HOW CAN MILLIANS BELIEVE IN SUPERHEROES?

• Authors: Faccio Lima Juliana
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

What is the content of beliefs expressed by sentences with fictional names? Millianism has notoriously struggled to give a satisfactory answer to this question. Some Millians have argued that fictional names are empty names. But such a view entails that the belief that Superman has impressive superpowers and the belief that Aquaman has impressive superpowers have the same content, contrary to our intuitions. Others have argued that fictional names refer to fictional entities. But this view has a long-standing problem, Frege’s Puzzle, and many philosophers are sceptical that Millians have successfully addressed it, despite commendable efforts. In this paper, I put forward a different Millian Theory of fictional proper names that by-passes these and other objections related to belief content. The novelty of my proposal partially rests on a distinction I draw between semantic content and belief content—as opposed to a distinction between belief content and belief state or a way of grasping the content, as it is commonly found in Millian accounts—in a framework where belief contents are not part of the meaning of names.

Keywords

EN

BELIEF CONTENT; EMPTY NAMES; FREGE’S PUZZLE; BELIEF ASCRIPTION; MILLIANISM

• 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: 135 – 167

Contributors

author

Faccio Lima Juliana

• Ashoka University, Department of Philosophy, Plot No. 2, Rajiv Gandhi Education City, National Capital Region P.O.Rai, Sonepat Haryana-131029, India

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28107