AN ARGUMENT FOR AUTHORIAL CREATION

• Authors: Zsófia Zvolenszky
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Artefactualism about fictional characters, positing Harry Potter as an abstract artefact created by J. K. Rowling, has been criticized on the grounds that the idea of creating such objects is mysterious and problematic. In the light of such qualms, it is worth homing in on an argument in favour of artefactualism, showing that it is the best way to include the likes of Harry Potter in our ontology precisely because it incorporates authorial creation. To that end, he author will be exploring Kripke’s fleeting remarks in the Addenda to his “Naming and Necessity” lectures about expressions like ‘unicorn’ and ‘Harry Potter’. Elsewhere, Kripke motivates artefactualism by suggesting that incorporating authorial creation (as artefactualism does) is a move that is intuitive and natural; but beyond this, he doesn’t provide any arguments in favour of such a move. The author ś purpose in this paper is to construct such an argument based on considerations about Kripke’s general view about proper names, in particular, his seminal causal-historical chain account of reference determination, and its consequences for fictional names as well as nonfictional names without bearers such as ‘Vulcan’.

Keywords

EN

ABSTRACT ARTFACTS; KRIPKE; PROPER NAMES; FICTIONAL CHARACTERS; CAUSAL-HISTORICAL CHAIN; THEORY OF REFERENCE DETERMINATION

• 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: 2015
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 461 – 487

Contributors

author

Zsófia Zvolenszky

• Department of Logic, Institute of Philosophy, Eötvös University, Múzeum krt. 4/I, H-1518, Budapest, Hungary