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Fictional Exemplars
In this paper I will argue that insofar as one holds that moral properties are defined by direct reference to exemplars (DRE), one should also hold that fictional characters can be moral exemplars. Since Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarist virtue the- ory is the main advocate of DRE in the literature, I will focus on it. I will first pay particular attention to Zagzebski’s exemplarist virtue theory to argue that there are practical benefits to holding that fictional characters can be moral exemplars and that these benefits outweigh the practical benefits of holding that exemplars have to be actual. Second, I will give a view of fictional characters and discovery of moral properties that allows fictional characters to function as moral exemplars. Last, I will raise what I take to be the most pressing problems for the view that DRE is com- patible with fictional exemplars, and I’ll propose solutions that a proponent of DRE can accept at little to no cost. I will conclude that insofar as a view endorses DRE, as Zagzebski’s exemplarist virtue theory does, there are good reasons for proponents of that view to hold that fictional characters can be moral exemplars.
1 Practical benefits 1 of fictional exemplars
It seems natural to hold that fictional characters can be exemplars, since we often take fictional characters to be exemplars, and we use them that way in examples. Often it makes no practical di↵erence whether we use fictional characters or biogra- phies of real people. For example, in Divine Motivation Theory, Zagzebski uses the example of Ajax as a moral exemplar for the ancient greeks (Zagzebski 2004, 146- 147). Whether or not Ajax actually existed seems to make no di↵erence to whether the characteristics of Ajax helped ancient greeks recognize important moral proper- ties. For another example, in her Epistemic Authority, Zagzebski uses a biographical account of Captain Oates, who, according to the accounts, displayed great courage
(^1) There may be a metaphysical benefit, e.g. grounding moral obligations, that may privilege an actual exemplar theory over one that allows fictional exemplars. I don’t discuss this benefit here since my primary targets are those views that hold that goodness is grounded in moral properties.
(Zagzebski mss, 23-24). She adds a footnote indicating that these accounts of Cap- tain Oates are disputed. Suppose the disputers are correct and that there was no Captain Oates, or, if there was, he didn’t perform the courageous act the accounts say he performed. The accounts would then be historical fiction, but this would not take away from our ability to read the account and recognize an act as courageous. Zagzebski says this best in her (2010): “We learn through narratives of both fictional and nonfictional persons that some people are admirable and worth imitating, and the identification of these persons is one of the pretheoretical aspects of our moral practices that theory must explain.” (Zagzebski 2010, 51) There are other practical benefits to holding fictional characters to be exem- plars. If only actual people were moral exemplars, we wouldn’t have access to nearly as many moral exemplars as we would if fictional characters were also exemplars. Through fiction, we will be able to see many characters with the same moral prop- erty we see in actual moral exemplars display that moral property many more times than we would if only actual people were moral exemplars. Seeing multiple instances of a property will help us to more clearly recognize that property, which is a practical benefit. Further, fictional exemplars can realize their virtue or moral goodness in envi- ronments and settings in which we don’t get to see actual exemplars display their goodness. Real people tend to act in certain characteristic ways, for example within the traditions they’ve received from their culture or time or location. Fictional char- acters act in settings we haven’t been acquainted with before. We can see how fictional characters would act in a variety of unfamiliar contexts, which will enrich our understanding of what it is to have certain virtues or certain moral properties. 2 Also, fictional characters can represent a specific virtue well without the dis- tractions from that virtue that come from the complexity of being an actual agent. Fictional characters’ virtues can, in a way, be isolated from other features that may obscure what is essential to a particular virtue so that we might more clearly rec- ognize a virtue in a fictional exemplar than we would the same virtue in an actual exemplar.^3 Last, we have access to a fictional character’s mental life: thoughts, intentions, motives, etc., merely by virtue of the author or producer telling us about the char- acter’s mental life. Actual people may be wrong about their intentions or not have access to them. On the other hand, the narrative report of a fictional character’s
(^2) I give and reply to the problem (problem 4) that some of these contexts are too unrealistic in section 3 below. (^3) A reviewer suggested that Charles Dickens has Esther Summerson display generosity this way
in Bleak House.
view of the metaphysics of fictional characters. We can hold that fictional characters are 1) just bundles of universals selected by an author (Wolterstor↵ 1980), 2) pos- sible entities described by an author (Kripke 1963/1971, 65), or 3) artifacts created by an author (Thomasson 2004, 2009).^6 There are arguments for and against each of these views that I won’t go into here. As long as we grant non-eliminativism about fictional characters, there are three more features of fictional characters that are important for my view. First, fictional characters must in some sense have properties that can be discov- ered by those who learn about them. 7 If fictional characters did not have properties, then there would be no properties of fictional exemplars to be discovered, and if there were no properties of fictional exemplars to be discovered, DRE would be false. Fortunately, each of the three views of the metaphysics of fictional characters is a view in which fictional characters have discoverable properties. Second, fictional characters cannot be identical to whatever properties she in fact has. If a fictional character is identical to whatever properties she in fact has, then the character cannot gain or lose any properties. 8 But in order for us to come to recognize moral properties in an exemplar, that exemplar needs to be able to gain or lose some properties or other. In fact, for many moral properties, a character cannot possess that moral property unless it is possible for her to gain or lose some property or other. Virtues in their fullest sense are displayed in actions, and someone’s acting requires gaining or losing some property or other. Fictional characters aren’t identical to the properties they have if they have both essential and non-essential properties. I take fictional characters to have both essen- tial and non-essential properties. We can take the distinction as to which properties are essential and which are non-essential to be set by the author, just as if the author created a new “natural” kind in her writings. This raises the question: how can we, as readers, discover which properties are essential and which are non-essential? I think we can do this in one of two ways. First, we can simply ask the author. This would be akin to asking an expert about the chemical structure of a natural kind. Second, we can try to discover the essential properties of fictional characters just like we try to discover the essential properties of natural kinds: we observe features of the natural kinds and investigate. Investigating may be di cult with a fictional entity,
(^6) Artifactual views have also been defended by Salmon (1998) and Schi↵er (1996). I am most persuaded by artifactual views of fictional characters. (^7) ‘Have’ here can mean ‘be constituted by’ (as in the abstract object view) or ‘instantiate’ (as in possibilist and artifactual views). (^8) Thomasson (2009), 16, uses this as an objection to the abstract object and possibilist views
(numbers 1 and 2 above, respectively). If her critique is successful, we can adopt the artifactual view (number 3 above), which is the majority view anyway.
since we only have access to limited information about that entity. But suppose we only had limited access to some natural kind due to, say, a defect in our abilities or the extinction of that natural kind or God’s prevention. This would prevent us from being able to discover what the essential properties are, but it would not prevent there from being essential properties. Since my thesis doesn’t require that we be able to tell whether goodness is an essential property of an exemplar or not, either of these two options will su ce for my purposes. I’ll address further objections in the next section. Third, fictional characters have to be able to have moral properties. This doesn’t seem di cult to hold. If they have non-moral properties, I see no objection to holding that they have moral properties. After all, we do say, for example, that Samwise Gamges is brave, and Saruman the White is evil. Now I’ll discuss how we discover moral properties in exemplars. As is stipulated by DRE, moral properties are defined by direct reference, or ostensively. 9 For ex- ample, I point to an exemplar and say, ‘good’ is whatever is like that, and whatever other character is like that character is also good. Proponents of DRE hold that the direct reference account has features important for a moral theory. 10 Let’s call these “DRE’s benefits.” First, DRE allows us to successfully refer without having any beliefs about a description that a term (such as ‘good’) might pick out. Specific to Zagzebski’s exemplarist virtue theory, our emotion of admiration is directed at an exemplar construed in a certain way, even if we can’t explicate the aspect of the exemplar to which our admiration is directed. 11 What is important to this first point is that we recognize that exemplars are good first without being able to provide an account of what ‘good’ means. Second, it allows us to successfully refer even when we associate a false description with the term. We do make mistakes, but we still ought to be able to successfully refer to and discover moral properties (such as goodness) by association with exemplars despite these mistakes. Third, it allows for narratives to help reveal to us the essential properties of a good person. By direct reference, we can identify characters in a narrative and by pointing to these characters and saying, for example, “She is generous,” successfully refer to moral properties. I need to say something specifically about defining moral properties by ostension, since the moral theories I am discussing endorse a direct reference view. According
(^9) The direct reference view is defended, among other places, by Kripke (1972) for proper names and Putnam (1973) for natural kind terms. For a good summary of the view, see Reimer (2010), 13-15. (^10) The following features follow Zagzebski (2010), 51-52. (^11) Hare (2005): “[S]ince she also thinks that emotions introduce propositional contexts, which are
therefore in the technical sense ‘opaque’, she would be better o↵ saying that the intentional object is the combination, the thing only qua held under the ‘thick’ description as dangerous.”
Now that I’ve given a sketch of what fictional characters can be and how we discover the moral properties these fictional characters possess, I’m in a position to address what I take to be the most pressing problems for the view that DRE is compatible with fictional exemplars. I’ll try to show that the problems this view can be solved at little to no cost.
3 Problems and solutions
There are four problems I’ll raise for the view that DRE is compatible with fictional exemplars. The first two problems concern defining moral properties like ‘good’ by direct reference to fictional characters. The first problem raises a metaphysical prob- lem, and the second raises an epistemological problem, for trying to fix the reference of ‘good’ to properties of fictional characters. The next two problems concern what kind of investigative work we can do to find what deep moral properties fictional exemplars have. The third problem concerns whether we can do any investigation at all, and the last problem concerns whether our investigations would yield correct results. The first problem is one Kripke raises for direct reference to fictional entities. The information we’re given in writings of fiction underdetermines the reference of the term we want to apply. Kripke o↵ers an example of a unicorn. “If we suppose, as I do, that the unicorns of the myth were supposed to be a particular species, but that the myth provides insu cient information about their internal structure to determine a unique species, then there is no actual or possible species of which we can say that it would have been the species of unicorns.” (Kripke 1972, 157) The problem here is that when we take a term that is supposed to refer to a feature but that feature isn’t determined, then there is no referring that can occur. ‘Unicorn’ is like that. So, ‘unicorn’ doesn’t refer. Similarly, suppose an author writes about what she calls a non-actual substance named ‘schmuranium’. To find out if ‘schmuranium’ refers, ‘schmuranium’ needs to have a chemical constitution. There may be no fact of the matter about what schmuranium’s chemical constitution is. In that case, ‘schmuranium’ doesn’t refer. Does this problem apply to terms like ‘good’ or ‘good person’? Perhaps it does. Perhaps ‘good’ or ‘good person’ is supposed to refer to a group of character traits that fictional characters don’t have in extant writings about them. Perhaps some of these character traits are counterfactual: if a certain fictional character were in di↵erent circumstances, that character would do such-and-such. We’re simply not given this information. The only information we’re given about fictional characters is what the author has conveyed in her writings. What’s on the surface is all there
is. So, there may be no fact of the matter whether a certain fictional character has deep moral properties. For example, there may be no fact of the matter whether a certain fictional character has certain character traits we’re not told about by the author, or there may be no fact about what she would do in circumstances other than the ones the author has her in. The problem is not simply that we don’t know what (counterfactual) character traits the character has; the problem is that there aren’t any. If there aren’t any, then ‘good’ when attributed to a fictional exemplar simply doesn’t refer. In reply, I think there is a fact of the matter about what a certain fictional character would do in counterfactual circumstances, and there is a fact of the matter about what non-revealed character traits that fictional character has. These facts are determined by what the author would write in counterfactual circumstances. Propositions of the form
If fictional character F were in circumstances C, then F would perform A in C
are reducible to propositions of the form
If author S of F were to have written about F in C, then S would have written that F performs A in C.^13
This account doesn’t require that the author has even thought about what a character may do in di↵erent circumstances. As long as someone thinks there are true counterfactuals about real people (and I do take authors to be real people), then there are true counterfactuals about fictional characters. So, just as we can look at real people and fix the reference of ‘good’ to their (counterfactual) properties, so we can fix the reference of ‘good’ to the (counterfactual) properties of fictional characters. (^13) Some comments: 1. I’ve omitted provisions for non-written literature for simplicity. 2. I’m
assuming the worlds in which the author would have written about F in C are close to this one so that, for example, the author does not become crazy from this world to the next. 3. On the abstract object and possibilist views, di↵erent authors can write about the same character. In that case, we can modify the account so that for ‘author S’ we substitute ‘the author(s)’. If we hold that two authors can write simultaneously about the same fictional character and that each author would have the character perform incompatible actions in C, then either a) there are two characters when we thought there was one or b) moral properties can only be had by fictional characters that do not have multiple authors such that each author would have the character perform incompatible actions in C. Adopting Thomasson’s artifactual view will avoid the third complication in this comment. See Thomasson (2004).
character traits a fictional character has by asking the author what her character would do in other circumstances. This only works if the author is living, but it is an option in some cases. The third problem is this: since we can just ask the author about the character as long as the author is alive, there is no need to investigate fictional characters at all. 15 There is no investigating to do as long as one person, viz. the author, can simply create by virtue of her imagination what the investigators would find if there were anything an investigation would reveal. This would be bad. We want to be able to investigate to discover moral properties in theories that hold to DRE, especially in Zagzebski’s exemplarist virtue theory. 16 Someone may reply by saying that there may be some traits a fictional character has that surprise that character’s author. So, the author doesn’t know everything she creates about her character. For example, an author writes about a character who performs certain kinds of actions and, upon reading what she wrote, realizes the character has a certain trait she never before intended or noticed in that character.^17 However, this kind of discovery by the author does not occur for every fictional character. As long as the author has already intended or noticed the morally relevant features of the character, then the initial objection still stands. It seems there is no need to investigate characters whose morally relevant features have been noticed by a living author. Although this objection is forceful, this objection only applies to cases where the fictional character has a living author who has already noticed the morally relevant features of her fictional character. In reply, in the cases where the objection applies we should treat asking the author about her character as parallel to the case of asking God about the chemical structure of a natural kind. Just as God creates natural kinds with a certain structure and does not fail to notice this structure, so a living author creates characters with morally relevant features and notices these morally relevant features. Would asking God about the chemical structure of a natural kind be worthy of the description ‘investigation’? Perhaps it is, but if it’s not, that’s not so bad. Arguably, asking God about the chemical structure of a natural kind is preferable to investigating natural kinds themselves. It is, after all, less work, and we’re more likely to get it right. At any rate, at least there is a parallel creative expert in the case of natural
(^15) [BLIND] o↵ered this objection and the next one to my thesis in personal correspondence, Nov. 22-26, 2011. [BLIND] also o↵ered a version of Kripke’s epistemological objection. (^16) Correspondence with [BLIND], Nov. 23, 2011. (^17) This doesn’t contradict my reply to the first objection. The author’s surprise only shows the author that she did not realize that: If she, the author S of F, were to have written about F in a circumstance in which F’s character needed to be revealed explicitly, then S would have explicitly revealed those character traits.
kinds, so the fact that we can ask the author to find all the details we need to find about fictional characters isn’t unusual. A similar reply should work even for those who think there is no God. If there is no God, we can still a rm that if there were a God with such-and-such qualities (communicative, correct, non-deceptive, etc.) who created natural kinds, then we could ask God about the chemical structure of a natural kind. More generally, if there were a creative expert of such-and-such qualities that created some object O, then we could ask that creative expert about O. The general case is applicable to both God (if God exists) and authors. The fourth problem is that investigation into fictional characters would often yield wrong results, because authors are often wrong about how moral properties or virtues appear when someone possesses them. For example, an author might make a character courageous, but because of the unrealistic fictional context, the character’s courage isn’t admirable. For another example, an author might make temperance in a character always be accompanied by narrow-mindedness and stodginess so that the temperance isn’t admirable in that character. In reply, I propose we take authors to be experts about what non-moral charac- teristics their characters display but not always experts about what moral charac- teristics their characters display. At least, there seems not to be anything initially implausible about letting authors create fictional characters while still holding that they often make false moral assessments about those characters. Authors make moral assessments like everyone else, but they, also like everyone else, are able to create fictional characters and so be experts about what non-explicit non-moral features that character possesses. 18 To summarize my replies to these objections, what fictional characters would do is determined by what their authors would have them do, and we can discover what these fictional characters would do by asking their author (or, in the case where the author is no longer living, we can’t discover what these characters would do. But that’s no di↵erent than the case of actual exemplars we can’t communicate with.) Further, investigation of fictional characters isn’t precluded by my account, or if it is, that’s not so bad, since we can hold a similar view about natural kinds. And if we can investigate a fictional character by asking the author, we can avoid often
(^18) This is a general statement. If an author gives contradictory non-explicit non-moral features of a character, she cannot be an expert about those features. For example, an author cannot, in a sequel that begins at the point the prequel ended, say she’s writing about the same character but also give that “same” character vices where that “same” character had virtues before. Likewise, she can’t make that “same” character a di↵erent species. Or, if she did, we would take her to have created a fictional environment with di↵erent moral or natural laws so not take the changes resulting from those laws to be bearing on our actual situation.
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Thomasson, Amie. (2009) “Fictional Entities,” in A Companion to Metaphysics, ed. Jaegwon Kim, Ernest Sosa, and Gary Rosenkrantz. Blackwell Publishing, 10-18.
Wolterstor↵, Nicholas. (1980) Works and Worlds of Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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