David Lewis was one of the most dependable philosophers in the 20th century. He made remarkable assistance in areas of philosophy. His contribution alongside those of other philosophers has attracted an increasing attention from philosophers from all over the world in the past years. They had a common area of interest which is the fictional entities. They had two areas to cover. One of the areas is the nature of fiction, the truth that fiction holds and the other one is about the personality of emotional retorts to fiction.
- There is the existence of the possible world
- The possible world has an entity that is concrete
- The possible world is nonchalantly and spatiotemporally remotely set from the other possible world
- The world we live in is among the possible worlds
In philosophy, the term possible world expresses modal claims. The common statement in the philosophical discourse has been unclear by several philosophers. Many of the theorists consider the actual world to be among the possible worlds. In any way the world had to be a possible world that is distinct, and the actual world is the one we live in. Most of the philosophers have had misunderstandings on the possible world. Lewis believed that there exist many possible worlds. There are also many stories that describe events. One of those stories can be true in the plurality of worlds
One characteristic of fictional work is that they have fictional characters. The character’s exploits have been written about in the works of fiction. Most of them were making their first appearances in the work of fiction. Most of Shakespeare’s works have fictional characters. Most of this characters whether animate or inanimate are found in the real world. If these statements in fiction depict something that is true in fiction, they also depict something true in the real world and in the possible worlds.
Thomason, believed that the work of fiction is nothing but an invitation of make believe. On the other hand the non-fiction gets to invite belief. He also believes that the work contains a content that is fictive. It is further said that if this work of fiction is true then it is just accidentally true. It is believed that this work is a product of the imagination of the author and so it cannot be fully true. This is what causes the make believe because it makes the author to invite the audience to believe the story.
According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (n.p), all the works of fiction have fictional characters. Fictional characters are those that their exploits have been written in the works of literature. This is the first appearance that they have made so far in the works of fiction. There are some works of fiction that have featured various fictional characters. For instance, we have Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Tolstoy’s Anna Karerina and Doyles the Hound of the Baskervilles. The characters belong to a certain class of individuals that are called, fictional entities. They include both the animate and the inanimate objects. The works in fiction contains entities that are found in the real world although the entities do not have importance in fiction. The characterization above shows that fictional entities have an important entity. They try and convince the audience to believe that these things are true when they read them.
According to Ronen (n.p), it is true that the world of fiction look like the possible worlds, the latter is taken in by the philosophers of language; they find it difficult to restitute the difference in literary. There is a claim that philosophy can reside with art if the philosophy thrives to tell us about singularity and immanence of the truth that is artistic. This means that they look at the singularity, the truth that art carries the truth is to it absolutely. In the term immanence it is said that the circumstance that the reality is inside to the artistic effects of mechanisms of art. He tried to solve this controversy through naming and the relation it has to words of fiction. By this he tried to show how a truth about fiction is established through the technique of naming. He said that it is possible to tell if something is true or false even when they do not exist for instance Sherlock Holmes.
Lewis (268) used his theory to modify the statement of possible worlds in relation to Sherlock Holmes; he said that there is uncountable number of worlds, where fiction occurs. The only way that one can tell the value of the truth is by Analysis. A sentence in form of the fiction f might be true if all that is told is true in all worlds, it should be known in the world as a fact other than fiction. This theory enables us to justify that everything told in a story is true. He goes a head analysis one since he finds this as not satisfying. In analysis 2 he says that a sentence in the fiction f is true if f if the worlds that f is known is known for a fact and true is different from the actual world and is balanced. He went on to analysis 2 which is the final because he was not satisfied with analysis one. He preferred analysis 2 because he has a strong philosophical base underneath this argument. The whole argument and the analysis 2 are fitted well to an approach that seems suited well for seizure by the school of thought.
In the theory that exists in literary studies, they use concepts that exist in the possible worlds. The concepts are logic and they are applied in the world that is created in the fictional texts in the fictional universe. The theory also provides vocabulary that is useful and a framework with which one can describe such worlds. We also see the literary world as a possible world on its own, but it is separate from the possible worlds of logic. The literary texts, which are works of fiction consists of their own modality system. They consist of worlds that are real with actual events and possible worlds with possible events. So they say that the world of fiction is given self-sufficiency just as the actual universe. We can then say that the fictional statements are true in one of the possible worlds.
David Lewis’ arguments are perceived as the most highly steady philosophical stand, this is because it brings much as a complement of literary criticism. It also brings an understanding for the assumptions that have been implied about facts in fiction. And so we come to a conclusion that the statement and claims of David Lewis about fiction and possible worlds is true.
Work Cited
Lewis, David. “Truth in Fiction,” Philosophical Papers, Volume 1, Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 261-275
Ruth Ronen. Possible Worlds beyond the Truth Principle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fiction. The metaphysics lab: Stanford University. http://plato.stanford.edu/ 2011
Thomason, A.L. Fiction and Metaphysics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999
