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Rolf Breuer
Einleitung

Andreas Bartels
Fiktion und Repräsentation

Rolf Breuer
Von der Normabweichung zur Fiktionalität:
Zur Definition des sprachlichen Kunstwerks

Urs Meyer
Fiktionen in der Werbung:
Zur ikonischen Repräsentation von ,wahr’ und ,falsch’

Joachim Schröter
Das naturwissenschaftliche Weltbild: Wahrheit oder Fiktion?

Erhebung
Anne Sauer
Semiotisch relevante Lehre an den Hochschulen Deutschlands,
Österreichs und der Schweiz

Fiktion und Repräsentation

Andreas Bartels

Summary. Fictional representations which do not refer to any real object are a central obstacle for any theory of representation, and particularly for similarity theories of representation. Works of art are in many cases fictional representations, and from this fact Nelson Goodman has drawn the conclusion that the concept of representation must be replaced by the more general notion of exemplification. The paper aims to show that, contrary to Goodman’s intention, exemplification can be reconciled with representations conceived as structure-preserving mappings. It is argued that scientific models can also be understood as exemplifications of a (not necessarily denoting) structure. In the end, an example from cognitive science is used to further strengthen these considerations. Fictional representations do not present a problem with which structural similarity theories of representation cannot deal.
 

Von der Normabweichung zur Fiktionalität:
Zur Definition des sprachlichen Kunstwerks

Rolf Breuer

Summary. This essay concentrates on the various ways in which literature has been differentiated from non-literature. The criteria of differentiation show themselves to be quite heterogeneous, even incommensurable. Older – essentialist – theories, based on epic and lyric poetry, distinguished between poetic and non-poetic forms of language. Later – relational – theories, often based on the novel, have argued that it is the reference of language to reality that distinguishes fiction from non-fiction. Still more recent theories, accompanied by new forms of literature, see the difference in the eye of the beholder or, rather, reader – and this is a pragmatic criterion for differentiation. Since each perspective yields valuable insights, the question is how the three criteria – essentialist, relational and pragmatic – relate to one another and how writers have prompted, and reacted to, these theories.
 

Fiktionen in der Werbung:
Zur ikonischen Repräsentation von ,wahr’ und ,falsch’

Urs Meyer

Summary. Fiction in advertising is affected not only by legal but also by semantic and pragmatic restrictions. Moreover, fiction in advertising is often produced by visual rather than verbal means. Therefore, the issue of fiction has to be examined from a semiotic perspective: What is the distinctive contribution that visual images make to fiction? Advertising tends to avoid the question of truth in order to increase its suggestive potential (even beyond the fictions of ‘everyday life’). Thus, the problem of reference has to be resolved in a creative way, e. g., by referring to products iconically or symbolically.
 

Das naturwissenschaftliche Weltbild: Wahrheit oder Fiktion?

Joachim Schröter

Summary. In this essay the question concerning the role of fiction is directed at the world view of the science of physics. A large part of the paper is devoted to establishing a definition of this concept. The method applied towards establishing this definition is a heuristics on the meta-level. It is shown that the concept of a physical theory is a key notion for the understanding of physics as a whole. This concept is explicated on the basis of the approach developed by Günther Ludwig. Having introduced this concept one is able to classify those propositions and terms which constitute the world view of physics in terms of a language. It is shown that the philosophical concept of truth based upon the so-called adaequatio formula is not appropiate for physics and the physical world view. Contrary to this, the notion of fiction is seen to be constitutive for all heuristic processes used to develop physical theories. But the final goal of these processes is to establish a world view without fictions. To conclude, it is argued that these results can be transferred to the other natural sciences.