Call for papers: Fictionalism as an (In)Appropriate Philosophical Methodology

Submission deadline: June 15, 2018

It is sometimes said that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Fictionalism in various fields of philosophy can be regarded as an attempt to turn this proverb into a falsehood. On the one hand, it is admitted that realistic ontologies of possible worlds, fictional characters, theoretical objects, propositions, numbers and other abstract entities is able to provide elegant explanations in various areas; on the other hand, the realistic ontologies are sometimes challenged as populating the universe with queer entities that bring about insurmountable problems. Fictionalism tries to steer a middle course by retaining the explanatory power of the realistic ontologies but eliminating the problems they might induce. The way in which fictionalism tries to achieve this result is bold—it approaches the realistic ontologies as useful fictions, meaning that they both deliver their explanations of phenomena and are stripped of their burdensome realistic load.

We believe that fictionalism, despite being pursued for some dozens of years, is still very attractive to many philosophers as well as rather worrisome to many others. Considering pros and cons of fictionalism is still capable to provide an opportunity for bringing new arguments and analyses. That is why we decided to prepare a special issue of Organon F – international journal of analytic philosophy in which fictionalism will be discussed from various perspectives. Particularly welcome are articles in which fictionalist methodology is applied to various fields like philosophy of modalities, philosophy of mathematics and other sciences, philosophy of fiction, semantics and philosophy of language, to name just a few. Critical articles in which problems of fictionalism are primarily discussed are welcome as well. Last, but not least, authors of historically oriented articles that are intended to study the origins of fictionalism and its developments are also encouraged to submit their contributions.

All papers submitted to the special issue will be peer-reviewed by at least two anonymous referees. Authors are asked to submit anonymized versions of their papers with a separate file containing author information, affiliation and e-mail address. There are no restrictions regarding the extent of papers. If you would like to ask whether your contribution is relevant to the scope of this special issue, feel free to contact us. All queries and submissions can be sent via the e-mail address organonf@gmail.com.