MEANINGS OF FICTIONAL NAMES

• Authors: Salis Fiora
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

According to Millianism, the meaning of a name is exhausted by its referent. According to anti-realism about fictional entities, there are no such entities. If there are no fictional entities, how can we explain the apparent meaningfulness of fictional names? Our best theory of fiction, Walton’s theory of make-believe, makes the same assumptions but lacks the theoretical resources to answer the question. In this paper, I propose a pragmatic solution in terms of two main dimensions of meaning, a subjective, psychological dimension and an intersubjective, public dimension. The psychological dimension builds on the notion of mental files; the public dimension builds on Stalnaker’s notion of common ground. The account is coherent with two main theoretical principles, parsimony and uniformity. Furthermore, it satisfies three explanatory conditions posed by the intentionality of our thought and discourse about fiction, object-directedness, counter fictional imagining and intersubjective identification.

Keywords

EN

FICTIONAL NAMES; MAKE-BELIEVE; MILL; WALTON; STALNAKER; PARSIMONY; UNIFORMITY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 28
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 9 – 43

Contributors

author

Salis Fiora

• The University of York, Department of Philosophy, Heslington, York, UK YO10 5DD

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28102