Abstract:Realists about fictional characters accept an ontological commitment to fictional characters, which enables them to provide straightforward explanations of data that are difficult to explain absent this commitment. Fictionalists about fictional characters purport to appropriate realists' explanatory power without their ontological commitments by paraphrasing the realist's claims ('according to the realist, …'). However, this approach faces a critical hurdle: To claim the explanatory benefits the fictionalist p… Show more
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