Abstract
AbstractIn a series of papers, Robin Jeshion has developed an ‘acquaintanceless' account of singular thoughts. Her account of singular thoughts is a psychological one, rejecting any epistemic constraint. Having singular thoughts is a matter of deploying ‘mental files' or ‘dossiers' that play a significant role in the cognitive life of the individual. This chapter elaborates an alternative account that preserves acquaintance, and focuses on aspects of the semantics of fictional reference and discourse. It addresses the behaviour of intuitively empty referential expressions, proper names, indexicals, and referentially used descriptions, mostly in two specific and related sorts of cases: the use of those expressions in speech acts by the creator of the fiction and critical discourse of fictions aimed at getting its content right. The chapter concludes that a certain epistemic, acquaintance‐based account of singular thoughts provides an intuitively satisfactory analysis of those two types of cases.
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