Abstracts

How to Vindicate (Fictional) Creationism

Alberto Voltolini University of Turin

Fictional Creationism is an ontologico-metaphysical position basically constituted by two theses. First, the ontological thesis a): in the general inventory of what there is, there also are fictional entities (ficta: not only fictional individuals like M.me Bovary and Sherlock Holmes, but also fictional places like Middle-earth and Neverland, to say nothing of fictional kinds and events). Second, the metaphysical thesis b): fictional entities depend for their existence on the imaginative activities of certain people - basically, make-believe practices of certain kinds, like story-telling - thereby being abstract entities of a certain kind, namely, mind-dependent abstracta.

Moderate creationism is the thesis according to which such a make-believe practice is just a necessary, but not a sufficient condition in order for a fictum to come into existence. What is further required for such an existence is that a certain reflexive stance on that make-believe practice takes place. In such a stance, the practice is taken as involving a certain set of properties, the properties the story-teller mobilizes in the relevant bit of her narration. In such a way of taking it, the practice consists in that that very set of properties is make-believedly identical with a certain individual.

Moderate creationism is really required in order for someone to be a creationist. For it seems the only way to bypass some further powerful criticisms that have been recently raised against creationism in general: the ontological criticism (Kroon 2010, 2013, 2015) and the metaphysical criticism (Deutsch 1991, Brock 2010).