Abstract
The longstanding problem I said I would tackle at the close of the previous chapter stems from the apparent fact that we can say true things about things that don’t exist. Among those who think there are truths to be told “about fictional objects”, two views prevail. One is the so-called Meinongian view that, e.g.,’Pegasus has wings’ is true for the same reason that sentences of subject-predicate form are usually true: because there is a horse, Pegasus, which is winged. That this horse does not exist is beside the point. The other view is that the sentence’Pegasus has wings’ is really about a myth, and that whatever truth there is to be told is a truth about that myth. The second view allows us to avoid nonexistent objects, but is otherwise not particularly plausible; the sentence’Reagan has a ranch’ makes no covert appeal to California legend, and it is rather unclear why’Pegasus has wings’ should be any different. Both views, I think, are to be rejected. I wish to defend something like the second view in this chapter; it will I hope come as no surprise by now that my own explanation will be pragmatic rather than semantic.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Hartry Field, “Theory Change and the Indeterminacy of Reference”, p. 471.
Lewis, “Truth in Fiction”, pp. 37–38.
Devitt, Designation, p. 174.
Ibid., p. 181.
See Emmon Bach, Syntactic Theory, pp. 99–100. (Later theories rejected this claim.)
Donnellan, “peaking of Nothing”, pp. 5–6.
The example is from the 1976–77 Law School Admissions Bulletin.
John Woods, The Logic of Fiction, p. 135.
Julian Barnes, review of The Perpetual Orgy, New York Times Book Review, December 21, 1986, p. 10. Copyright c 1986 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
Woods, The Logic of Fiction, p. 136. (Freud wrote a psychoanalytic study of Wilhelm Jenson’s Gradiva: A Pompeiian Fantasy.)
Ibid., p. 135.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bertolet, R. (1990). Concerning Fiction and Fictions. In: What is Said. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 49. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2061-3_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2061-3_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7425-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2061-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive