The Nonexistent

Abstract

The title of this book is potentially misleading in two ways. First, its topic is narrower than the title suggests. It is not about the non-existent in its entirety but about the fictitious only. Even to those who grant that fictitious objects (i.e., those objects that occur in works of fiction, e.g., Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet) are non-existent objects, it should be obvious that the class of the fictitious is only a sub-class of the class of the non-existent. Examples of non-existent but not fictitious objects are Vulcan, the hypothetical planet of LeVerrier; Meinong's golden mountain; past and future objects (according to presentists). Secondly, contrary to what the title suggests, this book is not about fictitious objects but about discourse about fiction. Fortunately, both the book's topic and aims are made clear enough right at the beginning, in the ‘Introduction’ ( ch. 1): Everett sets out to develop and defend an anti-realist theory of discourse about fiction, more exactly, a pretence-theoretic account. Its core theses may be put as follows. (1) There are no fictitious objects. (2) Sentences that seemingly are ‘about’ fictitious objects are in fact about nothing at all. (3) If taken at face value, these sentences are neither true nor false. (4) They are to be interpreted as sentences that are uttered within a game of make-believe or pretence.