Thinking About Different Nonexistents of the Same Kind: Reid's Account of the Imagination and its Nonexistent Objects

Abstract

How is it that, as fiction readers, we are nonplussed by J. K. Rowling's prescription to imagine Ronan, Bane, and Magorian, three different centaurs of the Forbidden Forrest at Hogwarts? It is usually held in the philosophical literature on fictional discourse that singular imaginings of fictional objects are impossible, given the blatant nonexistence of such objects. In this paper, I have a dual purpose: (i) on the one hand, to show that, without being committed to Meinongeanism, we can explain the phenomenon of singular imaginings of different nonexistents of the same (fictional) kind; (ii) while, at the same time, to attribute this position to Thomas Reid, thus correcting some misunderstandings of his view on imagination.

Thomas Reid on Induction and Natural Kinds

“…Reid's view is still a sort of conventionalism, then, but a conventionalism with more than a little bit of realism sprinkled in. Commentators (such as Lehrer (1985), Lehrer and McGee (1992), Nichols (2002), van Cleve (2015: 273-6), Folescu (2016)) have tended to focus on the anti-realist strains in Reid's philosophy (though there are some exceptions, such as Wolterstorff (2001: 71-4) and Wilson (2013)). I will be highlighting what I take to be an important and overlooked strand of a sort of quasi-realism espoused by Reid.…”