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Nick Bostrom's "simulation argument" purports to show that if it is possible to create and run a vast number of computer simulations indistinguishable from the reality we are living in, then it is highly probable that we are already living in a computer simulation. However, the simulation argument requires a modification to escape the undermining implications of the scepticism it implies, as argued by Birch. The present paper shows that, even if the modified simulation argument is valid, still it is unsound since it relies on the indistinguishability assumption that even in principle cannot be tested. To account for the unsoundness of the simulation argument, the present paper draws on John Woods' theory of fiction, to expose structural similarities between general fiction and the simulation argument. Though the simulation argument is unsound, it seems persuasive, because the argument immerses the reader in a fictive world with the help of tacit assumptions, leveraging just enough common sense to remain compelling while covering over an untestable premise. Simultaneously with the critique of Bostrom's argument, Chalmers' argument for the matrix hypothesis is assessed on similar criteria. In either case, both arguments rely on an accumulation of assumptions, both implicit and explicit, hiding the premises that are untestable in principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Queer people have always been here; for as long as we have existed, so has the awareness of our obvious otherness, as well as the desperate need to understand and reconcile our whats, hows, and whys. Literature has persevered as an outlet for LGBTQ+ exploration, increasingly so as the publishing industry responds to a more accepting society of queer people, writers, and stories. This paper will explore a proposed dichotomy of publishing's current treatment of queer literature between the adult and young adult markets, through the supplemental lenses of their individual and cultural histories: to help analyze the present and form pictures of our industry's future, we need to understand our past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a statistical overview of bibliodiversity in the Latvian book market—a small language market in terms of the number of Latvian language users and home for people from varied ethnic and national backgrounds. Diversity of the book output during 1991–2020 is analysed in terms of languages and general categories in which books are published, shares of literary genres in fiction publishing, shares of original and translated fiction titles, languages from which fiction titles are translated, as well as the background of fiction authors who have been translated and published in Latvia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of major scientific advances occurring as a short-term ‘revolutionary’ change in thinking interspersed by long periods of so-called ‘normal’ science seems to be losing ground to more ecological models, which are more inimical of the twists and turns of life. From this idea it is a short step to charting science’s progress against stages used in fictional storytelling, which after all is life-based. This paper explores the development of the periodic table in terms of the achievement of a fictional ‘quest’, and finds the stages of such a story are well represented. While Mendeleev or perhaps Meyer might be considered by some to be the hero of the quest, its first stage—the call—is represented by the Karlsruhe conference in 1860, with an international cast of ‘companions’ and ‘helpers’ who contributed to the Table’s early development. The ‘journey’ may have been frustrated by lack of appropriate data and understanding of concepts, but the ‘arrival’ phase is clearly marked by the award of the Davy medal jointly to Mendeleev and Meyer in 1882, Throughout these stages there are lesser, although still significant contributions made by “little people” of science to the overall progress of the Table. The end of the journey is not the end of the quest: the discovery of new elements—“new ordeals”—and their incorporation into an increasing range of types and styles of periodic table, which—akin to the “life-renewing goal” of the fictional quest—continue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently philosophy of religion has been almost exclusively focused upon the analysis of western religious ideas. The central concern of the discipline has been the concept 'God', as that concept has been understood within Judaeo-Christianity. However, this narrow remit threatens to render philosophy of religion irrelevant today. To avoid this philosophy of religion should become a genuinely multicultural discipline. But how, if at all, can philosophy of religion rise to this challenge? The paper considers fictionalism about religious discourse as a possible methodological standpoint from which to practice a tradition-neutral form of philosophy of religion. However, after examining some of the problems incurred by fictionalism, the paper concludes that fictionalism and religious diversity are uneasy bedfellows; which implies that fictionalism is unlikely to be the best theory to shape the practice of philosophy of religion in a multicultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using fiction in teaching sociology involves what Harvey Sacks calls 'sociological reconstruction'. Numerous comments on teaching sociology provide advice and suggestions on the use of literature and 'what counts' as 'sociological' literature, including specific titles. This paper goes further: while the use of literature is a routine feature of sociological accounts, discerning the relevance of a novel, or a passage within a novel, to sociological themes is an analyst's achievement. It requires work both by the teacher and the student to recognize the relevance of fiction to sociology. Previous studies on fiction in sociology focus on the pedagogic aspects of using novels but fail to acknowledge the key problem of 'sociological reconstruction' attempted through the use of novels. The paper explicates the crucial and generic issue of 'corpus status', which is fore-grounded by the use of non-sociological materials in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the logic of fictions within fictions. I argue that consistently nested consistent fictions must have certain formal characteristics. The most important is that they form a tree structure. Depending on one’s theory of fictional objects, additional constraints may apply regarding the appearance of a fictional object in two or more fictional universes. The background motivation for the paper is to use iterated fiction operators as a tool for making sense of iterated modal operators; I conclude by noting briefly where the results about nested fictions can, and where they cannot, be extended to nested possible worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes best-seller lists in seven major European book markets between April 2008 and March 2009. The paper's authors introduce the concept of an impact factor for best-selling authors that shows how influential an author is in a given market and across the analyzed markets overall. The paper's authors discovered that a new generation of European best-selling authors appeared in major book markets of Europe such that those not writing in English have an impact of almost twice that of the English writers. Furthermore, the authors have discovered that only veteran English or American best-selling authors tend to be published by big media conglomerates; the majority of the European best-selling authors were published by a surprising mix of big and small, independent and international publishing houses. It is striking that English as the most popular second language in the world did not play a stronger role as an intermediary language in the transmission of books from one European culture to another, as European publishers in major markets still employ editors who read a variety of languages and thus play the role of intermediaries in how books travel from one culture to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that there is no genuine puzzle of ‘imaginative resistance’. In part 1 of the paper I argue that the imaginability of fictional propositions is relative to a range of different factors including the ‘thickness’ of certain concepts, and certain pre-theoretical and theoretical commitments. I suggest that those holding realist moral commitments may be more susceptible to resistance and inability than those holding non-realist commitments, and that it is such realist commitments that ultimately motivate the problem. However, I argue that the relativity of imaginability is not a particularly puzzling feature of imagination. In part 2, I claim that it is the so-called ‘alethic’ puzzle, concerning fictional truth, which generates a real puzzle about imaginative resistance. However, I argue that the alethic puzzle itself depends on certain realist assumptions about the nature of fictional truth which are implausible and should be rejected in favour of an interpretive view of fictional truth. Once this is done, I contend, it becomes evident that the supposed problem of imaginative resistance as it has hitherto been discussed in the literature is not puzzling at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will defend modal fictionalism. The paper has two parts. In the first part, I will suggest a revised version of modal fictionalism which can avoid certain technical problems. In the second part, I will propose a nominalized version of modal fictionalism and a general scheme of fictionalism for the nominalist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a reflection on the boundaries of academic discourse as I came to be acutely aware of them while attempting to teach a graduate seminar in qualitative research methods. The purpose of the readings in Husserl and Schutz and the writing exercises was to assist students trained in quantitative methods and steeped in positivistic assumptions about research to write phenomenological descriptions of lived experience. "Paul" could not write the assigned papers due to a diagnosed writing "disability" but he did submit fictional stories and sketches which beautifully illustrated the concepts of Husserl and Schutz. Paul's disability presented a natural "bracketing" experiment which brought the positivistic as- sumptions surrounding academic research and writing to the forefront I engaged in verbal dialogues with Paul, in which he discussed the philosophical ideas. My work with Paul highlighted the extent to which the academic lifeworld marginalizes those who seek to write from the heart, disguising even the work of those philosophers who wish to uncover direct experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translations from the English language domain are reportedly declining, thus suggesting that there is a counter trend in publishing where Anglophone markets are coexisting more favourably alongside small-nation book trades. This article, however, argues that the threat of globalization is growing, with readers bypassing translations of fiction titles and consuming English language editions in their original form. This paper focuses on the relationship European fiction markets have with English language fiction. Initially, a summary of the debate surrounding the prevalence of English language texts in Europe will be presented. Discussion then moves on to consider three book market perspectives on the role of English language fiction in Europe: the UK, Sweden and France. Empirical research includes a range of original interviews with publishing experts from each of the three book markets and seeks to determine whether translations from English are diminishing while consumption of English language export editions is increasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent and growing discussion in philosophy addresses the construction of models and their use in scientific reasoning by comparison with fiction. This comparison helps to explore the problem of mediated observation and, hence, the lack of an unambiguous reference of representations. Examining the usefulness of the concept of fiction for a comparison with non-denoting elements in science, the aim of this paper is to present reasonable grounds for drawing a distinction between these two kinds of representation. In particular, my account will suggest a demarcation between fictional and non-fictional discourse as involving two different ways of interpreting representations. This demarcation, leading me to distinguish between fictional and non-fictional forms of enquiry, will provide a useful tool to explore to what extent the descriptions given by a model can be justified as making claims about the world and to what degree they are a consequence of the model's particular construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to show that Jerome, in his three biographies of monks ( Lives of Saint Paul, Saint Malchos and Saint Hilarion), written between 376 and 392, 'converts' classical travel narratives to hagiography, borrowing topics from ancient genres such as epos, history, geography or novel. But at the same time the author creates a new literary frame for these christian peregrinationes. Indeed, these short novels offer him the opportunity to think about how difficult it is to understand the eremitic xeniteia. Is it possible to be in touch with a holy man whose holiness comes from the fact that he is always fleeing human society, to get nearer to God? The solution proposed by Jerome belongs to literary art: he paradoxically succeeds in making obvious the holy man's absence, thanks to the rhetorical device of euidentia. The text, which generates mental visions, moves the Christian reader spiritually closer to the holy man, although that figure's holiness depends on a sort of exclusion of every kind of relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that major nineteenth-century British novelists promote the novel as the dominant national literary form, in direct competition with classical forms, such as the epic. Because of this agenda, some novelists castrate, cripple, or dehumanize the figure of the scholar of antiquity, as a way of symbolically rejecting ancient genres. The primary focus is on two novels of faith and doubt by women novelists: George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872-3), and Mary Augusta Ward’s Robert Elsmere (1888), novels which make great capital out of presenting and taming sickly, deathly, impotent, and sinister classicists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorizing has been conceived historically in illuminative and ocular metaphors, and as an activity that occurs in a fixed and privileged relation to political society that permits a panoramic perspective. These elements of light, sight, and distance, are supportable existentially and ethically in post-war, post-Holocaust world. One of the first to explore the challenges to theorizing in this era was Albert Camus. He provided phenomenological and existential investigations of the obstacles to theorizing politics in his literary works, particularly his trilogy of novels: The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall. In this paper, I offer a reading of these novels that isolates theorizing as an activity performed not from a transcendent perceptual vantage of perfect light and vision, but from the immanent perspectives achieved in the city, among friends, or by exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues in favor of a treatment of discourse about fiction in terms of operators on character, that is, Kaplanesque ‘monsters’. The first three sections criticize the traditional analysis of ‘according to the fiction’ as an intensional operator, and the approach to fictional discourse grounded on the notion of contextual shifts. The final sections explain how an analysis in terms of monsters yields the correct readings for a variety of examples involving modal and temporal indexicals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gideon Rosen’s [ Modal fictionalism. Mind, 99, 327–354] Modal Fictionalist aims to secure the benefits of realism about possible-worlds, whilst avoiding commitment to the existence of any world other than our own. Rosen [ A problem for fictionalism about possible worlds. Analysis, 53, 71–81] and Stuart Brock [ Modal fictionalism: A response to Rosen. Mind, 102, 147–150] both argue that fictionalism is self-defeating since the fictionalist is tacitly committed to the existence of a plurality of worlds. In this paper, I develop a new strategy for the fictionalist to pursue in response to the Brock–Rosen objection. I begin by arguing that modal fictionalism is best understood as a paraphrase strategy that concerns the propositions that are expressed, in a given context, by modal sentences. I go on to argue that what is interesting about paraphrastic fictionalism is that it allows the fictionalist to accept that the sentence ‘there is a plurality of worlds’ is true without thereby committing her to the existence of a plurality of worlds. I then argue that the paraphrastic fictionalist can appeal to a form of semantic contextualism in order to communicate her status as an anti-realist. Finally, I generalise my conception of fictionalism and argue that Daniel Nolan and John O’Leary-Hawthorne [ Reflexive fictionalisms. Analysis, 56, 26–32] are wrong to suggest that the Brock-Rosen objection reveals a structural flaw with all species of fictionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely held in theories of narrative that all works of literary narrative fiction include a narrator who fictionally tells the story. However, it is also granted that the personal qualities of a narrator may be more or less radically effaced. Recently, philosophers and film theorists have debated whether movies similarly involve implicit audio-visual narrators. Those who answer affirmatively allow that these cinematic narrators will be radically effaced. Their opponents deny that audio-visual narrators figure in the ontology of movies at all, and many have argued that the ‘effaced’ literary narrator is an illusion as well. In this paper, I attempt to sort out the central issues that arise in these debates, defending the existence of effaced narrators in both literature and film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The home of Nigeria's renowned Marxist anthropologist, Ikenna Nzimiro, and of the country's ``first lady of letters,'' Flora Nwapa, is Oguta, a sprawling commercial centre situated on Oguta Lake near the confluence of the rivers Niger and Urashi. Both authors have described their home town in their own diverging perspectives. While Nzimiro's account focused on the town's political organization and questions of state formation and authority, Flora Nwapa was a novelist concerned primarily with women's issues. She engaged her home town's custom and religious beliefs centring on the pre-eminent lake goddess, Ogbuide, in her quest to champion womanhood. This paper examines how the novelist took certain artistic liberties and critically deconstructed local custom in her cause to promote women. While Nwapa's primary concern was women's reproductive rights and welfare, she also cherished Oguta culture, voiced her critique with caution, and was increasingly critical of foreign intrusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many philosophers suggest (1) that our emotional engagement with fiction involves participation in a game of make-believe, and (2) that what distinguishes an emotional game from a dispassionate game is the fact that the former activity alone involves sensations of physiological and visceral disturbances caused by our participation in the game. In this paper I argue that philosophers who accept (1) should reject (2). I then illustrate how this conclusion illuminates various puzzles in aesthetics and the philosophy of mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The canonical version of possible worlds semantics for story prefixes is due to David Lewis. This paper reassesses Lewis's theory and draws attention to some novel problems for his account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]