On the Interaction Between Modality and Fiction

Paul Erickson Bass

Project Advisor: Sam Cowling

Department of Philosophy

Denison University Summer Scholar Project

2018
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Abstract

We have beliefs about how the world could or couldn’t have been. We believe

that we could have done better in high school, that Columbus could have sailed

the ocean blue in 1493, and that seven couldn’t be even. We also have beliefs

about fiction. We believe that Luke Skywalker saved the galaxy from the dark

side, that Sherlock Holmes isn’t a real detective, and that Superman can fly. But

it’s somewhat unclear what happens when these beliefs collide. What exactly does

it mean to claim that Luke Skywalker could have failed to save the galaxy from

the dark side? Is that a claim about how Luke Skywalker could have done

otherwise, a claim about how the writers could have written him otherwise, both,

or neither? I intend to answer these questions and clarify exactly we are saying

when we make modal claims about fictional entities.

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1. Introduction

Many of us have beliefs about how our favorite movies and books could have

been otherwise, usually in ways that (we think) would make them better. For

instance, one might think that the ​Star Wars ​prequels would have been better had

George Lucas not been the director. We also generally have intuitions about how

our favorite characters in fiction could have acted differently. For instance,

someone might believe that if Luke Skywalker hadn’t lost his hand, he might have

had a better chance at defeating the Emperor without Darth Vader’s help. These

kinds of claims are common enough that we should be committed to

understanding exactly what we are doing when we utter them. Over the course of

this paper I intend to clarify and taxonomize what precisely we are saying when

we make modal claims about fiction.

Before examining the intersection between modal discourse and discourse

about fiction, we must first deal with modality and fiction individually. Therefore,

I will first explicate the account of fictional discourse I will be using, fictional

realism. I will then examine the nature of modal claims, focusing specifically on

the notions of necessity and contingency. After having introduced both fictional

realism and modality, I will combine them into a taxonomy of our modal

discourse about fiction. Following the presentation of my taxonomy, I will

examine the different ways in which we can interpret essence claims about

fiction.
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2. Fictional Realism

Here are some seemingly true sentences

(1) Sherlock Holmes is a detective.

(2) Sherlock Holmes does not exist.

These sentences, taken at face value, seem contradictory. After all, a prerequisite

for detective-hood seems to be existence, since there are no non-existent

detectives. So how can Sherlock not exist and be a detective?

In an attempt to explain why we believe sentences like (1) and (2) to be

true, Peter van Inwagen advances the idea that sentences like (2) might actually be

mistaken, or at least should not be taken at face value (van Inwagen, 1997). Van

Inwagen argues that fictional characters exist, not as concrete entities like protons,

pickles, and porpoises, but rather as creatures of fiction. Creatures of fiction are

things like Harry Potter, Cybertron, and Professor X’s School for Gifted

Youngsters. They are things with properties like ​having been created by an

author ​and ​being fictional​. Thus the referent of (1) is the creature of fiction,

Sherlock Holmes, and we can adjust (1) to read as follows:

(3) The creature of fiction Sherlock Holmes is a detective.

 4

However, merely introducing this notion doesn’t solve our dilemma, we

need to introduce some qualifications. If I were to travel back in time to 19th

century London, I certainly wouldn’t encounter Sherlock Holmes on the streets of

London. Since he doesn’t exist as a concrete object, Sherlock Holmes is not a

detective in the same way that, say, Dave Toschi is a detective. Therefore we can

conclude that Holmes is not an actual detective, rather he is a detective according

to Conan Doyle’s fiction (van Inwagen, 1977). We can treat Conan Doyle’s

fiction as a kind of testimony, and must qualify it much in the same way we

qualify most testimony. Thus, we should modify (3) to read as follows:

(4) According to Conan Doyle’s fiction, Sherlock Holmes is a detective.

This modification gives the sentence context, and clarifies that we aren’t

talking about some actual person who happens to be named Sherlock Holmes, nor

a Sherlock Holmes in some other fiction, but rather the creature of fiction from

Conan Doyle’s fiction. Importantly, (4) is not claiming that Holmes has the

property of ​being a detective​, but rather that he is ​ascribed ​the property of​ being a

detective​ (van Inwagen, 1997). In order to understand what van Inwagen means

by ascription, we must first introduce the notion of instantiation.

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Objects instantiate properties. For instance, this paper instantiates the

property of ​being in English.​ Instantiation means that we take a particular object

to be an example or instance of a property. When taken at face value sentences

like (1) seem to claim that fictional characters instantiate properties like ​being a

detective.​ Van Inwagen argues that this is the incorrect interpretation of sentences

like (1), since fictional characters are non-concrete and thus cannot instantiate the

property of ​being a detective​ in the same sense that actual detectives can. But why

can’t non-concrete creatures of fiction instantiate properties? Take Holmes as an

example, who we might believe instantiates the property of being a detective in

19th century London. If we were to travel back in time, we wouldn’t find any

detectives in 19th century London named Sherlock Holmes. Thus, we can

conclude that Holmes does not in fact instantiate the property of being a detective

in 19th century London.

However, Holmes does still bear some kind of relation to the property of

being a detective​, even if that relation isn’t instantiation. After all, it would be

prima facie​ wrong to claim that a fictional detective bears no relation of any kind

to the property of ​being a detective.​ Thus, if Holmes does not instantiate the

property of​ being a detective,​ he must bear some other kind of relation to said

property. This relation is the relation of ascription. Ascription is when an author,

like Conan Doyle, claims that in a particular work a creature of fiction, like

Holmes, has a certain property. Since Holmes doesn’t actually have that property,
 6

Conan Doyle must engage in a kind of pretense. This pretense relies upon the

notion of ascription. Thus, instead of actually instantiating properties, fictional

characters are ascribed properties by authors.

According to van Inwagen, ascription is a three place operator (van

Inwagen, 1977). To properly ascribe a property to a creature of fiction, we must

have a property, a creature of fiction, and a place. A place is either a particular

work or a section of a work. Formalized using an operator, A, for ascription, we

would transcribe “Holmes is ascribed the property of ​being a detective​ in ​A Study

in Scarlet​” as A(​being a detective,​ Holmes,​ A Study in Scarlet​).

Van Inwagen believes that ascription must include a place as form of

qualification. Including a particular place serves as a way of limiting the

discussion of ascription to a particular area of fiction. This limited quantification

is, to van Inwagen, necessary because of how characters change over the course

of a fiction (van Inwagen, 1977). To take his example, Mrs Gamp is fat, but

Dickens could have had her lose weight later in ​Martin Chuzzlewit​. Thus, we need

to indicate exactly when and where within Dickens’ fiction he ascribes her the

property of ​fatness.​

This notion of ascription means that many of the properties we, in

common speech, believe characters instantiate are merely properties ascribed to

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them by authors. As established prior, to instantiate the property of ​being a

detective o​ ne must exist as a concrete object. But to be ascribed the property of

being a detective, one must be a creature of fiction. Ascription is preceded by the

antecedent “according to [author]’s fiction” in order to identify that we are not

talking about a concrete object, but rather a creature of fiction within a particular

context. For instance, “Holmes is a detective” should be read as “According to

Conan Doyle’s fiction, Holmes is a detective.”

Though fictional characters are ascribed properties like ​being fat,​ ​being a

detective,​ and ​being a superhero​, they do instantiate some properties (van

Inwagen, 1977). Creatures of fiction can be identified as the kinds of objects that

instantiate literary properties like​ having been written by Conan Doyle​ or ​not

being concrete.​ ” These literary properties are what help us differentiate creatures
1
of fiction from concrete entities .

While the ascribes/instantiates distinction does clarify our discourse

surrounding fiction, we need to introduce another distinction in order to properly

make sense of sentences like (4). Take the following two variants of (4):

1
​It is worth noting that certain genres or types of fiction, like extremely detailed
and accurate historical fiction, seem to provide counterexamples to this
conception of the ascribes/instantiates distinction. I ask the reader to set such
examples aside since they are few and far between and, while interesting, a topic
for another paper
 8

(5) Conan Doyle couldn’t have written Holmes as a non-detective.

(6) According to Conan Doyle’s fiction, Holmes couldn’t have been a

non-detective.

(5) and (6) seem to claim that Holmes couldn’t have been a non-detective,

but they do so in importantly different ways. (5) deals with an author’s ability to

conceive of a character other than how they were written, while (6) is making the

claim that within the context of the Holmes stories, Holmes must be a detective.

(6) is an example of what I will call a ​fiction-internal​ claim. Fiction-internal

claims deal with the internal rules of a fiction and are reliant on a kind of pretense

on the part of the speaker. They are not true when uttered in the context of the

actual world, but are true because the speaker is speaking within the context of a

fiction. Fiction-internal claims concern ascribed, rather than instantiated,

properties of fictional entities. Therefore, fiction-internal claims generally rely on

a kind of pretense on the part of the speaker. A general heuristic for identifying

fiction-internal sentences is to examine if a particular sentence is only true within

the context of a fictional world, or if it could be true devoid of the context of a

fiction. If it is the former, then the sentence is a fiction-internal claim.

In contrast, (5) is a ​fiction-external​ claim. Fiction-external claims are all

claims about creatures of fiction that don’t rely on pretense on the part of the

speaker since they concern instantiated, not ascribed, properties. For instance, the
 9

sentence “Holmes was created by Conan Doyle” concerns Holmes’ instantiation

of the property of ​having been created by Conan Doyle.​ Because it does not

concern any ascribed properties, and therefore does not involve any pretense on

the part of the speaker, it is a fiction-external claim. Other examples of

fiction-external claims are claims about works and authors. For instance, the

claim “​Action Comics​ could have been created by someone else” is a

fiction-external claim since it is about the work itself, not the fictional world

found within the work.

Now let’s re-examine (1) and (2) using our newfound knowledge of the

internal/external and ascribes/instantiates distinctions. (1) is clearly engaging in a

kind of fiction-internal, ascription claim, and is not claiming that Holmes

instantiates the property of ​being a detective​, but rather that he is ascribed such a

property by Conan Doyle. Since we now know that creatures of fiction exist, just

not as concrete objects, we also know that (2) is false and should be re-evaluated.

Instead, (2) is claiming that Sherlock Holmes is not an actual, concrete detective.

In light of our new understanding of creatures of fiction and ascription, we should

therefore interpret (1) and (2) as the following:

(7) According to Conan Doyle’s fiction, Holmes is a detective.

(8) Sherlock Holmes does not exist as a concrete object but rather as a

creature of fiction.
 10

When we look at (7) as an ascription claim, it is clearly compatible with

(8). Through the introduction of the internal/external and ascribes/instantiates

distinction, we can clarify precisely what we are claiming when we make claims

about fictional entities, and resolve our seemingly contradictory beliefs about

fiction.

3. Modality

Here are two true sentences:

(1) I am a student at Denison University.

(2) I could have been a student at DePauw university.

Both of these sentences are true, but concern different kinds of truths. This

is because (1) is describing the way the world is, while (2) is describing a way the

world could have been. (2) is a modal claim, a kind of claim that concerns

possibility and necessity and quite often describes the world not as it is, but as it

could be (Melia, 2003). But how can we talk about ways things could be? Taken

at face value it seems that our knowledge is limited to how things are, so it is not

immediately obvious how we could talk about how the world could be. These

kinds of questions might lead one to reject (2), and to instead claim that though

(2) seems true, it is in fact either false or meaningless. This reaction, though
 11

understandable, endangers some very important aspects of how we talk about the

actual world.

Modal discourse pervades our daily life in subtler ways than one might

think. For instance, take the following two sentences:

(3) That teapot is very fragile.

(4) I regret having purchased that corduroy couch.

Both these sentences are meaningful and should not be regarded with the

same suspicion that our modal skeptic feels towards (2). Our modal skeptic

disregards sentences like (2) since they describe the world as it could be, and we

only know about the world as it is. Therefore, since both (3) and (4) describe the

world as it is, our modal skeptic shouldn’t regard them as false or meaningless.

However, if we reject modal discourse we do risk endangering perfectly

meaningful sentences like (3) and (4). Therefore, we shouldn’t hastily throw out

modal discourse as our modal skeptic suggests.

The notion of fragility is a fundamentally modal one, as it is claiming that

an object ​could​ break easily. (3) is not claiming that the teapot has been or is

broken, but rather that if certain conditions were met, it would break. This kind of

talk is modal in nature, as it describes a way the world could be. Therefore, in
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order to describe the world as it is (after all, many objects are fragile) we must

invoke the modal notions of fragility, strength, brittleness, and so on. If someone

asked you to describe a particular rebar beam and you didn't mention that it ​could

(a modal notion) support a certain amount of weight, you wouldn’t have

adequately answered their question. Thus, somewhat surprisingly, we need

modality to describe the world as it actually is.

(4) talks about the feeling of regret. Regret is a feeling that is predicated

upon our ability to do otherwise. Since regret is usually used to express some kind

of distress at not having made different choices, it hinges upon our ability to

imagine and describe other choices we could have made. For instance, if I were

unable to imagine or describe life without a corduroy couch, feeling regret over

my purchase wouldn’t make any sense. Therefore, in order to make sense of

feelings like regret, guilt, or pride, we must again invoke modal notions.

Now that I have established that we need modal discourse for much of our

day to day life, I will move on to examining the contents of our modal discourse.

Here are two sentences that have particular modal statuses, though they lack

modal operators like (2):

(5) Paul is a philosophy student.

(6) Seven is prime.

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Both (5) and (6) are true sentences that are not, at face value, modal in

nature. However, they both have a ​modal status​ (Melia, 2003). (5) and (6) are not

unique in their possession of a modal status as all propositions have some kind of

modal status. First let’s look at (5). (5) is true, but could have been otherwise. I

could have chosen to study math, medicine, or music. But compare (5) to (6). (6)

could not have been otherwise, it would be a bizarre claim to say that, given

certain conditions, seven could fail to be prime. Thus, we can conclude that there

are two modal statuses that truths can have. Truths that could have been
2
otherwise, like (5), are called ​contingent truths​. ​Impossibilities and truths that
3
couldn’t have been otherwise and, like (6), are called ​necessary truths​.

Philosophers often think about necessity and contingency in terms of

possible worlds​. Possible worlds are not other planets or planes, but rather other

ways things could have been (Lewis, 1986). One way to think about contingent

truths is that they are true in some possible worlds but not others, while necessary

truths are true in all possible worlds (Lewis, 1986). Within this paper I make no

claim about what exactly possible worlds are, but merely use the language of

possible worlds to characterize necessity and contingency.

2
Usually denoted by a "◇" in front of a proposition. For instance, “◇ I am
human” expresses “it is contingent that I am human”
3
Usually denoted by a "□" in front of a proposition. For instance, “□ I am human”
expresses “it is necessary that I am human”
 14

In the next section, I will examine how these notions of necessity and

contingency can be applied to our day to day discourse about essence.

4. Essence

As I established in the previous section, in our day to day discourse, we tend to

make claims about the different ways the world could have been. Within this

section I plan on examining the discourse surrounding how particular objects

could or couldn’t have been. Our discourse about ways particular objects could or

couldn’t have been is commonly referred to as discourse about ​essence and

accident​.

As discussed previously, objects instantiate properties. For instance,

apples are edible, students are poor, and cakes are delicious. Each of these

sentences describes a property an object (or class of objects) instantiates. But not

all properties are created equal. Take the following two sentences about Bryce

Harper:

(1) Bryce Harper is human.

(2) Bryce Harper plays for the Nationals.

These two sentences both describe properties that Bryce Harper has, but

they seem to describe different kinds of properties. (1) is an example of an

essential property, while (2) is an example of an accidental property. Essential

 15

properties are properties that an object must have, while accidental properties are

properties that an object has, but could exist without (Robertson, 2016). One way

to get at this distinction is to reflect on whether a sentence about a particular

property involves the word “must” or “could.” Take the following modified

sentence:

(3) Bryce Harper must play for the nationals.

(3) is false, Harper could have decided to play for the Yankees, the Red

Sox, or in some far flung reality, the Blue Jays. Which team he plays for is not a

fundamental aspect of what it is to be him. He could exist without having the

property of ​playing for the Nationals,​ thus that property is accidental. Take the

following sentence:

(4) Bryce Harper could be a fish.

(4) is also false. Harper could not be a fish, since if he were a fish, he

would fail to be himself. His humanity is a fundamental aspect of what it is to be

him in a way that playing for the Nationals is not. As with our discourse about

necessity and contingency, we often think about these essential claims in terms of

possible worlds (Robertson, 2016). Thus, because in all worlds in which Harper
 16

exists he is a human, it is essential that Bryce Harper is human. Therefore we can

conclude that ​being human​ is an essential property of Bryce Harper’s.

One view of essence I will be taking seriously within this paper is origin

essentialism, as described by Kripke in ​Naming and Necessity.​ Origin

essentialism claims that objects have their origins essentially, that they all

necessarily originated where they actually originated (Kripke, 1980). Therefore,

according to origin essentialism, every person was necessarily born to their

parents, every chair was necessarily made from a particular piece of wood or

metal, and every shirt was necessarily made from a particular piece of cotton. The

need for this view will become more readily apparent in section 8 when I use it to

contextualize my views on author essentialism.

The characterization of the essential/accidental distinction I have been

using thus far is is modal in nature, and relies on the notions of necessity and

contingency (Robertson, 2016). The modal characterization of the

essential/accidental distinction is as follows:

Property P is an essential property of object O if and only

if, if object O exists, object O has P necessarily. Property P is an

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accidental property of object O if and only if, if object O exists,

4
object O has P contingently (Fine, 1994, p. 3)

This modal formulation of the essential/accidental distinction has faced criticism

but it is the most commonly used formulation of the essence/accident distinction,

and thus is the formulation that I will be using in much of this paper.

Other formulations of the essence/accident distinction include Fine’s

definitional characterization of essence. Fine believes that the traditional modal

characterization over-generates essential properties (Fine, 1994). To illustrate this,

Fine points out that, necessarily, there are an infinite number of prime numbers.

Thus, in all worlds in which Bryce Harper exists, he is such that there are an

infinite number of primes. Therefore, by our modal characterization of essence, an

essential property that Bryce Harper has is ​being such that there are an infinite

number of primes​. However, intuitively, the infinitude of prime numbers has

nothing to do with what it is to be Bryce Harper. Therefore, according to Fine, the

modal view of essence over-generates essential properties. Since the modal view

of essence, according to Fine, claims that properties that seem to be outside

objects’ essences are in fact essential, it therefore ought to be revised. Fine’s

4
This is, arguably, a poor formulation of the modal view of essence as it seems to
claim that existence is an essential property of any given object. This is because in
all worlds in which object O exists, it has the property of existence. Therefore, by
this definition, it seems that object O has the property of existence necessarily.
This problem can be dodged a number of ways, for instance Russell claims that
existence is not a property at all
 18

alternate proposal is the definitional conception of essence, which claims that an

object’s essential properties are the properties that constitute said object’s

definition(Fine, 1994).

5. Taxonomy of Modality and Fiction

Within this section I plan on using the fictional realist model to taxonomize and

systematize our discourse about modality within and surrounding fiction. I will

first explicate the difference between internal and external modal claims about

fiction. I will then examine the different ways in which we can interpret

fiction-internal modal claims, then will do the same for fiction-external modal

claims. Finally I will examine some challenges to my taxonomy, and apply my

taxonomy to our essence claims about creatures of fiction.

The following sentence is one that we might, under ordinary

circumstances, take as true:

(1) Batman is Bruce Wayne.

As we know from section 2, sentences like (1) are false unless they are

qualified by something like “according to [author]’s fiction.” Therefore applying

the fictional realist model, (1) should be interpreted as the following:

(2) According to Kane and Finger’s fiction, Batman is Bruce Wayne.

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This sentence gives us far more to work with when determining the

contents of a sentence about fiction. For instance, the above sentence makes it far

easier to identify if I am talking about the internal or external elements of a

fiction. Take the following three sentences:

(3) Bruce Wayne could have failed to be Batman.

(4) According to Kane and Finger’s fiction, Bruce Wayne could have failed to

be Batman.

(5) Kane and Finger could have written Batman as someone other than Bruce

Wayne.

(3), without the machinery of fictional realism, could be read as either (4)

or (5). However, by adding “in fiction F” or “according to Kane and Finger,” we

can distinguish between internal and external claims about fiction.

Consider now what happens when we add modal elements to a claim

about fiction. Note that, similar to (3), the following sentence could be read in

many different ways:

(6) It is necessary that Batman is Bruce Wayne.

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Are we claiming that within the DC universe ​being Batman​ is an essential

property of Bruce Wayne? Are we claiming that Batman being Bruce Wayne is a

necessary element of a ​Batman c​ omic? Or are we claiming that Kane and Finger

couldn’t have written Batman as anyone other than Bruce Wayne? Using the

internal/external distinction provided by our fictional realism sentence model, we

can determine if we are talking about the necessity of an external element, or the

necessity of an internal element:

(7) Necessarily, according to Kane and Finger’s fiction, Batman is Bruce

Wayne.

(8) According to Kane and Finger’s fiction, it is necessary that Batman is

Bruce Wayne.

The former is making a modal claim about the possibility or necessity of a

fiction-external truth, while the latter is making a claim about the possibility or

necessity of internal fictional truths. But both (7) and (8) could still each mean

radically different things based on the context in which they are uttered. I will

therefore attempt to further clarify our discourse, starting with fiction-internal

modal claims.

6. Fiction-Internal Modal Claims

Take (8) from the previous section:

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(1) According to Kane and Finger’s fiction, it is necessary that Batman is

Bruce Wayne.

(1) is making a claim about the internal modal truth of a fiction. As we

know from section 2, these kinds of sentences don’t talk about authors, or works,
5
or characters , but rather talk about the “in universe” rules and truths of a piece of

fiction. They rely on a kind of pretense on the part of the speaker, and, generally,

if we believe them to be true without pretense we are seen as either delusional,

wrong, or both. Therefore, when we talk about the modal truths within a fiction,

we must engage with the modal realities found within a particular fiction, realities

which can often be different than our own. Many ​fiction-internal modal claims

can be trivial, like the following:

(2) In ​Star Wars,​ it is possible that Chewbacca is a Wookie

Any fiction-internal claim that begins with “possibly” and ends with

something that happened within the fiction is true, since if something actually

happened it is trivially true that it could have happened. Beyond these trivial

cases, fiction-internal modal claims can be uniquely easy to parse in ways that

5
​They
can be about characters, but only within the context of a fiction. For
instance, the claim “Sherlock Holmes lives at 221b Baker Street” is internal, since
it is making a claim about Holmes in the context of his fiction, whereas “Holmes
is a creature of fiction” is not.
 22

actual modal claims cannot. For instance, if an omniscient narrator in a book said

“Holmes could have made the jump had it not been for the stones in his pockets”

then we as readers know for a fact that Holmes would have made the jump had he

had the foresight to remove the stones from his pockets. An omniscient narrator

can give us confidence in these kinds of fiction-internal claims that we could

never have in the actual world. Beyond these kinds of cases, however,

fiction-internal modal claims can be murky and unclear. Unlike cases like the

above, sentences that discuss the possibility or necessity of elements not

specifically addressed within the text of a fiction are very difficult to evaluate.

To help us evaluate these kinds of claims we use ​imported modal beliefs​.

When reading and evaluating fictions, we tend to use imported beliefs from the

actual world (Lewis, 1978). These imported beliefs aid us in making decisions

about what kinds of things are possible and true within a fiction. Let us suppose,

for instance, Conan Doyle never explicitly states that Holmes has teeth. The fact

that Doyle never explicitly says Holmes has teeth does not mean that Holmes is

toothless! We can assume Holmes does have teeth because a part of our collective

belief world is that humans have teeth. Fiction-internal modal claims, like other

fiction-internal claims, and should therefore be evaluated using our imported

modal beliefs. However, sometimes our imported modal beliefs can fail us. Take

the following 4 sentences:

 23

(3) According to Tolkien’s fiction, Gandalf is an Istar

(4) According to Tolkien’s fiction, Gandalf is essentially an Istar

(5) According to Tolkien’s fiction, Boromir is human

(6) According to Tolkien’s fiction, Boromir is essentially a human

(3) is a true sentence, but (4) is extremely difficult to evaluate. Since Istars

don’t exist in the actual world, I have no intuitions about how they work or if

being an Istar​ is an essential property in the same way that ​being human​ is.

Without any explicit guidance from the text the best way of evaluating such a

claim is to look at a similar kind of being in the actual world. Istars are

comparable to angels or saints, so we could perhaps consult our modal views

about angels to try and determine the truth of (4). However, assuming that our

modal views about theology apply to fictional, angel-like beings is quite an

assumption. This simple example illustrates that when fictions introduce

fantastical, magical, or otherwise otherworldly elements, our modal intuitions

tend to have trouble adapting. I, for instance, have no modal intuitions about the

sentence “Harry Potter could have had a different wand” because my modal

intuitions about the actual world don’t include wands or magic.

But take (5) and (6), both of which take the same form as (3) and (4) but

are far more obviously true. Even though (5) and (6) each deal with a fictional

person, Boromir, they use a familiar predicate, “is human.” Our modal views
 24

about the actual world tend to be that if someone is human, then they are

essentially human. Therefore, our imported beliefs about modality suggest that

Boromir is, like us, essentially human. Therefore, while (4) is difficult to assess

since it deals with concepts not found within our imported modal beliefs, (6) is

easier to assess since it uses our imported modal beliefs.

Fiction-internal modal claims can be trivial, just like modal claims in the

actual world. When modal claims discuss the possibility of things that actually

happened, they are trivially true, and thus trivially easy to evaluate. Non-trivial

fiction-internal modal claims use our imported belief worlds, which contain our

modal views. We use these imported modal views to evaluate elements of a

fiction that are similar to our world, like the necessity of ​being human​. A given

person’s stance on the necessity of ​being human i​ n the actual world should,
6
​ ithin a fiction .
typically, inform their views on the modal status of ​being human w

Finally, there are fiction-internal modal sentences that aren’t trivial and that don’t

use our imported modal beliefs. These sentences usually have to do with fantastic

elements and properties, like ​being a wizard.​ Since no real thing actually is​ a​

6
​There
is some wiggle room here. For instance, if one views humans as the only
sentient beings in any possible world then the claim “Jane is essentially human” is
true because “Jane is a sentient being” is also necessarily true. However, if one
holds the prior view, then in a fiction like Lord of the Rings the claim “Boromir is
essentially human” is not true, since there are many other sentient beings within
that particular fiction. Therefore, one's views about the necessity of ​is human​ or
any other property can vary based on fiction-internal context or content.
 25

wizard, these kinds of sentences are incredibly difficult to evaluate since our

modal knowledge of the actual world does not apply to them.

7. Fiction-External Modal Claims:

Our second class of modal-fictional sentences are sentences like (4) from section

5. These sentences talk about the necessity or contingency of things surrounding a

fiction, rather than the internal modality of a particular fictional world. To

illustrate this distinction, take the following sentence:

(1) Conan Doyle could have finished the Holmes stories one hour later than

he actually did

(1) does not make a claim about the internal contents of Holmes’ world,

but merely makes the claim that the stories could have been completed at a later

time than they actually were. The time at which the Holmes stories were finished
7
doesn’t affect the internal truths of the Holmes fiction. Therefore, claims like (1)

are fiction-external modal claims, and members of the class of sentences I will be

attempting to taxonomize in this section. Take the following sentence:

7
​An astute reader might claim that the cultural and societal forces at play while
the Holmes stories were being written had such an impact on its internal truths
that to divorce the two is impossible. While I agree, discussing external cultural
effects on internal fictional truths still puts us squarely in the realm of
extra-fictional discourse.
 26

(2) Superman is necessarily Kryptonian

As fictional realists, we believe that (2) is false if it is left unqualified. We

could interpret it one of two ways, either as an internal claim like “within the

Siegel and Shuster fiction, Superman is necessarily Kryptonian” or as an external

claim like “necessarily within Siegel and Shuster’s fiction, Superman is

Kryptonian”. Since we are examining fiction-external modal claims, we will

interpret it as the latter:

(3) Necessarily According to Siegel and Shuster’s fiction, Superman is

Kryptonian

Suppose (3) is true. What conditions would need to be satisfied to make it

true? I claim that any of the following could act as a satisfactory truth condition

for (3):

(4) No work about Superman could be such that he is non-Kryptonian

(5) Siegel and Shuster couldn’t have written Superman as a non-kryptonian

(6) The character of Superman is essentially Kryptonian

 27

The above three sentences are about works, authors, and characters

respectively. I believe that most, if not all, fiction-external modal claims fall into

one of these three categories.

First let’s examine (4). (4) is making the claim that a property of a given

work -- in this instance being such that Superman has the property of ​being from

Krypton​ -- is essential to what that work is. For characters like Superman that are

passed from creator to creator, this can help us understand how to differentiate a

Superman story from a non-Superman story. Using the modal view of essence, (4)

can thus be read as the following:

(7) In all possible worlds in which Superman fictions exist, Superman is from

Krypton

Our second sentence, (5), is not about the work itself but rather about the

authors of the work. (5) is a claim about what Siegel and Shuster could or

couldn’t have written. Once we realize that (5) is claiming that Siegel and Shuster

couldn’t, under any circumstances, have written Superman as a non-Kryptonian,

we can appreciate what bizarre claims sentences like (5) are. (5) is claiming that

either Siegal and Shuster were either cognitively incapable of imagining

Superman as a non-Kryptonian, or that in every instance in which they could have

written him as a non-Kryptonian something happened causing them to write him

 28

as a Kryptonian. Perhaps, for instance, if they had tried to write Superman as a

non-Kryptonian lightning would have struck both of their hands, rendering them

unable to put a pen to paper for the rest of their days. Sentences like (5) are

therefore rarely true, as it is difficult to imagine circumstances in which authors

could never have written a character in a different way.

Finally, (6) is about the character of Superman. (6) is claiming that there

are certain features that are essential to Superman and that he cannot exist

without. Note that since Superman is ascribed properties like ​being Kryptonian,​

we are not claiming that he instantiates a particular property essentially, but rather

that he is ascribed a property essentially. However, what exactly an essentially

ascribed property is is difficult to answer. I therefore will be elaborating further

on what exactly essence claims about fictional entities mean in section 9.

8. Possible Objections to This Taxonomy

One possible objection to this taxonomy is that fictional characters and the

fictional worlds in which they are located are inextricably linked. If this is true,

then it would follow that any discussion about the essence of a fictional character

is actually a discussion about a fiction-internal modal truth, rather than a

fiction-external modal truth. If fictional characters cannot be removed from the

fictional worlds they inhabit, then to claim that essence claims about fictional

characters are external claims is simply false.

 29

At face value, the distinction between a character and a work seems

unclear and fuzzy. However, upon reflection, most of our intuitions about fiction

point towards characters being distinct from particular fictions in which they

appear. For instance, I can fairly safely make the claim “Sherlock Holmes is a

better detective than Batman.” This claim may be true or false, but it is clearly

meaningful. If characters were tied to works and didn’t make sense outside of

their particular fictional worlds, then sentences like the above would be

meaningless since each character is clearly being compared to an entity outside of

their respective fictional worlds. A somewhat more pedestrian way of introducing

the distinction is to merely point out that many people come up with characters

long before the stories in which they appear. Therefore, claims about the essence

of fictional characters are claims about what kind of essential qualities fictional

characters have independent of any particular fiction. What exactly one is saying

when one makes an essence claim about a fictional character will be examined

later in this paper.

Another objection one might have to this taxonomy is that it fails to

account for multi-authored works. For instance, ​Star Wars​ wasn’t just made by

George Lucas, it was also made by dozens of crew workers, actors, editors, and

casters. Even books, most of which are only written by one author, are made up of

the contributions of not just the author but also several editors. Therefore, any

necessity or essence claim about authors should account for the vast array of
 30

influence and interaction needed to bring a fictional world to life.

While I acknowledge that most of the examples used are single or dual

author based, I believe that my taxonomy is elastic enough to account for

multi-authored works. Take (5) from the previous section. While it does make a

claim about a particular author, it could easily be adjusted to apply to multiple

authors. For instance, the claim “Nobody on the set of​ The Phantom Menace

could have made Anakin a non-Jedi” is a similar claim to “George Lucas could

not have made Anakin a non-jedi.” Both deal with people’s ability to conceive of

different versions of works, one merely has a multi-person subject. Both are

perfectly intelligible and fit within my category of fiction-external modal claims. I

therefore believe that my taxonomy is elastic enough to account for these kinds of

multi-authored works.

One other objection is that, in claiming that there are only three

fiction-external categories, I am ignoring claims about whether or not a work

could have been created by a different author. This kind of different-author claim

could constitute a fourth kind of fiction-external claim. For the purposes of this

paper, I do assume author essentialism. This is because I am committed to

Kripke’s notion of origin essentialism (Kripke, 1980) as introduced in section 4. If

object have their origins essentially, and if authors are the origins of their works,

then it would follow that works have their authors essentially.

 31

I am committed to author essentialism because I believe that changing a

work’s author would radically alter the work in ways that other changes, like the

time the work was completed or what language it was written in, wouldn’t. For

instance, there are many short films devoted to exploring what a particular work

would be like had it was created by a different author, like ​What if Wes Anderson

Directed X-Men​ (Willems, 2015). The existence of such films seems to suggest

that we generally believe films are inextricably tied to their creators, and that had

they been different in some way they would be so radically different that they

would fail to be the same movie.

Even though I am committed to author essentialism, I do acknowledge

there is a compelling case against it. Take my previous example of multi-authored

works. ​The Avengers ​had one of the largest film crews ever, 2718 people in total

worked on the film. It seems plausible that we could begin a simple sorites

sequence and swap out someone with a small role on the film for someone with a

similar skillset. For instance, a junior member of the special effects team could

probably be swapped out with someone equally skilled without causing the movie

to be radically different (unless one regards the particular color palette of a

background explosion as essential to the film.) However, if we are committed to

author essentialism, then we must commit to the notion that swapping out said

junior special effects artist would result in a movie that is not ​The Avengers.​
 32

I acknowledge this weakness in my taxonomy, but seeing as I am

committed to origin essentialism I am comfortable biting this particular bullet and

committing to all works having every member of their creative staff essentially. I

will now move on to examine what precisely we are claiming when we make

essence claims about fictional characters.

9. Essence Claims about Fictional Characters

Take (6) from section 7:

(1) The character of Superman is essentially Kryptonian

We established in section 7 that (1) is making some kind of claim about

Superman’s essential properties. But what exactly is an essential property for a

fictional character? Let’s run through our taxonomy and look at what (1) might be

saying. (1) could be read either internally or externally. Read internally, (1)

should read something like the following

(2) According to Siegel and Shuster’s fiction, Superman has the essential

property of ​being Kryptonian

(2) is making a fiction-internal modal claim. It is talking about Superman

in the context of the Superman canon, and is claiming that within that canon,
 33

being Kryptonian​ is an essential property that Superman possesses. Read within

our taxonomy, this kind of internal essence claim is still up for interpretation.

Fine, with his definitional characterization of essence, would most likely read (2)

as making some kind of claim about the definition of “Superman” within the DC

universe. In contrast, a philosopher like Kripke would interpret it as making some

claim about Superman’s necessary properties. Regardless of one’s views on

essence, the internal interpretation is fairly straightforward, though it is still

subject to the difficulties outlined within our taxonomy of fiction since ​being

Kryptonian​ is a fantastical property and thus is somewhat difficult to evaluate. So,

if this internal reading is pedestrian, straightforward, and outputs simple results,

why should we read essence claims as anything other than internal claims? After

all, when it comes to philosophical theories parsimony and simplicity are virtues.

If we can achieve our goal of evaluating essence claims by using the internal

reading, what would motivate us to read essence claims as external claims?

Take the following tweet from comics author Greg Pak about how he

approaches writing characters with lengthy histories and multiple authors:

“I think my job with a legacy character is to immerse myself in the

source material, distill what’s essential about the character, and

find a voice that feels true to that essence and feels right given the

story I’m telling” (Pak, 2018)

 34

Pak, as far as I am aware, is not a philosopher. Thus, his use of the word

“essence” is surely not intended to be philosophically rigorous, but rather is an

example of how we tend to use the word “essence” in a day to day context. Pak,

however, does not seem to be making any kind of internal claim, but rather is

claiming that fictional characters have an essence that exists outside of the

internal truths of a particular fiction. It should therefore cause us to question if our

essence claims about fictional characters are merely about internal necessity and

contingency.

Pak seems to be suggesting that in order to write a character well, one

must be familiar with their essence. Pak’s idea of essence something found

beyond the internal truths of a particular fiction, as it can inform how one writes a

character in another fiction. We must conclude that either Pak is wrong,

something that seems unlikely since his tweet seems to be well within the bounds

of standard discourse about fiction, or we must acknowledge that essence claims

about fictional characters aren’t merely about the internal truths of fictions.

10. Potential Interpretations of Fictional Essence Claims

Now that I have explained why we should see fictional essence claims as external,

or at least not merely internal, let’s examine the potential external readings of (1)

from the previous section. I will begin with an external reading using the modal

view of essence:
 35

(1) Necessarily if Superman exists, then Superman is Kryptonian

(1), like many of our previous sentences, could be read in multiple ways. I

will first read it through the traditional modal view of essence, which we will

shortly see is the incorrect way of reading (1). The modal view of essence

interprets (1) as claiming that if Superman exists, he instantiates the property of

being Kryptonian.​ As savvy fictional realists, we know this reading is a dead end.

As we know from van Inwagen, creatures of fiction only instantiate literary

properties like ​having been created by an author​ or ​being a character in a novel​.

Therefore, we cannot claim that Superman instantiates a property necessarily

unless that property is a literary property. The traditional modal view of essence

fails here, and we must use the the notion of ascription, as introduced in section 2,

instead. Using the notion of ascription, we should read (1) as the following:

(2) Necessarily if Superman exists, then Superman is ascribed the property of

being Kryptonian

At face value (2) seems like an excellent account of Superman’s essence.

However, I claim that (2) produces enough undesirable conclusions that we ought

not to consider it a satisfactory account of essence. Take the following claim:

Siegel and Shuster created Superman. As author essentialists, we believe that if

 36

Superman exists, he was necessarily created by Siegel and Shuster, though they

did not have to create him. Therefore, we can conclude the following is true:

(3) Necessarily if Superman exists, Siegel and Shuster ascribe him the

property of being Kryptonian

(3) seems to contradict many of our standard modal views. (3) entails the

following: “Siegel and Shuster necessarily wrote Superman such that he is

Kryptonian.” This sentence seems false. After all, Siegel and Shuster could have

had a change of heart at any time throughout the writing process and could have

decided to make Superman human. These intuitions aren’t ones we should

abandon lightly, as to do so would require a radically revised account of modality.

To accept the modal view of fictional essence would require one to

explain why certain attributes of a character had to be written a particular way,

while others didn’t. At face value, a character’s hair color seems no more difficult

to change than their planet of origin or who their parents are. However, this modal

view requires us to commit to the idea that authors are somehow deeply

constrained, that no matter how much they may want to they cannot alter some

fundamental aspects of a character, yet they can alter other, less fundamental

aspects as they please. Van Inwagen’s notion of ascription seems to preclude the

notion of fundamentality in the first place, which indicates that not only would the
 37

truth of a sentence like (3) require us to revise our modal views, but also our

views about ascription

The modal view claims that in all possible worlds in which he exists,

Superman is ascribed the property of ​being Kryptonian,​ which as outlined above,

is undesirable. Another objection to the modal view is that it fails to quantify over

a subset of the fictions in which Superman appears, something that we would

most likely want. (3)’s antecedent is “if Superman exists” not “if Superman is

present within a fiction.” Thus, (3) is not quantifying over fictions in which

Superman appears, but rather all of fiction. By quantifying over all of fiction, we

commit to, for instance, the claim that within ​Pride and Prejudice​ if Superman

exists, he is ascribed the property of ​being Kryptonian.​ But of course, Superman

has nothing to do with ​Pride and Prejudice,​ therefore the above statement seems

to have nothing to do with his essence. However, even if one believed the above

to be an essential property of Superman, we still run into another problem.

If a character is ascribed a property, then according to a fiction (at a

particular place within that fiction) they have that property. Thus, if we take the

above claim “If Superman exists within ​Pride and Prejudice​, he is necessarily

ascribed the property of being Kryptonian” to be true, that means that within the

world of ​Pride and Prejudice​, a non-existent Superman has the property of ​being

Kryptonian​. However, Superman was created nearly 120 years after ​Pride and
 38

Prejudice​ was published. Thus, when ​Pride and Prejudice​ was published, it

contained no truths about Superman. However, according to the modal view, one

day in June of 1938 the world of ​Pride and Prejudice​ suddenly contained a new

truth, namely that Superman is necessarily from Krypton. Therefore, the modal

view of essence claims that new truths can be added to already existent fictions.

This is ​prima facie​ false, since a standard view about fiction is that fictions that

are isolated from each other (i.e., not within the same shared continuity) cannot

affect each other.

As demonstrated above, not only does the modal view of essence

contradict many of our standard modal commitments, but it also requires us to

commit to the view that unrelated fictions can affect each other. Therefore we

must find another way of characterizing fictional essence. Another potential

candidate for our essence claims is the definitional characterization of essence,

which when applied to our essence claim about Superman and Krypton would

read as follows:

(4) Superman is, by definition, Kryptonian

I believe that (4) runs into many of the same issues as (2). Definitions

cannot rely on ascription, since ascription is within a place context, like a work or

a chapter within a work. Definitions must quantify over far more than a particular
 39

place within a book, meaning that they are getting at properties that an entity

instantiates rather than those it is ascribed. Therefore, 6 must be making some

claim about how Superman has certain properties by definition. However, as we

know from van Inwagen, Superman does not possess properties like ​being

Kyptonian,​ he is merely ascribed them. Therefore, sentences like (4) cannot

account for our essence claims about fictional characters beyond claims like “it is

essential that Superman is a fictional character” since Superman only instantiates

literary properties. While it is true that Superman is essentially fictional, the

definitional view cannot account for essential ascribed properties which seem to

make up the bulk of our essence claims about fictional characters.

For the above reasons, I believe that neither the modal nor the definitional

views of essence are equipped to deal with our discourse about fictional essence.

In the face of these challenges, one might be inclined to simply claim that essence

claims about fictional characters are meaningless. While I am sympathetic to this

reaction, I believe that it is misguided. People like Pak talk about essence all the

time, and attempting to work out exactly what they are saying when they talk

about essence is a worthwhile project.

Since neither the internal nor the common external readings of essence

seem to be adequate, we must try and find a different reading. I therefore intend to

introduce the limited quantification view of essence. In order to properly explain

 40

this view, I must first introduce some machinery surrounding limited

quantification, and explain what possible fictions are.

11. Limited Quantification

First I will introduce the notion of limited quantification. When we make modal

claims, we are usually quantifying over subsets of possible worlds rather than all

possible worlds. To help illustrate the notion of quantifying over a subset, I will

first introduce it in a non-modal setting. Much of our discourse is restricted to

quantifying across small slices of reality. For instance, if I were to open my

cabinet and exclaim “there’s no more pasta!” I am not saying that there is no pasta

anywhere in the world, but rather that there is no pasta within my apartment.

Within our standard modal discourse we similarly tend to quantify across subsets

of possible worlds. When I utter the claim “it is impossible for me fly,” I am very

clearly discounting possible worlds in which I am a pilot, have an anti-gravity

belt, or possess superpowers.

When we discuss fictions we, similarly to when we discuss possible

worlds, quantify over subsets of fictions rather than all fictions. For instance, take

the following claim: Superman is essentially not a balloon. I believe this claim to

be true. However, I know that in ​World’s Finest​ issue 131, both Superman and

Batman were turned into balloons. Does this knowledge mean that I am wrong in

my belief that Superman is essentially not a balloon? I claim that the answer is no,

I can still be committed to Superman essentially not being a balloon in the face of
 41

my knowledge of​ World’s Finest​. My continued commitment to this claim can be

explained by my quantification over all ordinary instances of Superman, and

merely setting aside odd examples like Superman’s brief balloonification. I can

safely set aside such instances because of the context in which I am speaking.

Therefore when discussing fiction one must be exceptionally sensitive to the

context surrounding essence claims around fiction.

12. Possible Fictions

I will now explain what I mean when I use the term “possible fictions”. Just as

there are possible worlds, there are possible fictions. Possible fictions are not

simply actual fictions, though sometimes they are, since the actual is, by

definition, the possible, but are fictions that could have been. One might rightly

claim that, by this definition, possible fictions are the same things as possible

worlds. After all, if a possible world is a different way the world could have been,

wouldn’t it follow that to talk about a possible fiction is merely to talk about a

fiction within a possible world? While I agree with this conception of possible

fictions, I believe that reducing possible fictions to the notion of “all fictions

within all possible worlds” is to quantify over far too large a modal area.

Instead of conceiving of possible fictions as all fictions found within all

possible worlds, we should see them as highly context sensitive things that vary

based on the context in which they are invoked. For instance, take the following

claim:
 42

(1) Conan Doyle couldn’t have written Holmes as a Rambo-esque action hero

wielding an M60

(1) is a true, meaningful claim that deals with a possible fiction, one in

which Holmes is a muscle bound, M60 wielding commando. It says that such a

possible fiction could not exist, therefore in order for (1) to be true we have to

discount all possible worlds in which Conan Doyle was born in the 70s and was

highly influenced by Rambo during his formative years. We exclude possible

worlds in which Conan Doyle was born in the 70s because they are so radically

different from our own that we don’t see them as relevant when making claims

like (1). Therefore when we discuss possible fictions we are really discussing

fictions within possible worlds that are close to the actual world. The notion of

“close to the actual world” is a highly context sensitive one, and therefore cannot

be easily defined (Lewis, 1973). For instance, take the following modification of

(1):

(2) Had Doyle been born in the 70s, Holmes might have been a Rambo-esque

action hero

Both (1) and (2) are true because, even though they make seemingly

contradictory claims about the same author and character, they do so in radically
 43

different contexts. By making the context “Conan Doyle having been born in the

70s” (2) is true. However, note that without addition of “Had Doyle been born in

the 70s” (2) is false since we tend not to include authors being born in different

time periods in standard contexts.

As illustrated above, possible fictions are fictions found within other

possible worlds. However, possible fictions should not be regarded all fictions

within possible worlds, but instead as those fictions relevant within the context in

which a particular fiction, author, or truth is being discussed.

13. Introducing the Limited Quantification View of Essence

Now that I have introduced the notions of limited quantification and possible

fictions, I can introduce the limited quantification theory of essence. The limited

quantification theory of essence is as follows:

For any context relevant fiction, if creature of fiction C is present

within that fiction, C is, according to that fiction, ascribed the

property of F

By limiting our conception of essence to context relevant fictions, we can

limit our discourse to a subset of all fictions as determined by the context in

which our essence claim is uttered. Importantly, “for any context relevant fiction”

does not exclude possible fictions. If a relevant possible fiction with creature of
 44

fiction C does not ascribe C the property of F, then C does not have F essentially,

even though in all context relevant actual fictions they do have F. As an example,

take the following claim: Luke Skywalker is essentially blond. Assuming Luke

Skywalker is blond in all context relevant actual fictions, Luke therefore is

essentially ascribed the property of ​being blond.​ However, Luke’s hair color in all

actual fictions does not mean that he couldn’t have been born a redhead! Clearly

there are context relevant possible fictions in which Luke was born a redhead. As

this simple example demonstrates, in order to prevent the overgeneration of

essential properties we must include possible as well as actual fictions.

However, one might be confused as to why I include the additional

qualifier “if creature of fiction C is present in that fiction.” I include this

additional qualifier as, without it, we are quantifying over all context relevant

fictions. These could include fictions in which the creature of fiction in question

does not exist. For instance, if I were to claim that Superman is essentially a

reporter, that claim could, given the right context, carry with it other fictions

about reporters. However, Superman’s essential properties are wholly irrelevant

to fictions in which he does not appear. Thus, we must limit our context relevant

fictions to only those possible fictions in which Superman appears.

14. Context Relevance

But what precisely is a context relevant fiction? How do we determine which

fictions are context relevant to a particular essence claim and which are not? As I
 45

discussed prior, context can come from any number of sources. For instance, the

contexts of (1) and (2) from section 12 are very different, as (2) has the antecedent

“had Doyle been born in the 70s.” Sentences like (2) rely on explicitly outlining

the contexts in which they are true. However, explicit contextualization is not

limited to fiction and thus a full account of the exact function of “had Doyle been

born in the 70s” and other similar sentences is outside the scope of this paper.

Nevertheless, I do owe some account of what kinds of context clues or rules are

specific to fiction.

I intend to focus on an element of context that is unique to fiction:

canonicity. Canon is a way of determining which works make internally true

claims about a particular fiction. It serves to differentiate things like fan works

from official, authorial claims about a work. For instance, fanfiction is not canon

while works written by the original author are (with some exceptions) canon. To

illustrate how this concept can affect the context relevancy of fictions, take a

recent example of shifts in canon: Disney’s acquisition of ​Star Wars.​

When Disney acquired ​Star Wars​, they declared that all prior ​Star Wars

media (except for the six Lucas movies) was non-canon. Therefore characters like

Mara Jade (Luke Skywalker’s spouse) were, post Disney acquisition, no longer

part of the ​Star Wars​ canon. Keeping that in mind, take the following sentence

about Luke Skywalker:

 46

(1) Luke Skywalker is essentially a bachelor

Prior to the Disney acquisition (1) was, in most (if not all) standard

contexts, a false sentence. It was false because within extended​ Star Wars​ media

Luke married Mara Jade and therefore couldn’t essentially be a lifelong bachelor.

The extended media was considered context relevant to (1) because it was canon,

and thus was considered relevant when evaluating the truth of sentences like (1)

barring some explicit exclusion by the speaker.

However, after the Disney acquisition (1) became, in most standard

contexts, false. This is because the exclusion of characters like Mara Jade from

the ​Star Wars​ canon pushed them outside the realm of standard context. Now,

post Disney acquisition, instead of being true in all standard contexts sentences

like (1) must be qualified in some way. Much in the same way that characters like

Mara Jade were considered implicitly context relevant prior to the Disney

acquisition, they are now considered implicitly irrelevant. Due to a shift in the

canon, a speaker must now explicitly include Mara Jade when discussing Luke’s

bachelorhood, whereas before they had to explicitly exclude her.

15. Applying Canon to the Limited Quantification view

As the above examples illustrate, we must take fiction specific context elements

like canon seriously when evaluating the truth of essence claims about fiction. So,
 47

applying this idea of canon and context relevance to the limited quantification

view of essence we get the following:

For any context relevant fiction, as determined by explicit

contextualization, canon and/or other standard features of context,

if creature of fiction C is present within those fictions, C is,

according to those fictions, ascribed the property of F

Let’s apply this view to Pak’s tweet and see if it returns an intuitive, true

result. Pak’s tweet is as follows:

I think my job with a legacy character is to immerse myself in the

source material, distill what’s essential about the character, and

find a voice that feels true to that essence and feels right given the

story I’m telling (Pak, 2018)

Pak is clearly claiming that the context in which he is speaking is the

“source material” which, since he doesn’t include any other kind of explicit

contextualization, we can read as “prior canon works about a legacy character.”

Therefore, we can read Pak as saying something similar to the following:

 48

My job with a legacy character is to immerse myself in any prior

canon works about the character, and to search for common

properties that are found within those prior canon works that I

must include in order for my future works to be about the same

character

While my formalization of Pak’s tweet into the limited quantification view

of essence may diminish the strength of Pak’s rhetoric and the quality of his

writing, it seems to be expressing the same thing. Pak’s tweet seems to be using

essence in a fairly banal way that most of us take to be uncontroversial. Therefore,

if the limited quantification view of essence can accurately represent and

explicate Pak’s tweet, it is capable of accurately representing the standard ways in

which we talk about essence and fiction. Therefore, I claim that the limited

quantification view of essence is the correct way of contextualizing our essence

claims about fictional entities since it succeeds where the modal and definitional

views fail.

In sum, when we make fictional essence claims we are usually not

employing the modal or the definitional views of essence. This third view,

the limited quantification view of essence, is very similar to the modal

view but, through limited quantification, does away with the problems

introduced by the ascription account of the modal view of essence.

 49

Moreover, instead of quantifying across all possible fictions, they quantify

over context sensitive subsets of fictions. Determining which fictions are

relevant to a particular claim is done through both standard context clues,

but also fiction particular contextualizations like canonicity. Therefore, the

claim “Superman is essentially Kryptonian” is claiming that, in all context

relevant fictions in which Superman exists, Superman is ascribed the

property of ​being from Krypton​.

16. Conclusion

Over the course of this paper I accomplished two tasks. I outlined a general

taxonomy of our modal fictional discourse, dividing said discourse into two broad

categories: fiction-external claims and fiction-internal claims. I then explained

how fiction-internal modal claims can be complicated or simplified based on

elements found within a given work’s text. After having outlined fiction-internal

claims, I explained how fiction-external claims can be subdivided into three broad

categories: claims about works, claims about authors, and claims about characters.

After having outlined this taxonomy of modality and fiction, I examined potential

counterarguments and concluded that none of them were strong enough objections

to necessitate major revisions to my taxonomy. I then applied these ideas to

essence claims about fictional characters. Since neither the modal nor the

definitional characterizations of essence were adequate, I claimed we needed a

third way of characterizing fictional essence. This third way was the limited

quantification view of essence, and used the notion of quantifying over a subset of
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context relevant fictions to explain what kind of claim we are making when we

talk about the essence of fictional characters.

Works Cited

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Perspectives Lecture. Philosophical Perspectives, 8, 1-16. doi:10.2307/2214160

Kripke, S. A. (1980). Naming and necessity. Cape Town: Wiley.

Lewis, D. (1973). Counterfactuals and Comparative Possibility. Journal of

Philosophical Logic, 2(4), 418-446. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30226074

Lewis, D. (1978). Truth in Fiction. American Philosophical Quarterly,

15(1), 37-46. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org.denison.idm.oclc.org/stable/20009693

Lewis, D. K. (1986). On the plurality of worlds. Malden (Mass.):

Blackwell.

Melia, J. (2003). Modality. Routledge.

Pak, Greg [@gregpak] (2018),. “I think my job with a legacy character…”

Twitter, Retrieved from https://twitter.com/gregpak/status/1021019301300588544

Robertson, T., & Atkins, P. (2016, April 18). Essential vs. Accidental
Properties. Retrieved from
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/essential-accidental/

Van Inwagen, P. (1977). Creatures of Fiction. American Philosophical

Quarterly, 14(4), 299-308. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20009682

Willems, P. [PatrickhWillems] (2015, March 03). What if Wes Anderson

Directed X-Men. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UngE0qn3VRY
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