Part 2: Ontological Problems in Augmented Reality
2. Enlarging and transforming what there is
2.3 Poetic imagination and its objects
In literary fictions, the authors present courses of events that are not descriptions of what has been, but possibilities of what could have been. Literary fictions use fiction operators that can make truth of what is not true, and so perhaps reveal in terms of truth what may be of some value. Frequently they reveal truths about passions, emotions, human attitudes and actions, and in general the human condition in an indirect fictional way.
We think mostly of novels when thinking of fiction. But if we want to clarify what fiction is in general terms, we ought to leave room for other genres like, for instance, plays and movies.
Fictions bring possible realities to mind. To be a work of fiction is to have been produced with a certain intention: the intention that it be appreciated as
such by a potential audience. Therefore, it seems natural to conceive of it as the result of a game of make-believe. Games of make-believe bring with them a no-tion of ficno-tional truth, of what is so according to the game.
Fictional objects do not occupy space in our world. We can never encounter them or visit them. They are materially non-existent. They exist only ideally in the literary texts they are part of. In other words, there are stories in which those objects are portrayed. Reality does not contain them. But they exist in sto-ries as fictional characters. They exist thanks to the existence of stosto-ries (novels, plays, or movies).
Being a realist about fictional objects or characters in a novel seems to be a quite plausible position. If we affirm that “the Greeks worshipped Zeus”, it is quite acceptable to believe that Zeus existed in a certain sense. The narrative text in which such an assertion is put forward makes us believe that the Greeks actually worshipped some (fictionally) existent thing or God they called Zeus.
Zeus, like all fictional characters in novels, plays or movies, is the result of a cre-ation process. Zeus and all fictional characters are somehow brought into exis-tence, and then they keep on getting more additional properties in an incremen-tal process for readers and authors. Those properties and details individuate them and are in the end the features that constitute each one of them as fictional individuals.
Strictly speaking, it would be better to avoid ontological commitments when-ever possible. Paraphrasing what is said may be a good device according to Quine to enable us to talk conveniently about putative objects without being bound by ontological commitments. But such a paraphrasing strategy is not al-ways convenient. Whenever possible we should substitute or replace then ex-pressions like “There are fictional characters” by exex-pressions like “In some fic-tion, specific characters are portrayed”. On many occasions, however, paraphrasing substitutions and replacements do not seem to be desirable as they are cumbersome and even pedantic. The suitable specification of the onto-logical status of the objects in question as fictional objects would allow them to enter the realm of what there is. Those objects and characters do indeed exist in fictional texts that introduce, describe and refer properly to them.
References
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Existence and Ontological Commitments 109
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Quine, W. V. O. (1981): Theories and Things, Cambridge, Ma.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
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Juan Antonio Valor
What Actually is Augmented Reality
Abstract: The answer to the question proposed in the title is complicated because what is meant by reality depends on prior philosophical conceptions. So, to respond rigorously, I should clarify the notion of reality by resorting to the his-tory of philosophy. I shall offer two responses following two distinct philosoph-ical stands. The first is the empiricism of Locke and Newton which I will take into account since although it emerges in the 17thcentury it somehow extends up to this day and is at the basis of what we mean by reality even today. The other po-sition is the pragmatism of Dewey and Rorty, which openly criticizes the philo-sophical assumptions of classical empiricism and offers an alternative discourse upon which a new notion of reality is construed. What is real about Augmented Reality? Nothing, according to empiricism; it is mere appearance. And according to pragmatism the reality we grant it will depend on the problems it allows us to solve. In this paper I will explain both positions.
Keywords: Augmented Reality, appearance, situation, empiricism, pragmatism, representationalism, holism.