Category: Fiction and Fictionalism
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An Inferential Semantics for Empty Names?
London Ed submits this for our evaluation: While apparently conceding that empty proper names have an 'inferential role', rightly underscores the need for me to demonstrate that its meaning is just this role, i.e. to demonstrate that the 'inferential semantics' is a sufficient as well as a necessary explanation of (empty) proper names. Here are…
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Must Singular Thoughts be Object-Dependent?
What follows are some ideas from London Ed about a book he is writing. He solicits comments. Mine are in blue. The logical form thing was entertaining but rather off-topic re the fictional names thing. On which, Peter requested some more. Let’s step right back. I want to kick off the book with an observation…
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Comments on London Ed’s “Towards a Positive Theory”
My comments are in blue. 1. Another claim which is nearly Moorean. I claim that the following argument is valid: Frodo is a hobbitFrodo has large feetSome hobbit has large feet I am not saying that the premisses are true. Clearly if there are no such things as hobbits, the first sentence has to be…
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Fictional Names
London Ed writes, I would like to bounce some of the central ideas [of a book] off you. The idea at the very centre is that fictional names, i.e. empty names, individuate. A fictional name like 'Frodo', in the sense it is used in The Lord of the Rings, tells us which character Tolkien is talking about. For…
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What Problem Does Literary Fiction Pose?
More than one. Here is one. And as old Chisholm used to say, you are not philosophizing unless you have a puzzle. So try on this aporetic triad for size: 1. Purely fictional objects do not exist. 2. There are true sentences about purely fictional objects, e.g., 'Sherlock Holmes is a detective' and 'Sherlock Holmes…
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Fiction and Alienans Adjectives
David Brightly comments: As you use them, the terms 'fictional', 'intentional', 'possible', 'incomplete', and others like 'past' have a distinctive effect on the concept terms they qualify. Ordinary adjectives have the effect of narrowing the extension of the concept term they qualify: the red balls are a subset of the balls, the female prime ministers…
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Imagining X as Real versus Imagining X as Unreal and a Puzzle of Actualization
Peter and I discussed the following over Sunday breakfast. Suppose I want a table, but there is no existing table that I want: I want a table with special features that no existing table possesses. So I decide to build a table with these features. My planning involves imagining a table having certain properties. It…
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More on Ficta and Impossibilia
As an ornery aporetician, I want ultimately to say that an equally strong case can be made both for and against the thesis that ficta are impossibilia. But here I only make (part of) the case for thinking that ficta are impossibilia. Preliminaries Every human being is either right-handed or not right-handed. (But if one…
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The Fictional and the Merely Possible
"To be or not to be, that is the question." Or at least that is one question. Another is whether Hamlet, that very individual, might have been actual. It is a mistake to conflate the fictional and the merely possible. Hamlet, for example, is a fictional individual, the central character and eponym of the Shakespearean …
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Fiction
A fictional character can be believed by some to be real, known by others to be fictional, and an object of uncertainty to still others. Some young children believe Santa Claus to be real; adults know him to be purely fictional; and some children are unsure whether he is real or fictional. It seems to…