Fictionalism and intentionality

Abstract

This chapter offers a defence of mental fictionalism. Its central claim is that the notion of the mind as an inner world of representations is merely a useful fiction. Mental fictionalism is often said to suffer from “cognitive collapse”, since stating the fictionalist’s position itself involves reference to mental states, such as imagination or make-believe. This chapter shows how mental fictionalism can avoid cognitive collapse. To do so, it explores fictionalism’s broader implications for the nature of intentionality. The key to avoiding cognitive collapse is to see that fictionalism can grant the existence of external, public representations with content, such as written and spoken language. In contrast, the notion of inner representations is what the early fictionalist Hans Vaihinger called a “real fiction”: it is an idea that is not merely false, but incoherent.