Traceability in property reference in a bundle theory of propositions

Josh Rasmussen gives a kind of bundle theory (in terms of arrangements) of propositions. ("About Aboutness", Metaphysica)

 

Inspired by this I write the following, but I won't attribute any of the following, and any mistakes it contains, to Rasmussen's view.

 

Property: A direct, indirect, or modal experience. By 'modal experience' I mean something a person would experience if they were situated in the right context. 

 

Concept: A concept is a reference to a property. So, concepts reference direct, indirect, or modal experiences.

 

Word: A word is a combination of sounds, symbols, or both, and refers to a concept or bundle of concepts. By transitivity, words refer to properties or bundles of properties.

 

The words 'fire' and 'feu', while different words, both refer to the same concept(s) (or close enough), and thus are bundling the same properties.

 

Proposition: A combination of concepts that designates, by predication, what is being referred, and thus can be true or false.

 

Sentence: A sequence of words governed by grammatical rules that references a proposition.

 

The sentences 'Fire is hot' and 'Le feu est chaud', while different sentences, refer to the same proposition (or close enough).

 

Truth: Reference to non-fictional properties.

 

Falsity: Reference to fictional properties. 

 

Problem: You can take a single word like 'unicorn', which refers to fictional properties, and yet this singular word cannot be true or false. But if falsity just is reference to fictional properties, and 'unicorn' references fictional properties, then 'unicorn' is false.

 

This is where predication comes in: Only by designating what is being referred to can you evaluate whether something is true or false. While 'unicorn' refers to fictional properties, we don't know what is being said about unicorns. If you say:

 

    Unicorns are everywhere.

 

This is false. But if you say:

 

    There are no unicorns.

 

This is true.

 

So referring to false properties isn't enough to reach falsity; to reach falsity you need to make an existential claim, which means attributing non-fiction to fictional properties, or attributing fiction to non-fictional properties. But abstract objects like propositions don't make claims; people make claims. So how do I capture the claim-like nature of propositions?

 

Maybe attribution is enough – attributing fiction to non-fictional properties, or vice versa? Or maybe propositions have a representational aspect, and false propositions contain misrepresentation?

 

But that's beside the point here. The above definitions are rough and need revisiting, but the task at hand is to focus on the concept of fiction.

 

Fictional properties: Properties (or bundles) that can be traced to an act of imagination.

 

Non-fictional properties: Properties (or bundles) that cannot be traced to an act of imagination.

 

Problem: Someone could, by luck, or by educated prediction, use their imagination to combine properties and stumble upon a true proposition that nonetheless traces back to an act of imagination. And despite these properties being non-fictional, they can be traced to an act of imagination. Is this a fictional proposition, or non-fictional?

 

The answer is that it is non-fictional, requiring the fix: 

 

Fictional properties*: Properties (or bundles) that can only be traced to an act of imagination.

 

Examples: Golden mountains, unicorns, wizards.

 

Note: If 'unicorn' itself is something like: horse + horn + magic + rarity, or something roughly like this, then the properties of horse, horn, etc., are not fictional. What's fictional is the bundle of the properties. Same with gold + mountain: two non-fictional properties that together make a fictional bundle. Even magic probably can be reduced to real properties, with the bundle being fictional. If all acts of imagination depend on experience, then all fictional properties are ultimately fictional bundles of non-fictional properties.

 

Non-fictional properties*: Properties (or bundles) that cannot be traced in all cases to an act of imagination.

 

'In all cases' applies to modal cases: If everyone only ever imagines wormholes, but wormholes end up being real, wormholes are still non-fictional because it's not in all cases that wormholes can be traced to acts of imagination; if someone were in the right situation, they would experience wormholes (even if only indirectly through scientific instruments), and in this case the wormhole properties could not be traced to an act of imagination, but must be traced to experience.

 

(Also, it's almost certainly the case that what is being imagined is not quite what is real; imagination is never perfectly successful. But imagination can still be successful enough in a broad sense to enable this traceability objection.)

 

And that's what we're getting at with falsity versus truth: Can the proposition only ever be traced to acts of imagination even given modal cases (falsity), or can the proposition be traced to experience, at least modally (truth)?

 

The modality can be restricted. It might be that wormholes are impossible in our universe, but possible in a different universe. To say wormholes are fictions is to say that an omniscient observer in our universe would not experience wormholes (though they would experience our thoughts and stories about wormholes).

 

But maybe there's a simpler strategy: If properties are experiences (including modal), then fictions are non-experienced bundles of properties traced to acts of imagination. "Fictional property" becomes an oxymoron, with only bundles being fictions. While ‘magical’ sounds like a fictional property, again magic could be reduced to a fictional bundle of real properties (of agency, power, etc.)