The philosophy papers blog is up.

Kieran Healy has a nice post up about cheaters, along with some tips for increasing blog traffic every May. He seems to enjoy catching cheaters somewhat more than I do.

Another little puzzle about truth in fiction to think about, this one indirectly related to the puzzle for Walton’s view discussd below. Some books end, rather annoyingly, with an ‘it was all a dream’ scene. The Alice in Wonderland books are prime examples of this. What is true in such a story? We normally say, unreflectively, that it is true in the Alice in Wonderland stories that the Queen of Hearts she baked some tarts, and that the White Rabbit is late for a very important date, and that Humpty Dumpty thought he could make words mean just what he wanted them to mean. But a more literalist theory of truth in fiction, such as the theory given by David Lewis in his paper Truth in Fiction, would presumably entail that it’s merely true in the story that Alice dreamed that the Queen of Hearts she baked some tarts, and that the White Rabbit is late for a very important date, and that Humpty Dumpty thought he could make words mean just what he wanted them to mean.

This isn’t a matter for philosophical theory to decide, since we presumably should be testing theories against what they say about this case, rather than having theories tell us what to say. (The question is, who is to be the master, that’s all.) I’m inclined to think the unreflective practice here is right. The Alice in Wonderland books are the stories of Alice’s dreams, and so it is true in the book, as in the dream, that the Queen of Hearts she baked some tarts. And this, I think, is some good news for Walton’s theory that truth in fiction is grounded in prescriptions to imagine, because there clearly is a prescription for the reader to imagine that the Queen of Hearts she baked some tarts. Well, at least I think it’s good news. Perhaps when I find out how Walton is to solve the problem of figurative language in fiction I’ll see that according to his theory it really isn’t true in the story that the Queen of Hearts she baked some tarts. Perhaps, that is, whatever makes it the case that it isn’t true in Ulysses that Bloom is an Arthurian knight, the prescription to imagine that notwithstanding, will also make it the case that it isn’t true in the Alice in Wonderland stories that the Queen of Hearts she baked some tarts, the prescription to imagine that notwithstanding. To be continued…