Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: On Walton’s account of make-believe, unknown facts concerning the existence and nature of props can influence fictional truth. Inspired by Lewis’s and Walton’s discussions of import of fictional truth, I explore the shape and tenability of an alternative account that avoids such interference of unknown facts, by making fictional truth rely on participants’ common beliefs about props: conditional principles of generation are only valid if they quantify over props whose existence and nature is common belief between participants of the game of make-believe. I discuss two possible objections to the proposed account that are both based on the intuition that fictional truth should be something that is objective and independent of participants’ mental states.
Source: Erkenntnis
Author: Merel Semeijn
Institution: University of Groningen
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,290
OpenAlex ID: W4410186619