is one of the sum’s constituents. The sum does not select that part; the latter simply constitutes the former. Thus, one may refer to the intentional object one thinks of that constitutes such a thought, provided that such an object has a nature such that entities of that nature are allowed in the overall ontological domain.
Hence in the case of Vulcan, since Vulcan is a concretum and we have concreta in the overall ontological domain, Le Verrier really thinks of it. Moreover, he really thinks of it, for it constitutes such a thought. Thus, he may also refer to it.
So far, so good. Yet another form of this ontological problem lurks behind the previous one. Let us see it in detail, by making again a step backward.
Hopefully, the distinction between legendary objects and post-empirical posits that weak creationism draws is clear. Legendary objects are the standard mythical entities inadvertently created by their purported authors who simply misunderstand their metaphysical nature. Post-empirical posits are nonstandard mythical entities that are created not by such purported authors, but by a later audience that correctly conceives of them as fictional entities. They somehow correspond to the concrete entities that those, actually mere, purported authors actually thought of.11
Notwithstanding this distinction, however, one may wonder why one must multiply entities of a different kind: (actually nonexistent) concrete, abstract. For one may instead ascribe to what I have called the merely purported authors the mere inadvertent creation of mythical entities, just as in the case of legendary objects, as mythical backward-looking creationism maintains. Why must one hold that Vulcan has not been inadvertently created as a mythical artefact by Le Verrier himself, as we on the contrary
11 A curious case is the Freudian Id. By Freud’s own admission (1937), this has revealed to be, a legendary object rather than a post-empirical posit postulated after the existential failure of a scientific enterprise. For, says Freud there, the Id’s existence is not empirically testable. Instead, the life of a patient becomes meaningful once it is interpreted in terms of its being dominated by the Id’s drives.
do with Zeus and ancient Greeks, and assign that creation to a later audience, while attributing to Le Verrier a mental involvement with a different concrete yet actually nonexistent possible entity?
Yet let me reply that, on the basis of the above ontology of possibilia, we can dispense with ascribing Le Verrier a reference to a mythical abstract artefact that he inadvertently creates. For since in thinking about Vulcan he already refers to a possibile, there is no reason to interpret that thought as involving a reference to an object of another kind, a created abstractum. Instead, that reference can be truly ascribed to the later audience, precisely because they mentally disregarded that possibile given its actual nonexistence.12
But this reply may still leave some dissatisfied. Why must one ascribe to the entertainers of false theories or of false hallucinatory experiences a reference to nonexistent possibilia? For by appealing to mythical backward-looking creationism one may dispense with that ascription, by ascribing them instead a reference to mythical abstract artefacts.
The answer to this question is simple. As I have hinted at before, unlike a purported author, a merely purported author principledly accepts that empirical evidence may run counter her claim that the entity she thinks of exists. Just as in another possible world
12 Given such a reference to a possibile on Le Verrier’s part, we can even avoid to ascribe him a reference to an abstract artefact in the projective sense Kripke (1982) appealed to when saying that we may ascribe rule-following to Robinson Crusoe, taken as an individual born and developed completely alone, hence in isolation from the community that does the ascription.
we would accept that an entity that actually exist did not exist there. This shows that, unlike a merely purported author, she does not think of a mythical artefact.
Take Le Verrier again. In (falsely) claiming that the Vulcan he thinks of actually exists, he implicitly acknowledged that his claim would have been falsified if a certain piece of counterevidence had been discovered. He also knew that in order to restate that claim, he should have faced that counterevidence by means of other empirical findings. Yet take now the ancient Greeks. They would not have principledly taken into account any counterevidence showing Zeus’ nonexistence. They would have ad-hocly put aside that counterevidence, as in the Mt. Olympus example seen in the previous Section.
Thus, Le Verrier did not think of a mythical artefact. If there were an entity he was concerned with, that entity was a concrete, actually nonexistent, one. The only mythical artefact that can be around is the nonstandard mythical entity that was postulated by a later audience. By contrast, ancient Greeks were thinking of a standard mythical artefact, a legendary object whose fictional nature was not simply recognised by them.
Yet at this point the problem may be further restated. Granted, Le Verrier was convinced that he was thinking of a concretum. But why cannot his error have consisted just in his misunderstanding the metaphysical nature of the only entity that was around, a mythical entity, just as in the case of the ancient Greeks?
I agree that in itself, epistemology is not a good guide as regards the metaphysical nature of things. Yet in this respect there are limits to epistemic failures. Indeed first of all, the above objection makes two different sorts of epistemic behavior improperly
collapse into one and the same kind of mere metaphysical mistake. As I repeatedly said, the purported author of a mythical abstract artefact simply misunderstands its nature, by erroneously believing that it is a supernatural rather than a mythical entity. By contrast, the merely purported author of a mythical abstract artefact is right as regards the metaphysical nature of the different entity she thinks of, a concretum. She is simply wrong in believing that such a concretum exists. Moreover, the objection does not acknowledge the difference between deferential and nondeferential forms of epistemic behavior. Granted, a child may mistakenly believe that Santa Claus is a concretum, while in point of fact it is a fictum. In this case, the child has simply an erroneous metaphysical belief about one and the same entity, whose effective nature is fictional. But this depends on the fact that the child defers to her mentors both in her use of the name ‘Santa Claus’ and in her mobilisation of her corresponding ‘Santa Claus’-thoughts. Yet no such deference affects Le Verrier’s epistemic behavior. Le Verrier is the originator of the specific use of the name ‘Vulcan’, hence not even the content of his ‘Vulcan’ thoughts defers to his community. Thus, there is no reason why we should take his metaphysical belief that the entity he thinks of is concrete as erroneous. Indeed, no such reason subsists even when we are engaged with our similar ordinary transactions. If it turned that you, my dear concrete reader, do not actually exist, why should I take that, notwithstanding my opposite beliefs, I was mentally involved with a fictional entity?
So far, so good. Yet an opponent of weak creationism might still remark that the distinction between different kinds of created abstracta, legendary objects and
post-empirical posits, remains unmotivated, pace Kripke’s own suspicion to the contrary (‘the use of natural language as a guide perhaps reveals an essential difference [between these kinds of abstracta]’ 2013, x). Indeed, the previous worry arises again precisely if one appeals to the theoretical background on intentionality I have explicitly endorsed before. For if one appeals to intentional objects as schematic objects, one may say that all mythical entities appear as objects of error up to time t, and turn out to be objects of fiction afterwards. In all such cases, we simply mistake their nature (Crane 2013). In other and more detailed terms, why must we say that in the case of a legendary object its purported author legitimately authors it, since she simply does not know that what she thinks of is legendary (a mere object of fiction not revealed as such to her from her very first conception), whereas in the case of a post-empirical posit its purported author is merely such, for she thinks of a numerically different entity that is also metaphysically utterly different from a fictional entity, i.e., a concretum?13
Fortunately enough, also this further version of the problem has an answer. This answer relies on what I said above concerning different forms of epistemically-based behavior. On the one hand, in the case of legendary objects, we are ready to attribute to their legitimate authors true beliefs whose content is simply nontrasparent to them. For we also attribute such beliefs to subjects who do not realise the consequences of their deferential mental activities. Indeed, they are beliefs about entities whose nature such authors do not know. Yet on the other hand, in the case of post-empirical posits, we 13 See also Lundgren (2017), who more radically holds that all mythical objects are objects of the mistake creating them; they are not created by who is in any such case simply responsible for that mistake, the merely purported author.
refrain from making such attributions to the merely purported authors. For they have different false beliefs whose content is however transparent to them. In that case, in fact, both the content and the truthvalue of one’s own intentional state cannot depend on epistemic contingencies. The falsity of a theory – or more vividly, the fact that one’s perceptual experience is a hallucination – cannot transform the relevant false belief into a true nontransparent belief of an utterly different kind with an utterly different content. In Crane’s terms, the category of object of error for (nonexistent) intentional objects is not a pseudocategory that must be systematically replaced by that of object of fiction. On the contrary, it is a genuine category that really captures the nature of some intentional objects; namely, the concrete intentional objects whose failure to actually exist makes them objects of error. Thus, legendary objects are indeed intentional objects that are originally erroneously misconceived as having a different nature, even if they indeed are mythical entities, as Crane holds. Yet post-empirical posits are not the same as the concrete intentional objects of error that were originally thought-of by their merely purported authors. They are new abstract artefacts whose nature is not misconceived by the later audience that actually creates them; namely, nonstandard mythical entities viz. full-fledged fictional entities. They merely replace those concrete intentional objects of error in the later audience’s minds.
Once again, it is useful to look at the matter by means of examples. On the one hand, in the case of a legendary object, we may say that in actual fact, ancient Greeks did have a true belief that Zeus is the father of all gods, yet as a belief about an object that they did not recognise as mythical (they thought it was supernatural etc.). In this respect, as I
said before, we ascribe to ancient Greeks the very same kind of mental behavior that we ascribe to a credulous child. While deferring to us as regards Santa Claus, the child does not realise that she nontransparently yet truly believes that the mythical object Santa Claus brings presents at Christmas’ night, for she fails to grasp its nature.
Yet on the other hand, in the case of a post-empirical posit, it is not the case that Le Verrier truly yet nontransparently believes that the mythical artefact Vulcan is a planet. Rather, he does believe that the concretum Vulcan is a planet. Simply, his belief is false. For, in accordance with the available evidence, that Vulcan is an object of error, since it does not actually exist. It would be a true belief if it turned out that such an object exists. Mutatis mutandis and more vividly, if one hallucinates a little green man, call it Greeny, one does falsely believe that Greeny is a little green man, for Greeny does not actually exist. One does not truly yet inadvertently believe that a different mythical artefact Greeny is such.
Conclusion
To sum up. Suppose that the distinction between legendary objects and post-empirical posits is, as I believe, motivated. Both are mythical entities, yet standard and nonstandard respectively, for they differ in the circumstances of their creation. Then, one may stick to mythical creationism, but reject mythical backward-looking creationism, as indeed weak mythical creationism claims. Unlike legendary objects,
post-empirical posits are created later, when thoughts about concrete yet merely possible entities on their merely purported authors’ part are disregarded by a subsequent, yet ontologically creative, audience. Indeed, in endorsing a new make-believe activity, that audience mentally replaces such concreta with the new abstract creations post-empirical posits actually amount to: nonstandard mythical entities, which is to say, full-fledged fictional entities.14
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