Fictional Objects

Abstract

Given the recent release of Kripke’s Reference and Existence,1 the earlier manuscript of which set the stage for a lot of the recent debate, this volume of essays on fictional objects is timely and contains essays by a number of those who have pushed the debate on since Kripke. After a very helpful introduction by Brock and Everett, there are eleven chapters that are not organized by theme. Nevertheless there are a number of themes that re-occur during the volume including fictional properties, identity of fictional objects, fictionalism, and intentional identity. For reasons of space, in what follows, I will discuss eight of the chapters, omitting those by Braun, Howell, and Salmon which largely build on their previous contributions. In her chapter, Amie Thomasson raises a problem for fictionalists about fictional characters. Thomasson thinks that realism about fictional characters follows from the following principle, given the relevant background facts: if an author writes a story using a name N to pretend to refer to and describe someone, then the author creates a fictional character. The fictionalist will agree that it does follow from this that we can say that the author created a fictional character, but they will deny that we should take this conclusion seriously. As Thomasson notes, the fictionalist effectively treats her principle as a principle generating fictional truths.