Empty Names and `Gappy' Propositions

Everett, Anthony

doi:10.1023/b:phil.0000005533.25543.36

Cited by 47 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…9 Thanks to Mark Richard and Jennifer Saul for urging me to address it. 10 Caplan (2002) and Everett (2003) argue that the view that atomic gappy propositions are false entails unintuitive results about the truth values of certain sentences containing empty names. Everett seemingly concludes that atomic gappy propositions (if there are any) have no truth value.…”

Section: Conventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empty Names, Fictional Names, Mythical Names

Braun

2005

Nous

151

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Section: Conventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empty Names, Fictional Names, Mythical Names

Braun

2005

Nous

151

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“…Meanwhile his cousin Lawrence in London, also reading the novel, imagines (what13 Adams and Stecker (1994),Taylor (2000) andAdams and Dietrich (2004) defend versions of this view. SeeReimer (2001),Everett (2003) andGreen (2007) for criticisms.14 Adams and Dietrich (2004) also invoke the ''causal history of the name'' (p. 128ff) to fill out the pragmatic portion of the gappy proposition view, but do not develop the idea in detail.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The great beetle debate: a study in imagining with names

Friend

2009

Philos Stud

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Statements about fictional characters, such as ''Gregor Samsa has been changed into a beetle,'' pose the problem of how we can say something true (or false) using empty names. I propose an original solution to this problem that construes such utterances as reports of the ''prescriptions to imagine'' generated by works of fiction. In particular, I argue that we should construe these utterances as specifying, not what we are supposed to imagine-the propositional object of the imagining-but how we are supposed to imagine. Most other theories of thought and discourse about fictional characters either fail to capture the intentionality of our imaginings, or else obscure the differences between imaginings directed toward fictional characters and those directed toward real individuals. I argue that once we have an account of prescriptions to imagine about real individuals, we can adapt the same framework to specify the contents of prescriptions to imagine about fictional characters, and thereby to account for the truth (or falsity) of statements about fictional characters.

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“…As fans of gappy propositions tend to do, using weak or 'exclusion' negation to get the appropriate nonexistence claims to come out true. See Everett (2003) for objections. My own credence in this twist on nonfactualism is about 5%, but we needn't linger on gappy propositions here.…”

Section: Scorecardmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods

Daly¹

2015

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Empty Names and `Gappy' Propositions

Cited by 47 publications

References 15 publications

Empty Names, Fictional Names, Mythical Names

Empty Names, Fictional Names, Mythical Names

The great beetle debate: a study in imagining with names

The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods

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