Sylvan's Bottle and other Problems

Abstract

According to Richard Routley, a comprehensive theory of fiction is impossible, since almost anything is in principle imaginable. In my view, Routley is right: for any purported logic of fiction, there will be actual or imaginable fictions that successfully counterexample the logic. Using the example of ‘impossible’ fictions, I test this claim against theories proposed by Routley’s Meinongian contemporaries and also by Routley himself (for what he called ‘esoteric’ works of fiction) and his 21st century heirs. I argue that the phenomenon of impossible fictions challenges even today’s modal Meinongians.