Sainsbury's Category-Mistake Essay
Abstract Artifact Theory about
Fictional Characters Defended — Why
Sainsbury’s Category-Mistake
Objection is Mistaken
Zsófia Zvolenszky*
Institute of Philosophy, Eötvös University (ELTE)
Abstract. In this paper, I explore a line of argument against one form of realism about fictional characters: abstract artifact theory (‘artifactualism’, for short), the view according to which fictional characters like Harry Potter are part of our reality, but (unlike concrete entities like the Big Ben and
J. K. Rowling), they are abstract objects created by humans, akin to the institution of marriage and the game of soccer. I will defend artifactualism against an objection that Mark Sainsbury (2010) considers decisive against it: the category-mistake …show more content…
Deflecting the Category-Mistake Objection
Sainsbury, an advocate of irrealism, maintains that among realist contenders, artifactualism has the edge. According to him (2010, 111), in the end, artifactualism suffers a crucial blow, however:
…the problems for abstract artifact theory … have the form: on abstract artifact theories, fictional characters just are not the kinds of things we want them to be. We want them to be as they are said to be in the stories, to be detectives and to play the violin, but they are said to be something of an entirely different kind. … Fictional characters do not have the properties they are ascribed during their creation. This is mysterious: Conan Doyle stipulates that Holmes wears a deerstalker, there is such an entity as Holmes, yet that entity does not end up having (i.e. exemplifying) the property of wearing a deerstalker. He does end up having (exemplifying) a genuine property, that of encoding wearing a deerstalker, but this is not a property that’s intellectually accessible to most authors. People can, of course, fail to understand what they are doing, but it’s surprising to be
Fictional Characters Defended — Why
Sainsbury’s Category-Mistake
Objection is Mistaken
Zsófia Zvolenszky*
Institute of Philosophy, Eötvös University (ELTE)
Abstract. In this paper, I explore a line of argument against one form of realism about fictional characters: abstract artifact theory (‘artifactualism’, for short), the view according to which fictional characters like Harry Potter are part of our reality, but (unlike concrete entities like the Big Ben and
J. K. Rowling), they are abstract objects created by humans, akin to the institution of marriage and the game of soccer. I will defend artifactualism against an objection that Mark Sainsbury (2010) considers decisive against it: the category-mistake …show more content…
Deflecting the Category-Mistake Objection
Sainsbury, an advocate of irrealism, maintains that among realist contenders, artifactualism has the edge. According to him (2010, 111), in the end, artifactualism suffers a crucial blow, however:
…the problems for abstract artifact theory … have the form: on abstract artifact theories, fictional characters just are not the kinds of things we want them to be. We want them to be as they are said to be in the stories, to be detectives and to play the violin, but they are said to be something of an entirely different kind. … Fictional characters do not have the properties they are ascribed during their creation. This is mysterious: Conan Doyle stipulates that Holmes wears a deerstalker, there is such an entity as Holmes, yet that entity does not end up having (i.e. exemplifying) the property of wearing a deerstalker. He does end up having (exemplifying) a genuine property, that of encoding wearing a deerstalker, but this is not a property that’s intellectually accessible to most authors. People can, of course, fail to understand what they are doing, but it’s surprising to be