Description, Disagreement, and Fictional Names
2011; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/cjp.2011.0028
ISSN1911-0820
Autores Tópico(s)Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
ResumoIn this paper, a theory of the contents of fictional names — names of fictional people, places, etc. — will be developed. The fundamental datum that must be addressed by such a theory is that fictional names are, in an important sense, empty: the entities to which they putatively refer do not exist. Nevertheless, they make substantial contributions to the truth conditions of sentences in which they occur. Not only do such sentences have truth conditions, sentences differing only in the fictional names they contain differ in their truth conditions. It is, after all, commonplace to note such things as, for example, that Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit is true, and Sherlock Holmes is a hobbit is false, while acknowledging at the same time that neither Baggins nor Holmes exists. The central problem, therefore, is that of reconciling the emptiness of fictional names with their substantial contributions.
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