Fictional Characters and Characterisations

Connolly, Niall

doi:10.1111/papq.12426

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(20 reference statements)

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“…I think the same point is put forward in [57] (p. 364), when disagreeing with Thomasson's defence of principle (C) as expressing an analytic truth. I am unsure whether Connolly would go for (B) over (C); he explicitly asserts that his account is anti-realist (denying the existence of fictional characters), while at the same time, in several places, talks about the existence of "characterisations".…”

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confidence: 81%

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The Paradox of Fictional Creatures

Rouillé

2023

Philosophies

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Authors create fictional characters; that is a “creationist locution”. Artefactualism takes such statements very seriously and holds that fictional characters are abstract artefacts, i.e., entities that are both created and abstract. Anti-creationists, by contrast, deny that we need to postulate such doubtful entities to explain creationist locutions. In this paper, I present this debate in the form of a paradox, which organises the many existing theories of creationist locutions in a single logical space. This new way of framing the problem displays the crucial role of so-called “linking principles”. In general, it seems that fictionality entails nonexistence, while creation entails existence. This is why “fictional creatures” are puzzling. I further argue that to create means to invent and to realise, and finally, that fictional characters are invented but not created, contra artefactualism. I thus advocate for a new kind of anti-creationism about fictional characters.

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confidence: 81%

“…Inventions, in general, can exist or not depending on whether and how they are realised, and this is an empirical matter. Counting some complex structure involving imagination as proper realisation sounds like a weak vindication of (C) when compared to the force of (B) 26 [57].…”

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confidence: 99%

The Paradox of Fictional Creatures

Rouillé

2023

Philosophies

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Fictional domains

Gregory

2022

Nous

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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.

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Fictional Characters and Characterisations

Cited by 2 publications

References 25 publications

The Paradox of Fictional Creatures

The Paradox of Fictional Creatures

Fictional domains

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