Fictions as Cognitive Artefacts:The Case of Jorge Luis Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (review)

This book explores the role played by fiction in the discourse of knowledge, examining the notions of cognitive fictions and narrative fictions in Jorge Luis Borges' "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," (TUOT) where the two terms appear to coincide. Thus, the author establishes correspondences between TUOT and some philosophical ideas related mainly to gnoseology and representation, arising from, but not restricted to, thinkers such as George Berkeley, David Hume, Bertrand Russell, Alexius Meinong, and other names such as HansVaihinger and Fritz Mauthner.

The book is divided into six chapters, with an Introduction and a Conclusion. Chapter I is introductory and contains a reminder of the plot and an analysis of TUOT's formal structure. The themes in this work, intersecting with the notions of fiction explored throughout the book, are: Utopia (Chapter I, "Allusions and References" and Chapter IV "Tlön and the Philosophy of 'As If'"); Idealism (Chapter II, "Idealism in Tlön"); History (Chapter III, "Worldmaking" and Chapter VI, "The Limits of Representations"); Language (Chapter V, "The Critique of Language"); and Representations (Chapter VI).

Riberi discusses the heuristic and epistemic value of fictions within the conceptual framework of Vaihinger's philosophy of "As If" where the philosopher argued that human beings can never really know the underlying reality of the world, and that as a result we construct systems of thought and then assume that these match reality: we behave "as if" the world matches our models. According to Vaihinger, fictions constitute cognitive instruments, since they advance an understanding of the empirical world by means of fictional arrangements (11). Riberi argues that the "as if" allows Borges to build a utopian world erected for epistemic purposes.

The notion of fiction is further discussed in relation to possible worlds, with particular reference to Meinong's theory of objects which grew out of his work on intentionality and his belief in the possibility of intending nonexistent objects. The theory is based around the purported empirical observation that it is possible to think about something, such as a golden mountain, even though that object does not exist. Since we can refer to such things, they must have some sort of being. In this context, Meinong's notion of impossible objects is a valuable tool for explaining the nature of fictional entities. Riberi's development of these ideas suggests the entanglement between fiction and possible worlds in TUOT, since, he argues, the meaning of words determines the things referred to by those words. Fictional worlds are essentially intentional worlds and a discrete case of possible worlds.

To explicate Borges' fictive constructs, Riberi takes as central the idea of incompleteness, since it allows him to posit a possible world ruled by extreme idealism to be grafted onto the empirical world. In the successive chapters of this book, he develops and supports the claims that incompleteness lies at the base of representations, therefore, this central idea is a condition for the world's intelligibility.

This book also addresses the importance of language in TUOT, tracking down the traces of Fritz Mauther's critique of language in this story. The discussion of Mauthner's notion of Aufmerksamkeit (attention) is relevant to the study of language and knowledge in TUOT. Mauthner's critique ended in the rejection of language, unmasking its fundamental inadequacy as a vehicle of knowledge. In this book, Riberi establishes a number of correspondences between Mauthner's critique of language and the text of the story (112-23), decisively proving what Mauthner's theory contributes to an understanding of TUOT.

The final chapter of this book explores the "all-pervasive theme of Borges' narrative" (125), the possibilities and limits of representations. Riberi's analysis of the Borgesian map leads to the many paradoxes and precariousness arising from representations. He argues that TUOT exemplifies the fact that representations of the world must always be made anew. Finally, he approaches the crisscrossing between fictional narratives and historiography and the fictionalization of history in...