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(ii) There are possible worlds that sound nonverisimilar and scarcely credible from the point of view of our actual experience, for instance, worlds in which animals speak. However, I can conceive of such worlds by flexibly readjusting the experience of the world I live in: it is sufficient to imagine that animals can have humanlike phonatory organs and a more complex brain structure. This kind of cooperation requests flexibility and superficiality: in order scientifically to conceive of animals with different physiological features I should reconsider the whole course of evolution, thus conceiving of a vast quantity of different biological lawswhat I certainly do not do when reading Little Red Riding Hood. In order to accept the fact that a wolf speaks to a girl, I conceive of a local, nonhomogeneous small world. I act as a nearsighted observer able to isolate big shapes but unable to analyze their background. I can do so because I am used to doing the same in the world of my actual experience: I speak and I accept as conceivable the fact that I can speak butdue to the social division of semantic laborI take for granted that there are evolutionary reasons of this phenomenon without knowing them. In the same way I can conceive of worlds whichunder a more severe inquiryshould appear as incredible and nonverisimilar. |
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(iii) There are inconceivable worlds thathowever possible or impossible they may beare in any case beyond our powers of conception, because their alleged individuals or properties violate our logical or epistemological habits. We cannot conceive of worlds furnished with square circles that can be bought for an amount of dollars corresponding to the highest even number. However, as evident in the lines above, such a world can be mentioned (the reason why it can be mentioned, that is, the reason why language can name nonexistent and inconceivable entities, cannot be discussed here). In similar cases the Model Reader is requested to display exaggeratedly generous flexibility and superficiality, since he or she is supposed to take for granted something he or she cannot even conceive of. The difference between taking for mentioned and taking for conceivable can probably help to trace borderlines between romance and novel, fantasy and realism. |
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(iv) Inconceivable worlds are probably an extreme instance of impossible possible worlds, that is, worlds that the Model Reader is led to conceive of just to understand that it is impossible to do so. Dolezel
* (1988:238ff) speaks to this apropos of self-voiding texts and self-disclosing metafiction. |
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In such cases "on the one hand, possible entities seem to be brought into fictional existence since conventional authentication procedures |
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