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The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature pp 385–406Cite as

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Language, Ontology, Fiction

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Abstract

This chapter is about ontological issues that arise in the context of discourse within and about fiction and fictional characters. Our main focus will be on the divide between broadly realist accounts of fictional characters (the entities supposedly designated by purely fictional terms) and broadly antirealist accounts. Understanding what is at stake requires a brief look both at the nature of fiction, and at the nature of fictional language, in particular the ways in which the semantics of fictional language raises ontological issues. We also consider some arguments that are more directly ontological. In the final section, we turn from ontology to metaphysics and look at the dominant realist theories of fictional objects.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    More precisely: for Walton, a proposition is fictional or true in the fiction just in case participants in a game authorized by the text are supposed to imagine it as true (Walton 1990). Note that there are two types of fictional truth: the primary fictional truths are evident in the work itself, while the implied fictional truths are generated from the primary ones. The latter include all the fictional truths that are implicit rather than explicitly stated, for example, that Holmes lived in a city in England.

  2. 2.

    This should already be evident from the above explanation of the fictional truth of a statement like ‘Anna Karenina is a fictional character’. Without more work, it is far from clear that it succeeds in avoiding a commitment to Anna Karenina as a genuine entity. For recent antirealist proposals along the lines above, see Everett (2013, ch. 3).

  3. 3.

    Other examples include quantified sentences that seem to commit one to indeterminate fictional entities. (See also Yablo 1998 for a more general account of why we shouldn’t simply read our ontological commitments off from our language, even when it displays quantificational structure.)

  4. 4.

    These difficulties for possibilism do not equally affect all versions of the doctrine. In particular, the fact that there are so many distinct Holmes candidates is less embarrassing for Lewis than it is for other possibilists (cf. Lewis 1983; Currie 1990, 137–39; Kroon 1994).

  5. 5.

    Although this is the usual understanding of Meinong’s conception of fictional objects, some of his other work suggests that he thinks of them as higher-order entities—entities that are constructed out of simpler entities—in the same sense in which a melody is an entity constructed out of its constituent sounds (cf. Raspa 2001; Marek 2009).

  6. 6.

    The obvious similarity of such claims to the unorthodox neo-Meinongian’s claim that there are ‘two modes of predication’ has not gone unnoticed (see Zalta 2006).

  7. 7.

    Despite the apparent incompatibility of the two approaches, some have argued that the most promising elements of each can somehow be combined (cf. Zalta 2000; Voltolini 2006).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Frederick Kroon

  2. University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Alberto Voltolini

Authors
  1. Frederick Kroon
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  2. Alberto Voltolini
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Correspondence to Frederick Kroon .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Barry Stocker

  2. Durham University, Durham, UK

    Michael Mack

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Kroon, F., Voltolini, A. (2018). Language, Ontology, Fiction. In: Stocker, B., Mack, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54794-1_18

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