About this topic
Summary How can a name which is empty contribute to a sentence which is true or false? If it can contribute, what is its contribution? If it cannot so contribute, how can we explain away the judgement of apparently meaningful sentences containing empty names? In particular how can we account for the preponderance of apparently true negative existential claims?
Key works Russell 1905 argues that ordinary proper names should be treated as definite descriptions which should in turn be analysed away in context with quantifiers. One of Russell's arguements for this descriptivism is that it allows empty names to have a meaning. Kripke 1980 argues against descriptivist theories of names and is sympathetic to a Millian theory. This theme is continued by Kripke 2013 which argues that empty names do not provide a test case for theories of names and that traditional descriptivists do not solve the problem of negative existentials. A Millian solution to the problem of negative existentials is tentatively proposed. Whilst rejecting Millianism, Evans 1982 agrees with Kripke that (most) names depend on a referent to be meaningful. Evans 1982 argues forcefully against Kripke's approach to negative existentials and proposes his own solution. Evans' own solution is, however, subject to the same problems. Burge 1974 shows how one can systematically accommodate meaningful empty names in an ontologically perspicuous way. See also Sainsbury 2005.
Introductions Sainsbury 2009 is an introduction to empty names and related issues such as fictional characters, and truth in fiction.
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  1. Conservative Meinongianism: An Actualist+ Ontology.T. Parent - manuscript
    [Draft of October 2024] David Lewis acclimated us to talk of “nonactual concreta that exist,” regarding talking donkeys and the like. I shall argue that this was not for the best, and try to normalize a way of describing them as “actual concreta that do not exist.” The basis of this is a defense of the Meinongian thesis “there are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects,” re: fictitious and illusory objects. I first formulate the (...)
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  2. Existence and Free Logic.Dolf Rami - manuscript
    In this paper I aim to defend a first‐order non‐discriminating property view concerning existence. The version of this view that I prefer is based on negative (or a specific neutral) free logic that treats the existence predicate as first‐order logical predicate. I will provide reasons why such a view is more plausible than a second‐order discriminating property view concerning existence and I will also discuss four challenges for the proposed view and provide solutions to them.
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  3. Non‐Standard Neutral Free Logic, Empty Names and Negative Existentials.Dolf Rami - manuscript
    In this paper I am concerned with an analysis of negative existential sentences that contain proper names only by using negative or neutral free logic. I will compare different versions of neutral free logic with the standard system of negative free logic (Burge, Sainsbury) and aim to defend my version of neutral free logic that I have labeled non-standard neutral free logic.
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  4. Reality and Unreality.Nathan Salmon - manuscript
    A collection of ten previously published essays on existence, nonexistence, empty names, fiction and myth, and free logic.
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  5. Judgements of Co-Identification.Stacie Friend - forthcoming - In Alex Grzankowski & Anthony Savile (eds.), Thought: its Origin and Reach. Essays in Honour of Mark Sainsbury. Routledge.
    A popular way for irrealists to explain co-identification—thinking and talking ‘about the same thing’ when there is no such thing—is by appeal to causal, historical or informational chains, networks or practices. Recently, however, this approach has come under attack by philosophers who contend that it cannot provide necessary and/or sufficient conditions for co-identification. In this paper I defend the approach against these objections. My claim is not that the appeal to such practices can provide necessary and sufficient conditions for co-identification, (...)
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  6. Fictitious Existence versus Nonexistence.Nathan Salmon - forthcoming - Grazer Philosophische Studien.
    A correct observation to the effect that a does not exist, where ‘a’ is a singular term, could be true on any of a variety of grounds. Typically, a true, singular negative existential is true on the unproblematic ground that the subject term ‘a’ designates something that does not presently exist. More interesting philosophically is a singular, negative existential statement in which the subject term ‘a’ designates nothing at all. Both of these contrast sharply with a singular, negative existential in (...)
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  7. Against Descriptive Names.J. P. Smit & Jan Heylen - forthcoming - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy.
    Names like ‘Neptune’ and ‘Vulcan’ have lead some Millians to countenance a class of descriptive names. This is so, as, first, the closeness of the association between a descriptive name and its associated descriptive condition seems to show that the link between the name and the description must be semantic, and, second, as Millianism implies that names without bearers make no direct contribution to the propositions expressed by the sentences in which such names occur. In this paper we use the (...)
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  8. Fictional domains.Dominic Gregory - 2024 - Noûs 58 (1):126-140.
    (Open Access.) Quantifiers frequently figure in works of fiction. But occurrences of quantificational expressions within fictions seem no more inevitably to be associated with real domains than uses of names within fictions seem inevitably to be associated with existing referents. The paper outlines some philosophical puzzles resulting from this apparent lack of associated domains, puzzles that are broadly analogous to more familiar ones raised by the apparently nonreferential nature of many fictional names. The paper argues, in the light of an (...)
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  9. A modified Kripkean theory of negative existentials.Chaoan He - 2023 - Analysis 83 (2):243-248.
    In a 2019 paper, Hausmann raised a new and interesting problem for Kripke’s account of negative existentials. He argued that Kripke’s account leads to the absurd consequence that anybody who has good reasons to believe that there are no propositions also has good reasons to believe that he or she does not exist. In this paper I propose a modified Kripkean theory, which is invulnerable to a Hausmann-like argument. As will be seen, the modified theory can be squarely justified in (...)
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  10. Fictional Names Revisited.Panu Raatikainen - 2023 - In _Essays in the Philosophy of Language._ Acta Philosophica Fennica Vol. 100. Helsinki: Societas Philosophica Fennica. pp. 227–246.
    Several philosophers including Kripke have contended that fictional entities do exist as abstract objects, and fictional names refer to such abstract entities. Kripke and Thomasson compare fictional entities to existing social entities. Kripke also reflects on fictions inside fictions to support his view. Many philosophers appeal to the apparent fact that we quantify over fictional entities. Such arguments in favor of the existence of fictional entities are critically scrutinized. It is argued that they are much less compelling than their proponents (...)
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  11. Russellians should have a no proposition view of empty names.Thomas Hodgson - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Empty names are a problem for Russellians. I describe three ways to approach solving the problem. These are positing gappy propositions as contents, nonsingular propositions as contents, or denying that sentences containing empty names have contents. I discuss methods for deciding between solutions. I then argue for some methods over others and defend one solution using those methods. I reject the arguments that either intuitions about truth value, truth, content, or meaningfulness can decide between the solutions. I give an alternative (...)
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  12. Proper Names as Demonstratives in Fiction.Maciej Tarkowski - 2022 - Studia Semiotyczne 36 (1):63-83.
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  13. Mill and the Missing Referents.David Braun - 2021 - In Heimir Geirsson & Stephen Biggs (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Reference. New York: Routledge. pp. 373-383.
  14. Fictional Characters and Their Discontents: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics of Fictional Entities.Shamik Chakravarty - 2021 - Dissertation, Lingnan University
    In recent metaphysics, the questions of whether fictional entities exist, what their nature is, and how to explain truths of statements such as “Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street” and “Holmes was created by Arthur Conan Doyle” have been subject to much debate. The main aim of my thesis is to wrestle with key proponents of the abstractionist view that fictional entities are abstract objects that exist (van Inwagen 1977, 2018, Thomasson 1999 and Salmon 1998) as well as Walton’s (...)
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  15. Empty Names, Presupposition Failure, and Metalinguistic Negation.Giulia Felappi - 2021 - Journal of Philosophy 118 (5):270-287.
    When it comes to empty names, we seem to have reached very little consensus. Still, we all seem to agree, first, that our semantics should assign truth to negative singular existence statements in which an empty name occurs and, second, that names are used in such statements. The purpose of this paper is to show that ruling out that the names are mentioned is harder than it has been thought. I will present a new metalinguistic account for negative singular existence (...)
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  16. Turning Aboutness About.Alexander Sandgren - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (1):136-155.
    There are two families of influential and stubborn puzzles that many theories of aboutness (intentionality) face: underdetermination puzzles and puzzles concerning representations that appear to be about things that do not exist. I propose an approach that elegantly avoids both kinds of puzzle. The central idea is to explain aboutness (the relation supposed to stand between thoughts and terms and their objects) in terms of relations of co-aboutness (the relation of being about the same thing that stands between the thoughts (...)
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  17. V—The Linguistic Approach to Ontology.Lee Walters - 2021 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 121 (2):127-152.
    What are the prospects for a linguistic approach to ontology? Given that it seems that there are true subject-predicate sentences containing empty names, traditional linguistic approaches to ontology appear to be flawed. I argue that in order to determine what there is, we need to determine which sentences ascribe properties (and relations) to objects, and that there does not appear to be any formal criterion for this. This view is then committed to giving an account of what predicates do in (...)
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  18. Hic sunt chimaerae? On Absolutely Impossible Significates and Referents in Mid-14th-Century Nominalist Logic.Graziana S. Ciola - 2020 - Recherches de Theologie Et Philosophie Medievales 87 (2):441-467.
    Marsilius of Inghen’s account of imaginable impossibilities became paradigmatic in logic, semantics, and metaphysics throughout the later Middle Ages and well into the early modern period. The present study focuses on imaginable impossibilities in 14th-century logic, underlining the relevance of Marsilius of Inghen’s innovative approach through a comparison with the semantic accounts proposed by other mid-14th-century Parisian nominalists, namely John Buridan and Albert of Saxony. In particular, this paper tracks the specific issue of the admissibility of absolute impossibilities – such (...)
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  19. Truth Without Reference: The Use of Fictional Names.María de Ponte, Kepa Korta & John Perry - 2020 - Topoi 39 (2):389-399.
    Singular terms without referents are called empty or vacuous terms. But not all of them are equally empty. In particular, not all proper names that fail to name an existing object fail in the same way: although they are all empty, they are not all equally vacuous. “Vulcan,” “Jacob Horn,” “Odysseus,” and “Sherlock Holmes,” for instance, are all empty. They have no referents. But they are not entirely vacuous or useless. Sometimes they are used in statements that are true or (...)
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  20. Fictional Discourse: A Radical Fictionalist Semantics By Stefano Predelli. [REVIEW]Thomas Hodgson - 2020 - Analysis 80 (4):834-836.
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  21. Russellians can solve the problem of empty names with nonsingular propositions.Thomas Hodgson - 2020 - Synthese 197:5411–5433.
    Views that treat the contents of sentences as structured, Russellian propositions face a problem with empty names. It seems that those sorts of things cannot be the contents of sentences containing such names. I motivate and defend a solution to the problem according to which a sentence may have a singular proposition as its content at one time, and a nonsingular one at another. When the name is empty the content is a nonsingular Russellian structured proposition; when the name is (...)
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  22. A Russellian Analysis of Buddhist Catuskoti.Nicholaos Jones - 2020 - Comparative Philosophy 11 (2):63-89.
    Names name, but there are no individuals who are named by names. This is the key to an elegant and ideologically parsimonious strategy for analyzing the Buddhist catuṣkoṭi. The strategy is ideologically parsimonious, because it appeals to no analytic resources beyond those of standard predicate logic. The strategy is elegant, because it is, in effect, an application of Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions to Buddhist contexts. The strategy imposes some minor adjustments upon Russell's theory. Attention to familiar catuṣkoṭi from (...)
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  23. The Truth and Nothing but the Truth: Non-Literalism and The Habits of Sherlock Holmes.Heidi Savage - 2020 - Southwest Philosophy Review 36 (2).
    Abstract: Many, if not most philosophers, deny that a sentence like ‘Sherlock Holmes smokes’ could be true. However, this attitude conflicts with the assignment of true to that sentence by natural language speakers. Furthermore, this process of assigning truth values to sentences like ‘Sherlock Holes smokes’ seems indistinguishable from the process that leads speakers to assign true to other sentences, those like ‘Bertrand Russell smokes’. I will explore the idea that when speakers assign the value true to the first sentence, (...)
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  24. A New Puzzle for Phenomenal Intentionality.Peter Clutton & Alexander Sandgren - 2019 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6.
    Phenomenal intentionality theories have recently enjoyed significant attention. According to these theories, the intentionality of a mental representation (what it is about) crucially depends on its phenomenal features. We present a new puzzle for these theories, involving a phenomenon called ‘intentional identity’, or ‘co-intentionality’. Co-intentionality is a ubiquitous intentional phenomenon that involves tracking things even when there is no concrete thing being tracked. We suggest that phenomenal intentionality theories need to either develop new uniquely phenomenal resources for handling the puzzle, (...)
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  25. Semantic Verbs Are Intensional Transitives.Justin D’Ambrosio - 2019 - Mind 128 (509):213-248.
    In this paper I show that we have strong empirical and theoretical reasons to treat the verbs we use in our semantic theorizing—particularly ‘refers to ’, ‘applies to ’, and ‘is true of ’—as intensional transitive verbs. Stating our semantic theories with intensional vocabulary allows us to partially reconcile two competing approaches to the nature and subject-matter of semantics: the Chomskian approach, on which semantics is non-relational, internalistic, and concerns the psychology of language users, and the Lewisian approach, on which (...)
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  26. Semantics of fictional terms.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2019 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 38 (2):73-100.
    The paper provides an opinionated survey of recent contributions – roughly, in the last decade – to our understanding of how names and other referring expressions work in fictional discourse and addresses well-known philosophical worries that they raise. Views about the semantics of referring expressions in fictional discourse are usually accompanied by metaphysical views on the ontology of fictional characters, so this will also come under our focus.
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  27. Singular Reference in Fictional Discourse?Manuel García-Carpintero - 2019 - Disputatio 11 (54):143-177.
    Singular terms used in fictions for fictional characters raise well-known philosophical issues, explored in depth in the literature. But philosophers typically assume that names already in use to refer to “moderatesized specimens of dry goods” cause no special problem when occurring in fictions, behaving there as they ordinarily do in straightforward assertions. In this paper I continue a debate with Stacie Friend, arguing against this for the exceptionalist view that names of real entities in fictional discourse don’t work there as (...)
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  28. Consequences of Reference Failure.Michael McKinsey - 2019 - New York and Oxford: Routledge.
    This book defends the Direct Reference (DR) thesis in philosophy of language regarding proper names and indexical pronouns. It uniquely draws out the significant consequences of DR when it is conjoined with the fact that these singular terms sometimes fail to refer. Even though DR is widely endorsed by philosophers of language, many philosophically important and radically controversial consequences of the thesis have gone largely unexplored. This book makes an important contribution to the DR literature by explicitly addressing the consequences (...)
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  29. The Varieties of Gappy Propositions.Seyed N. Mousavian - 2019 - In Chris Tillman & Adam Murray (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Propositions. Routledge.
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  30. Fiction and Representation.Zoltán Vecsey - 2019 - Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
    One of the basic insights of the book is that there is a notion of non-relational linguistic representation which can fruitfully be employed in a systematic approach to literary fiction. This notion allows us to develop an improved understanding of the ontological nature of fictional entities. A related insight is that the customary distinction between extra-fictional and intra-fictional contexts has only a secondary theoretical importance. This distinction plays a central role in nearly all contemporary theories of literary fiction. There is (...)
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  31. Propositions, Meaning, and Names.Tristan Grøtvedt Haze - 2018 - Philosophical Forum 49 (3):335-362.
    The object of this paper is to sketch an approach to propositions, meaning and names. The key ingredients are a Twin-Earth-inspired distinction between internal and external meaning, and a middle-Wittgenstein-inspired conception of internal meaning as role in language system. I show how the approach offers a promising solution to the problem of the meaning of proper names. This is a plea for a neglected way of thinking about these topics.
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  32. Reference fiction, and omission.Samuel Murray - 2018 - Synthese 195 (1):235-257.
    In this paper, I argue that sentences that contain ‘omission’ tokens that appear to function as singular terms are meaningful while maintaining the view that omissions are nothing at all or mere absences. I take omissions to be fictional entities and claim that the way in which sentences about fictional characters are true parallels the way in which sentences about omissions are true. I develop a pragmatic account of fictional reference and argue that my fictionalist account of omissions implies a (...)
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  33. Empty Representations: Reference and Non-existence By Manuel García-Carpintero and Genoveva Martí. [REVIEW]T. Parent - 2018 - Analysis 78 (1):172-173.
  34. Fictional, Metafictional, Parafictional.François Recanati - 2018 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 118 (1):25-54.
  35. Which witch is which? Exotic objects and intentional identity.Alexander Sandgren - 2018 - Synthese 195 (2):721-739.
    This paper is about intentional identity, the phenomenon of intentional attitudes having a common focus. I present an argument against an approach to explaining intentional identity, defended by Nathan Salmon, Terence Parsons and others, that involves positing exotic objects. For example, those who adopt this sort of view say that when two astronomers had beliefs about Vulcan, their attitudes had a common focus because there is an exotic object that both of their beliefs were about. I argue that countenancing these (...)
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  36. Critical Notice of 'On Reference' by Andrea Bianchi (ed.).Lukas Skiba - 2018 - Analysis 78 (1):160-171.
    ‘On Reference’ is a collection of 18 original articles. While united in their concern with reference, they deal with a large variety of topics, ranging from questions concerning the nature of reference, through the interaction of reference and cognition, to more specific questions about the semantics of particular referring expressions. The contributions are of high quality: thought provoking, insightful and engagingly written. Many have the potential to substantially advance the debate in their field. In this critical notice I will do (...)
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  37. Russellians can have a no proposition view of empty names.Thomas Hodgson - 2017 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (7):670-691.
    Russellians can have a no proposition view of empty names. I will defend this theory against the problem of meaningfulness, and show that the theory is in general well motivated. My solution to the problem of meaningfulness is that speakers’ judgements about meaningfulness are tracking grammaticality, and not propositional content.
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  38. Mistake is to Myth What Pretense is to Fiction: A Reply to Goodman.Björn Lundgren - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (3):1275-1282.
    In this reply I defend Kripke’s creationist thesis for mythical objects against Jeffrey Goodman’s counter-argument to the thesis, 35–40, 2014). I argue that Goodman has mistaken the basis for when mythical abstracta are created. Contrary to Goodman I show that, as well as how, Kripke’s theory consistently retains the analogy between creation of mythical objects and creation of fictional objects, while also explaining in what way they differ.
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  39. Modelling Empty Representations: The Case of Computational Models of Hallucination.Marcin Miłkowski - 2017 - In Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic & Raffaela Giovagnoli (eds.), Representation of Reality: Humans, Other Living Organism and Intelligent Machines. Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 17--32.
    I argue that there are no plausible non-representational explanations of episodes of hallucination. To make the discussion more specific, I focus on visual hallucinations in Charles Bonnet syndrome. I claim that the character of such hallucinatory experiences cannot be explained away non-representationally, for they cannot be taken as simple failures of cognizing or as failures of contact with external reality—such failures being the only genuinely non-representational explanations of hallucinations and cognitive errors in general. I briefly introduce a recent computational model (...)
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  40. Names in Fiction.Dilip Ninan - 2017 - Theoretical Linguistics 43 (1-2):61-70.
    Discussion of Emar Maier's essay “Fictional Names in Psychologistic Semantics.”.
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  41. M. García-Carpintero & G. Martí (eds.), Empty Representations: Reference and Non-existence. [REVIEW]Fredrik Haraldsen - 2016 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 23 (2):263-274.
  42. (1 other version)Truths Containing Empty Names.Michael McKinsey - 2016 - In Piotr Stalmaszczyk & Luis Fernandez Moreno (eds.), Philosophical Approaches to Proper Names. Peter Lang. pp. 175-202.
    Abstract. On the Direct Reference thesis, proper names are what I call ‘genuine terms’, terms whose sole semantic contributions to the propositions expressed by their use are the terms’ semantic referents. But unless qualified, this thesis implies the false consequence that sentences containing names that fail to refer can never express true or false propositions. (Consider ‘The ancient Greeks worshipped Zeus’, for instance.) I suggest that while names are typically and fundamentally used as genuine terms, there is a small class (...)
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  43. The problem of empty names and Russellian Plenitude.Joshua Spencer - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (3):1-18.
    ‘Ahab is a whaler’ and ‘Holmes is a whaler’ express different propositions, even though neither ‘Ahab’ nor ‘Holmes’ has a referent. This seems to constitute a theoretical puzzle for the Russellian view of propositions. In this paper, I develop a variant of the Russellian view, Plenitudinous Russellianism. I claim that ‘Ahab is a whaler’ and ‘Holmes is a whaler’ express distinct gappy propositions. I discuss key metaphysical and semantic differences between Plenitudinous Russellianism and Traditional Russellianism and respond to objections that (...)
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  44. Vacuous Names in Early Analytic Philosophy: Frege, Russell, and Moore.Mark Textor - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (6):316-326.
    Empty proper names give rise to intriguing questions. Frege, Moore and Russell stand at the beginning of analytic philosophy's engagement with these questions. In this paper I will therefore introduce and assess their views on the topic of empty names and draw connections to recent work.
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  45. Fictional Characters, Mythical Objects, and the Phenomenon of Inadvertent Creation.Zsófia Zvolenszky - 2016 - Res Philosophica 93 (2):1-23.
    My goal is to reflect on the phenomenon of inadvertent creation and argue that—various objections to the contrary—it doesn’t undermine the view that fictional characters are abstract artifacts. My starting point is a recent challenge by Jeffrey Goodman that is originally posed for those who hold that fictional characters and mythical objects alike are abstract artifacts. The challenge: if we think that astronomers like Le Verrier, in mistakenly hypothesizing the planet Vulcan, inadvertently created an abstract artifact, then the “inadvertent creation” (...)
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  46. Pretense and Pathology: Philosophical Fictionalism and its Applications.Bradley Armour-Garb & James A. Woodbridge - 2015 - Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Edited by James A. Woodbridge.
    In this book, Bradley Armour-Garb and James A. Woodbridge distinguish various species of fictionalism, locating and defending their own version of philosophical fictionalism. Addressing semantic and philosophical puzzles that arise from ordinary language, they consider such issues as the problem of non-being, plural identity claims, mental-attitude ascriptions, meaning attributions, and truth-talk. They consider 'deflationism about truth', explaining why deflationists should be fictionalists, and show how their philosophical fictionalist account of truth-talk underwrites a dissolution of the Liar Paradox and its kin. (...)
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  47. Frege on Existence and Non‐existence.Karen Green - 2015 - Theoria 81 (4):293-310.
    Despite its importance for early analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege's account of existence statements, according to which they classify concepts, has been thought to succumb to a number of well-worn criticisms. This article does two things. First, it argues that, by remaining faithful to the letter of Frege's claim that concepts are functions, the Fregean account can be saved from many of the standard criticisms. Second, it examines the problem that Frege's account fails to generalize to cases which involve definite descriptions (...)
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  48. Pretense and fiction-directed thought.Michael R. Hicks - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (6):1549-1573.
    Thought about fictional characters is special, and needs to be distinguished from ordinary world-directed thought. On my interpretation, Kendall Walton and Gareth Evans have tried to show how this serious fiction-directed thought can arise from engagement with a kind of pretending. Many criticisms of their account have focused on the methodological presupposition, that fiction-directed thought is the appropriate explanandum. In the first part of this paper, I defend the methodological claim, and thus the existence of the problem to which pretense (...)
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  49. Reference and Existence: The John Locke Lectures. [REVIEW]Fred Kroon - 2015 - Philosophical Quarterly 65 (261):861-865.
  50. The Nonexistent, by Anthony Everett: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, viii + 246, £40. [REVIEW]Frederick Kroon - 2015 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (1):185-187.
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