Fictional characters and their names : a defense of the fact theory

Abstract

of thesis entitled Fictional Characters and Their Names: A Defense of the Fact Theory Submitted by Pei Kong-ngai For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in August 2007 This thesis is concerned with the philosophy of fiction, particularly the metaphysics of fictional characters, and our talk of fictional characters. I discuss and criticize the leading theories of fictional names, and argue that the theory proposed in this thesis is better. I shall begin by discussing eliminativist theories. In the next chapter (Chapter 2), I shall discuss and criticize Walton’s make-believe theory. In Chapter 3, I move on to another eliminativist proposal, the pragmatic account proposed by Adam, Stecker, and Dietrich. A common problem faced by these two theories, I shall point out, is that they run counter to our ontological intuitions that fictional characters and the narratives that describe them are mutually dependent, a problem that can easily be circumvented if we include fictional characters in our ontology. One may be curious about the motivations underlying the desire to eliminate fictional characters. At the close of Chapter 2 I scrutinize these motivations, and by evaluating them, I conclude that only one among them – an argument that relies on the key premise that fictional characters are metaphysically dubious – is worth further examination. However the key premise is not justified, since no eliminativist has ever offered a substantive analysis of the ontological status of fictional characters – what fictional characters are like if there are any. So in Chapter 4, I begin to provide such an analysis, taking as a basis the analysis given by Amie L. Thomasson. According to her, fictional characters are like abstract