Are there nonexistent objects, i.e., objects that do not exist? Some examples often cited are: Zeus, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes, Vulcan (the hypothetical planet postulated by the 19th century astronomer Le Verrier), the perpetual motion machine, the golden mountain, the fountain of youth, the round square, etc. Some important philosophers have thought that the very concept of a nonexistent object is contradictory (Hume) or logically ill-formed (Kant, Frege), while others (Leibniz, Meinong, the Russell of Principles of Mathematics) have embraced it wholeheartedly. (...) This entry is an examination of the many questions which arise in connection with the view that there are nonexistent objects. The following are particularly salient: What reasons are there (if any) for thinking that there are nonexistent objects? If there are nonexistent objects, then what kind of objects are they? How can they be characterized? Is it possible to provide a consistent theory of nonexistent objects? What is the explanatory force of a consistent theory of nonexistent objects (if such a thing is possible)? (shrink)

Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account for de re truths (...) about merely possible entities. I argue that such difficulty is rooted in a problem in the metaphysics of powers. In particular, I contend that the well-known tension between two key principle of powers ontology, namely Directedness and Independence has received an unsatisfactory solution so far, and that it is this unsatisfactory solution concerning the status of “unmanifested manifestations” that makes it hard for Dispositionalism to account for mere possibilia. I develop a novel account of the status of unmanifested manifestations and an overall metaphysics of powers which allows to better respond to Leech's objection and handle mere possibilia. The central idea of the proposal is that unmanifested manifestations are akin to mere logical existents, and are best characterised as non-essentially non-located entities. (shrink)

A critical reflection on John Woods's new monograph, Truth in Fiction – Rethinking its Logic. I focus in particular on Woods’s world-inheritance thesis (what others have variously called ‘background,’ ‘the principle of minimal departure,’ and ‘the reality assumption,’ and which replaces Woods’s earlier ‘fill-conditions’) and its interplay with auctorial say-so, arguing that world-inheritance actually constrains auctorial say-so in ways Woods has not anticipated.

In ‘Against fictional realism’ Anthony Everett argues that fictional realism leads to indeterminate identity. He concludes that we should reject fictional realism. Everett’s paper and much of the ensuing literature does not discuss what exactly fictional characters are. This is a mistake. I argue that some versions of abstract creationism about fictional characters lead to indeterminate identity, and that some versions of Platonism about fictional characters lead only to indeterminate reference. In doing so I show that Everett’s argument poses a (...) more pressing problem for abstract creationism than for Platonism. The general lesson is that fictional realists should think more about the ontology of fictional characters in order to discern whether they are committed to indeterminate identity. (shrink)

Realists about fictional entities often distinguish the properties that a fictional character has and the properties a character holds. Roughly, this is the distinction between the properties that a character really possesses and the properties it fictionally possess. But despite the popularity of this distinction in realist circles, it gives rise to a number of subtle issues about which fictional realists can and do disagree. In this paper, we aim to clarify these issues and defend three related theses. One: that (...) to say that Hermione holds the property of being female is just to say that the singular proposition ⟨Hermione, being female⟩ is true according to Harry Potter. Two: that ordinary objects can hold properties insofar as propositions like ⟨Napoleon, being French⟩ can be true according to fictions like War and Peace. Three: that the distinction between having and holding should not be thought to play any semantic role within the context of fictional realism. (shrink)

The debate about cinematic motion revolves around the question of whether the movement of cinematic images is real. That the movement we perceive in film should be construed as the movement of images is taken for granted. But this is a mistake. There is no reason to suppose that cinematic images of moving objects are themselves perceived to be moving. All that is necessary is to perceive these images as continuously changing images of one and the same object.

Fictional realists maintain that fictional characters are part of the world’s ontology. In an influential article, Anthony Everett argues that the fictional realist is thereby committing herself to problematic entities. Among these are entities that are indeterminately identical. Recently, Ross Cameron and Richard Woodward have answered Everett’s worry using the same strategy. They argue that the fictional realist can bypass the problematic identities by contending that they are merely semantically indeterminate. This paper concisely surveys Everett’s original argument, Cameron’s and Woodward’s (...) responses, and then argues that the strategy employed by Cameron and Woodward fails to satisfactorily answer Everett’s worries. (shrink)

Abstract creationism about fictional characters is the view that fictional characters are abstract objects that authors create. I defend this view against criticisms from Stuart Brock that hitherto have not been adequately countered. The discussion sheds light on how the number of fictional characters depends on authorial intention. I conclude also that we should change how we think intentions are connected to artifacts more generally, both abstract and concrete.

Anthony Everett () argues that those who embrace the reality of fictional entities run into trouble when it comes to specifying criteria of character identity. More specifically, he argues that realists must reject natural principles governing the identity and distinctness of fictional characters due to the existence of fictions which leave it indeterminate whether certain characters are identical and the existence of fictions which say inconsistent things about the identities of their characters. Everett's critique has deservedly drawn much attention and (...) a number of defensive moves have been made by, or on the behalf of, fictional realists. My goal in this paper is to move this debate on a further step. I have three goals: to clarify the importance of Everett's discussion of identity criteria within the context of fictional realism, to reassess Everett's objections to realism in light of the resultant literature, and to develop a novel strategy for responding to Everett's concerns. On the approach to be developed, the problems emerge due to an indeterminacy inherent in the concept of a fictional character itself. (shrink)

We want to say both that Sherlock Holmes does not exist, and that he is a fictional character. But how can we say these things without committing ourselves to the existence of Sherlock Holmes? Here I develop and defend a non-commital paraphrase of quantification over fictional characters, modeled on the non-commital paraphrase Kit Fine provides for quantification over possibilia. I also develop and defend the view that names for fictional characters are weakly non-referring, in Nathan Salmon’s sense, and so provide (...) us with a non-commital means to express singular propositions. The resulting position allows us to reap the benefits of Fictional Realism without paying the associated ontological cost. (shrink)

The argument from contingency for the existence of God is best understood as a request for an explanation of the total sequence of causes and effects in the universe (‘History’ for short). Many puzzles about how there could be such an explanation arise from the assumption that God is being introduced as one more cause prepended to the sequence of causes that (allegedly) needed explaining. In response to this difficulty, this chapter defends three theses. First, it argues that, if the (...) argument from contingency is to succeed, the explanation of History in terms of God must not be a causal explanation; second, that a particular hypothesis about God’s relation to History—that God is what I call the foundational ground of History—is intelligible and explanatory; third and finally, that the explanatory advantages of this hypothesis cannot be had within the confines of naturalism. (shrink)

In this entry I present one of the most hotly debated issues in contemporary analytic philosophy regarding the nature of fictional entities and the motivations that might be adduced for and against positing them into our ontology. The entry is divided in two parts. In the first part I offer an overview of the main accounts of the metaphysics of fictional entities according to three standard realist views, fictional Meinongianism, fictional possibilism and fictional creationism. In the second part I describe (...) two main kinds of arguments for or against positing fictional entities into our ontology. The first kind is traditionally inspired by the linguistic data coming from our talk about fictional characters. The second kind is more recent and it builds on genuine ontological considerations. (shrink)

Fictional realism is the view that creatures of fiction exist. Mythical realism is the view that creatures of myth and mistaken theories exist. Call the combined view “Ecumenical Realism.” We critically evaluate three arguments for Ecumenical Realism and argue they are unsound because fictional storytelling differs from mistaken theorizing in important ways. We think these considerations support a more conservative view, “Sectarian Realism,” which results from subtracting “creatures of mistaken theorizing” from Ecumenical Realism. We close by considering an important challenge (...) to Sectarian Realism involving immigrants in fiction. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to provide a plausible fictional creationist explanation of when and how a fictional object comes into existence without a successful creative intention, focusing on the problem posed by Stuart Brock’s nominalist author scenario. I first present some intuitions about parallel scenarios for fictional objects and concrete artifacts as data to be explained. Then I provide a sufficient condition for the existence of artifacts that can explain both cases. An important upshot of this is (...) that there is an overlooked way to bring artifacts into existence that should merit serious consideration, and this leads to a version of the mind-dependence, but not the intention-dependence, view of artifacts. (shrink)

Beach's Gaelic Symphony is plausibly an abstract object that Beach created. The view that people create some abstract objects is called abstract creationism. There are abstract creationists about many kinds of objects, including musical works, fictional characters, arguments, words, internet memes, installation artworks, bitcoins, and restaurants. Alternative theories include materialism and Platonism. This paper discusses some of the most serious objections against abstract creationism. Arguably, these objections have ramifications for questions in metaphysics pertaining to the abstract/concrete distinction, time, causation, vague (...) existence, vague identity, and inadvertent creation. (shrink)

This paper deals with the identity problems of fictional objects, focusing on Anthony Everett's and Stuart Brock's leading criticisms against fictional creationism, the view that fictional objects are abstract objects created by our acts involving literary practices. My primary aim is to argue that creationism based on referentialism has enough resources to individuate fictional objects and hence can address the alleged identity problems: every alleged problematic case regarding the identity of fictional objects is well explained in terms of the notions (...) of authorial intention, gappy proposition, inadvertent creation, and reference shift. (shrink)

Kurt Gödel’s version of the Ontological Proof derives rather than assumes the crucial Possibility Claim: the claim that it is possible that something God-like exists. Gödel’s derivation starts off with a proof of the Possible Instantiation of the Positive: the principle that, if a property is positive, it is possible that there exists something that has that property. I argue that Gödel’s proof of this principle relies on some implausible axiological assumptions but it can be patched so that it only (...) relies on plausible principles. But Gödel’s derivation of the Possibility Claim also needs a substantial axiological assumption, which is still open to doubt. (shrink)

It is argued that experiences are complex events that befall their subjects. Each experience has a single subject and depends on the state or the event that it is of. The constituents of an experience are its subject, its grounding event or state, and everything that the subject is aware of during that time that's relevant to the telling of the story of how it was to participate in that event or be put in that state. The experience occurs where (...) the person having the experience is. An experience of an event or state occurs when that event or state makes a difference to its possessor's conscious life, where this difference is either a matter of really knowing what's happening or merely a matter of being affected. (shrink)

Everett (2005) has argued that fictional realism runs into insuperable difficulties when faced with fictional stories in which there are indeterminate identities. By appeal to a principle linking the individuation of characters within stories and without, Everett argues that such stories entail that there are indeterminate identities outside of fiction on the fictional realist picture. And although indeterminate identities are perfectly acceptable within fiction, they are intolerable in the (nonfictional) world itself. In this paper, I develop the “extended-game” model of (...) fiction according to which fictional characters are props—and, hence, potential objects of reference—in authorized games of make-believe for fictional works in which they appear but do not originate but are neither props nor potential objects of reference in authorized games for works in which they do originate. And I argue that this entails that Everett’s linking principle, on which his argument depends, simply fails to apply. (shrink)

Anthony Everett has argued that fictional realism entails that some fictional characters are indeterminately identical. Benjamin Schnieder and Tatjana von Solodkoff deny that fictional realism has that entailment. But, we argue in this paper, their view is arbitrary, since there is no reason to prefer their principles to alternative ones. We don’t take this to show that fictional realism should be rejected. But we do take this to show that fictional realists who deny that some fictional characters are indeterminately identical (...) need another response to Everett’s argument. (shrink)

The authors consider a recurring objection to fictional realism, the view that fictional characters are objects. The authors call this the counting objection. Russell presses a version of the objection against Meinong’s view. Everett presses a version of the objection against contemporary fictional realist views, as do Nolan and Sandgren. As the authors see it, the objection assumes that the fictional realist must provide criteria of identity for fictional characters, so its force depends on the plausibility of that assumption. Rather (...) than coming up with such criteria, a fictional realist might argue that the demand is misplaced. (shrink)

Argumento, seguindo a perspectiva de Amie Thomasson acerca da metafísica da ficção, que os objetos ficcionais são artefatos abstratos. No entanto, o artefactualismo encontra dificuldades em fazer sentido das propriedades que podemos atribuir corretamente a um objeto ficcional: como é possível que um personagem ficcional, como L. B. Jefferies do filme Janela Indiscreta, seja um fotógrafo e um artefato abstrato ao mesmo tempo? Tal personagem pode fazer algo como investigar um crime? A fim de solucionar essa tensão conceitual, introduzo o (...) vocabulário desenvolvido por Andrea Bonomi que trata dos proferimentos ficcionais, metaficcionais e paraficcionais. Então, em oposição às perspectivas que usam a noção de faz-de-contas para analisar o discurso ficcional, apresento a teoria dos adjetivos modificacionais de Hans Kamp e Barbara Partee e argumento que os usos que fazemos do adjetivo ‘ficcional’ são intersectivos no que diz respeito à metafísica dos objetos ficcionais, enquanto são privativos no que diz respeito às propriedades que lhes são atribuídas de acordo com a história. Consequentemente, apesar dos objetos ficcionais não exemplificarem as propriedades que lhes são atribuídas em uma história, uma vez que artefatos abstratos não têm localização espacial e não podem estabelecer interações causais com outros objetos, essas são as propriedades que temos permissões e somos obrigados a lhes atribuir. Assim, apresento uma perspectiva unificada sobre como as nossas práticas de ficção são inteligíveis e estão de acordo com a perspectiva artefactual. (shrink)

ABSTRACTI propose a different account of fictional objects from the ones already present in the literature. According to my account, fictional objects are culturally created abstract objects dependent for their existence on the pretence attitude adopted by a group of people towards a single fictional content. My work is divided into three parts: in the first one, I present how fictional objects come into existence according to my proposal; in the second part, I illustrate how the existence of fictional objects (...) so conceived may be ontically indeterminate; in the last part, I consider what happens when vague existence and indeterminate identity are claimed within fictional texts. (shrink)

In the philosophy of fiction, a majority view is continuism, i.e., the thesis that ordinary names, or genuine singular terms in general, directly refer to ordinary real individuals in fiction-involving sentences – e.g. “Napoleon” in the sentences that constitute the text of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. But there is also a minority view, exceptionalism, which is the thesis that such terms change their semantic value in such sentences, either by directly referring to fictional surrogates of those individuals – what we (...) may call exceptional hyperrealism about fictional characters – or by acquiring a semantic value that turns them into nonreferential terms, involving no ontological commitment to such characters – exceptional irrealism about fictional characters. In this paper, first of all, I want to support hybrid exceptionalism, according to which both parties are partly right and partly wrong. In the fictional use of fiction-involving sentences, those terms directly refer to ordinary real individuals, as continuists claim, while both in the internal and the external metafictional use of fiction-involving sentences, such terms change their semantic value, as exceptionalists claim. (By contrast, for pure exceptionalists such terms either always refer to fictional surrogates or are nonreferring on all such uses.) Moreover, I will argue that hybrid exceptional hyperrealism must be preferred to hybrid exceptional irrealism: in the latter uses, I claim, such terms directly refer to fictional surrogates. (shrink)

I argue there are some objects which do not respect the Law of the Excluded Middle, i.e., which are such that, for some property F, the disjunction Fo v ~Fo fails to be true. I call such objects “odd objects” and present three examples—fictional objects, nonsort objects, and quantum objects. I argue that each of these objects is best understood as violating LEM. I, then, discuss Jessica Wilson’s account of metaphysical indeterminacy. I show how the indeterminacy which arises with odd (...) objects can be accounted for on Wilson’s account. I, then, argue that my Wilson-inspired, but non-LEM-respecting, account of metaphysical indeterminacy is superior to Wilson’s in terms of costs and benefits. (shrink)