Sesión extraordinaria del Seminario (16/10/2017): Martin Vacek

Dr. Martin Vacek. Chair of Analytical Philosophy Department, Institute of Philosophy at the Slovak Academy of Sciences

On the indispensability of Fictional Discourse

A part of the overall reason to prefer modal fictionalism to modal realism is our epistemic access to fictions, in contrast to our inability to access casually isolated spatiotemporal systems. I claim that fictional discourse is indispensable to every metaphysical theorising and, if so, metaphysical theories are on a par when it comes to knowledge of their ontological commitments. First, I introduce the framework within which I build my argument: ontology/ideology dichotomy. Second, I draw a line between various understandings of the dichotomy. Only one such understanding will be of my interest though, and will be discussed in the third part. I illustrate the position on a particular debate in metaphysics and, finally, generalise my view to other debates in metaphysics.