Against Fictional Realism

Abstract

Strict Quineans will insist that our ontological commitments are revealed, not by the natural language sentences we hold true, but rather by the way we choose to paraphrase these into First Order Logic but I will ignore this complication here.

How can we reconcile the following apparent truths: ‘Sherlock Holmes doesn’t exist’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes was created by Conan Doyle’?

“…Some authors have objected that any realist account of ficta will suffer from a possible situation where it is indeterminate whether two fictional characters are identical. For example, Everett (2005) believes it is indeterminate whether the Faust of Marlowe is identical to that of Goethe. The realist is held to be especially exposed to the problem because indeterminacy of identity cannot apply in the real world.…”

“…Again, they are not identical unless they are given all of the same properties. In the example of Frackworld given by Everett (2005: 629 et seq), it is said that there are some 'striking differences' between two allegedly indeterminately identical characters. If we accept Parsons's view, these differences are sufficient to distinguish the characters.…”

Foundational Grounding and the Argument from Contingency

“…For such defenses, see van Inwagen 1977;Thomasson 1999;Schnieder and Solodkoff 2009;Kripke 2013, 69-83. For an opposing view, see Everett 2005Everett , 2007. For an overview of the debate about sentences that apparently quantify over fictional objects, see Friend 2007. 20.…”

The ontological commitments of inconsistent theories

“…9Everett (2005) makes an interesting argument against fictional realism based on the inconsistency found in fiction. Everett's argument has some similarity to the objection I am considering here.…”