Fictional domains

Noûs 58 (1):126-140 (2024)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

(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 important disanalogy between quantifiers and names, that the quantificational puzzles are substantive, in that they cannot be resolved merely by appealing to the possibility of empty domains. It then argues that, despite the cited parallels between occurrences of quantifiers and names within fictions, promising treatments of fictional names do not always straightforwardly generalise to provide accounts of the quantificational phenomena: the quantificational puzzles are therefore not only substantive but also distinctive. The paper provides further testament to the depth and interest of the problems involving content that are generated by fiction, by identifying a very wide range of previously neglected cases, while also helping to situate within a broader context the notoriously hard philosophical challenges posed by fictional names.

Similar books and articles

Fictional Characters and Their Names.Hanoch Ben-Yami - 2022 - Studia Semiotyczne 36 (1):9-16.
Fictional Realism and Negative Existentials.Tatjana von Solodkoff - 2014 - In Manuel García-Carpintero & Genoveva Martí (eds.), Empty Representations: Reference and Non-Existence. Oxford University Press. pp. 333-352.
The great beetle debate: A study in imagining with names.Stacie Friend - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 153 (2):183-211.
Actualisme et fiction.Jérôme Pelletier - 2000 - Dialogue 39 (1):77-.
Speaking of fictional characters.Amie L. Thomasson - 2003 - Dialectica 57 (2):205–223.
Speaking of Fictional Characters.Amie L. Thomasson - 2003 - Dialectica 57 (2):205-223.
Fictional names and individual concepts.Andreas Stokke - 2020 - Synthese 198 (8):7829-7859.
The Fictional Road Not Taken: A Weak Anti-realist Theory of Fiction.Peter Alward - 2022 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 80 (3):333-344.
The Importance of Fictional Properties.Sarah Sawyer - 2015 - In Stuart Brock & Anthony Everett (eds.), Fictional Objects. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 208-229.
Fictional Realism.Ioan Motoarca - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-12-15

Downloads
224 (#82,488)

6 months
103 (#33,230)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Dominic Gregory
University of Sheffield

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts.Kendall L. Walton - 1990 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (2):161-166.
Quantification and the empty domain.W. V. Quine - 1954 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 19 (3):177-179.
Fictional Characters and Characterisations.Niall Connolly - 2023 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104 (2):348-367.

View all 6 references / Add more references