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  1. Fred Adams, Gary Fuller & Robert Stecker (1997). The Semantics of Fictional Names. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (2):128–148.
    In this paper we defend a direct reference theory of names. We maintain that the meaning of a name is its bearer. In the case of vacuous names, there is no bearer and they have no meaning. We develop a unified theory of names such that one theory applies to names whether they occur within or outside fiction. Hence, we apply our theory to sentences containing names within fiction, sentences about fiction or sentences making comparisons across fictions. We then defend (...)
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  2. Kent Bach (1985/1986). Failed Reference and Feigned Reference. Grazer Philosophische Studien 25:359-374.
    Nothing can be said about a nonexistent object, but something can be said about the act of (unsuccessfully) attempting to refer to one or, as in fiction, of pretending to refer to one. Unsuccessful reference, whether by expressions or by speakers, can be explained straightforwardly within the context of the theory of speech acts and communication. As for fiction, there is nothing special semantically, as to either meaning or reference, about its language. And fictional discourse is just a distinctive use (...)
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  3. Jay E. Bachrach (1991). Fictional Objects in Literature and Mental Representations. British Journal of Aesthetics 31 (2):134-139.
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  4. H. Gene Blocker (1974). The Truth About Fictional Entities. Philosophical Quarterly 24 (94):27-36.
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  5. Paul Bloom, What Does Batman Think About Spongebob? Children's Understanding of the Fantasy/Fantasy Distinction.
    Young children reliably distinguish reality from fantasy; they know that their friends are real and that Batman is not. But it is an open question whether they appreciate, as adults do, that there are multiple fantasy worlds. We test this by asking children and adults about fictional characters’ beliefs about other characters who exist either within the same world (e.g., Batman and Robin) or in different worlds (e.g., Batman and SpongeBob). Study 1 found that although both adults and young children (...)
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  6. Stuart Brock (2002). Fictionalism About Fictional Characters. Noûs 36 (1):1–21.
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  7. Tim Button (2011). Spotty Scope and Our Relation to Fictions. Noûs 45 (1):1--16.
    Whatever the attractions of Tolkein's world, irrealists about fictions do not believe literally that Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit. Instead, irrealists believe that, according to The Lord of the Rings {Bilbo is a hobbit}. But when irrealists want to say something like “I am taller than Bilbo”, there is nowhere good for them to insert the operator “according to The Lord of the Rings”. This is an instance of the operator problem. In this paper, I outline and criticise Sainsbury's (2006) (...)
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  8. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (2005). Brentano Husserl Und Ingarden Über Die Intentionalen Gegenstände. In Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (ed.), Existence, Culture, and Persons: The Ontology of Roman Ingarden. Ontos.
    In der Geschichte der Philosophie finden wir viele Intentionalitätstheorien, die spezielle Gegenstände zur Erklärung des Intentionalitätsphänomens einführen. Solche Theorien wurden in erster Linie von Philosophen eingeführt, die durch Franz Brentano beeinflusst waren. Gegenstände, um die es hier geht, werden üblicherweise intentionale Gegenstände genannt. Eine Theorie der intentionalen Gegenstände, die vom ontologischen Standpunkt aus betrachtet besonders detailliert ausgearbeitet ist, hat Roman Ingarden formuliert. Auch Ingardens Theorie ist daher Gegenstand einer oft geäußerten Kritik. Man behauptet, dass alles, was intentionale Gegenstände leisten, auch (...)
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  9. Ralph W. Clark (1980). Fictional Entities: Talking About Them and Having Feelings About Them. Philosophical Studies 38 (4):341 - 349.
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  10. David Conter (1991). Fictional Names and Narrating Characters. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (3):319 – 328.
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  11. Gabriele Contessa (2012). Sweet Nothings. Analysis 72 (2):354-366.
    This paper is part of a book symposium on Jody Azzouni's Talking about Nothing: Numbers, Hallucinations, and Fictions.
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  12. Gabriele Contessa (2009). Who is Afraid of Imaginary Objects? In Nicholas Griffin & Dale Jacquette (eds.), Russell Vs. Meinong: The Legacy of "On Denoting". Routledge.
    People often use expressions such as ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘Pegasus’ that appear to refer to imaginary objects. In this paper, I consider the main attempts to account for apparent reference to imaginary objects available in the literature and argue that all fall short of being fully satisfactory. In particular, I consider the problems of two main options to maintain that imaginary objects are real and reference to them is genuine reference: possibilist and abstractist account. According to the former, imaginary objects (...)
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  13. Gregory Currie (1997). On Being Fictional. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (4):425-427.
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  14. Gregory Currie (1988). Fictional Names. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 66 (4):471 – 488.
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  15. Gregory Currle (2003). Characters and Contingency. Dialectica 57 (2):137–148.
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  16. Francis W. Dauer (1995). The Nature of Fictional Characters and the Referential Fallacy. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1):31-38.
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  17. Stacie Friend (2011). The Great Beetle Debate: A Study in Imagining with Names. Philosophical Studies 153:183-211.
    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 (...)
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  18. Stacie Friend (2007). Fictional Characters. Philosophy Compass 2 (2):141–156.
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  19. Stavroula Glezakos (forthcoming). Truth and Reference in Fiction. In Gillian Russell & Delia Graff Fara (eds.), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Language. Routledge.
    Fiction is often characterized by way of a contrast with truth, as, for example, in the familiar couplet “Truth is always strange/ Stranger than fiction" (Byron 1824). And yet, those who would maintain that “we will always learn more about human life and human personality from novels than from scientific psychology” (Chomsky 1988: 159) hold that some truth is best encountered via fiction. The scrupulous novelist points out that her work depicts no actual person, either living or dead; nonetheless, we (...)
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  20. Jeffrey Goodman (2004). A Defense of Creationism in Fiction. Grazer Philosophische Studien 67 (1):131-155.
    Creationism is the conjunction of the following theses: (i) fictional individuals (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) actually exist; (ii) fictional names (e.g., 'Holmes') are at least sometimes genuinely referential; (iii) fictional individuals are the creations of the authors who first wrote (or spoke, etc.) about them. CA Creationism is the conjunction of (i) - (iii) and the following thesis: (iv) fictional individuals are contingently existing abstracta; they are non-concrete artifacts of our world and various other possible worlds. TakashiYagisawa has recently provided a (...)
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  21. Jeffrey Goodman (2003). Where is Sherlock Holmes? Southern Journal of Philosophy 41 (2):183-197.
    Most philosophers would say that fictional characters lack spatiotemporal location simply because such entities do not exist. However, even prominent believers in ficta hold that they must lack location. I here focus on the views of one such believer, Amie Thomasson, and her Artifactual Theory. The fundamentals of her ontology seem correct, but I argue that the view implies that ficta do have location. I provide a diagnosis of an argument Thomasson gives for the contrary, and then suggest a way (...)
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  22. Richard Hanley (2003). Much Ado About Nothing: Critical Realism Examined. Philosophical Studies 115 (2):123 - 147.
    Critical realism is the view that fictional characters arecontingent, actual, abstract individuals, ontologically on a par with such things as plots and rhyme schemes, andquantified over in statements such as A character inHamlet is a prince. A strong contender for thecorrect account of fictional characters, critical realismnevertheless has difficulty satisfying all that we intuitivelyrequire of such an account.
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  23. Dan Haybron (1999). Evil Characters. American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (2):131 - 148.
    In this paper I examine the psychological traits that can play a constitutive role in having an evil character, using a recent affect-based account by Colin McGinn as my starting point. I distinguish several such traits and defend the importance of both affect and action-based approaches. I then argue that someone who possesses these characteristics to the greatest possible extent—the purely evil individual—can actually be less depraved than one whose character is not so thoroughly penetrated by such traits. To illustrate (...)
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  24. Michael Hicks (2010). A Note on Pretense and Co-Reference. Philosophical Studies 149 (3).
    Anna Pautz has recently argued that the pretense theory of thought about fiction cannot explain how two people can count as thinking about the same fictional character. This is based on conflating pretending and the serious thought that can be based on pretend. With this distinction in place, her objections are groundless.
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  25. Alec Hyslop (1986). Emotions and Fictional Characters. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (3):289 – 297.
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  26. Andrew Kania (2005). Against the Ubiquity of Fictional Narrators. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63 (1):47–54.
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  27. Peter Lamarque (1984). Bits and Pieces of Fiction. British Journal of Aesthetics 24 (1):53-58.
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  28. Roger Lamb (1990). Currie on Fictional Names. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68 (1):113 – 115.
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  29. Paisley Livingston & Andrea Sauchelli (2011). Philosophical Perspectives on Fictional Characters. New Literary History 42 (2):337-360.
  30. Peter Ludlow (2006). From Sherlock and Buffy to Klingon and Norrathian Platinum Pieces: Pretense, Contextalism, and the Myth of Fiction. Philosophical Issues 16 (1):162–183.
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  31. Terence Parsons (1975). A Meinongian Analysis of Fictional Objects. Grazer Philosophische Studien 1:73-86.
    This paper explores the view that there are such things as (nonexistent) fictional objects, and that we refer to such objects when we say things like "Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective", or "Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes". A theory of such objects is developed as a special application of a Meinongian Ontology.
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  32. Alan Paskow (2004). The Paradoxes of Art: A Phenomenological Investigation. Cambridge University Press.
    In this study, Alan Paskow first asks why fictional characters, such as Hamlet and Anna Karenina, matter to us and how they emotionally affect us. He then applies these questions to painting, demonstrating that certain paintings beckon us to view their contents as real. What we visualise in paintings, he argues, is not simply in our heads but in our world. No one would assert that the paintings themselves are in our heads; nor would anyone deny that they are in (...)
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  33. Anna Bjurman Pautz (2008). Fictional Coreference as a Problem for the Pretense Theory. Philosophical Studies 141 (2):147 - 156.
    There seems to be a perfectly ordinary sense in which different speakers can use an empty name to talk about the same thing. Call this fictional coreference. It is a constraint on an adequate theory of empty names that it provide a satisfactory account of fictional coreference. The main claim of this paper is that the pretense theory of empty names does not respect this constraint.
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  34. D. E. B. Pollard (1976). On Talk ‘About’ Characters. British Journal of Aesthetics 16 (4):367-369.
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  35. Stefano Predelli (2002). 'Holmes'and Holmes—a Millian Analysis of Names From Fiction. Dialectica 56 (3):261–279.
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  36. Colin Radford (2000). Neuroscience and Anna; a Reply to Glenn Hartz. Philosophy 75 (3):437-440.
    Glen Hartz argues, that neuroscience reveals that persons moved or frightened by fictional characters believe that they are real, so such behaviour is not irrational. But these beliefs, if they exist, are not rational and, in any case inconsistent with our conscious rational beliefs that fictional characters are not real. So his argument fails to establish that we are not irrational or incoherent when moved or frightened by such characters. It powerfully reinforces the contrary view.
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  37. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (1976). A Literary Postscript: Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals. In Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons. University of California Press.
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  38. R. M. Sainsbury (2009). Fiction and Fictionalism. Routledge.
    Introduction -- What is fiction? -- Realism about fictional objects -- Fictional objects are nonexistents -- Worlds and truth : fictional worlds, possible worlds, and impossible worlds -- Fictional entities are abstract artifacts -- Irrealism : fiction and intentionality -- Some fictionalists -- Fictionalism about possible worlds -- Moral fictionalism -- Retrospect.
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  39. Andrea Sauchelli (forthcoming). Ontology, Reference, and the Qua Problem: Amie Thomasson on Existence. Axiomathes.
    I argue that Amie Thomasson’s recent theory of the methodology to be applied to find the truth-conditions for claims of existence faces serious objections. Her account is based on Devitt and Sterelny’s solution to the qua problem for theories of reference fixing; however, such a solution cannot be also applied to analyze existential claims.
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  40. Andrea Sauchelli (2012). Fictional Objects, Non-Existence, and the Principle of Characterization. Philosophical Studies 159 (1):139-146.
    I advance an objection to Graham Priest’s account of fictional entities as nonexistent objects. According to Priest, fictional characters do not have, in our world, the properties they are represented as having; for example, the property of being a bank clerk is possessed by Joseph K. not in our world but in other worlds. Priest claims that, in this way, his theory can include an unrestricted principle of characterization for objects. Now, some representational properties attributed to fictional characters, a kind (...)
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  41. Benjamin Schnieder & Tatjana von Solodkoff (2009). In Defence of Fictional Realism. Philosophical Quarterly 59 (234):138-149.
    Fictional realism, i.e., the view that because fictions exist, fictional characters exist as well, has recently been accused of leading to inconsistency generated by phenomena of indeterminacy and inconsistency in fiction. We examine in detail four arguments against fictional realism, and present a version of fictional realism which can withstand those arguments.
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  42. Aaron Smuts (2009). Art and Negative Affect. Philosophy Compass 4 (1):39-55.
    Why do people seemingly want to be scared by movies and feel pity for fictional characters when they avoid situations in real life that arouse these same negative emotions? Although the domain of relevant artworks encompasses far more than just tragedy, the general problem is typically called the paradox of tragedy. The paradox boils down to a simple question: If people avoid pain then why do people want to experience art that is painful? I discuss six popular solutions to the (...)
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  43. Laurent Stern (1965). Fictional Characters, Places, and Events. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 26 (2):202-215.
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  44. Amie Thomasson, Fictional Entities.
    The first question to be addressed about fictional entities is: are there any? The usual grounds given for accepting or rejecting the view that there are fictional entities come from linguistic considerations. We make many different sorts of claims about fictional characters in our literary discussions. How can we account for their apparent truth? Does doing so require that we allow that there are fictional characters we can refer to, or can we offer equally good analyses while denying that there (...)
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  45. Amie L. Thomasson (2003). Fictional Characters and Literary Practices. British Journal of Aesthetics 43 (2):138-157.
    I argue that the ontological status of fictional characters is determined by the beliefs and practices of those who competently deal with works of literature, and draw out three important consequences of this. First, heavily revisionary theories cannot be considered as ‘discoveries’ about the ‘true nature’ of fictional characters; any acceptable realist theory of fiction must preserve all or most of the common conception of fictional characters. Second, once we note that the existence conditions for fictional characters (established by those (...)
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  46. Amie L. Thomasson (2003). Speaking of Fictional Characters. Dialectica 57 (2):205–223.
    The challenge of handling fictional discourse is to find the best way to resolve the apparent inconsistencies in our ways of speaking about fiction. A promising approach is to take at least some such discourse to involve pretense, but does all fictional discourse involve pretense? I will argue that a better, less revisionary, solution is to take internal and fictionalizing discourse to involve pretense, while allowing that in external critical discourse, fictional names are used seriously to refer to fictional characters. (...)
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  47. Amie L. Thomasson (1999). Fiction and Metaphysics. Cambridge University Press.
    This challenging study places fiction squarely at the center of the discussion of metaphysics. Philosophers have traditionally treated fiction as involving a set of narrow problems in logic or the philosophy of language. By contrast Amie Thomasson argues that fiction has far-reaching implications for central problems of metaphysics. The book develops an 'artifactual' theory of fiction, whereby fictional characters are abstract artifacts as ordinary as laws or symphonies or works of literature. By understanding fictional characters we come to understand how (...)
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  48. Massimiliano Vignolo (2009). Pleonastic Entities: Fictional Characters and Propositions. Philosophical Investigations 32 (1):65-78.
    Stephen Schiffer holds that propositions are pleonastic entities. I will argue that there is a substantial difference between propositions and fictional characters, which Schiffer presents as typical pleonastic entities. My conclusion will be that if fictional characters are typical pleonastic entities, then Schiffer fails to show that propositions are pleonastic entities.
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  49. Alberto Voltolini (2003). How Fictional Works Are Related to Fictional Entities. Dialectica 57 (2):225–238.
    The paper attempts at yielding a language-independent argument in favour of fictional entities, that is, an argument providing genuinely ontological reasons in favour of such entities. According to this argument, ficta are indispensable insofar as they are involved in the identity conditions of semantically-based entities we ordinarily accept, i.e. fictional works. It will also be evaluated to what extent this argument is close to other arguments recently provided to the same purpose.
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  50. Thomas E. Wartenberg (2007). Need There Be Implicit Narrators of Literary Fictions? Philosophical Studies 135 (1):89 - 94.
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  51. Bill Wringe (2008). Making the Lightness of Being Bearable: Arithmetical Platonism, Fictional Realism and Cognitive Command. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 38 (3):pp. 453-487.
    In this paper I argue against Divers and Miller's 'Lightness of Being' objection to Hale and Wright's neo-Fregean Platonism. According to the 'Lightness of Being' objection, the neo-Fregean Platonist makes existence too cheap: the same principles which allow her to argue that numbers exist also allow her to claim that fictional objects exist. I claim that this is no objection at all" the neo-Fregean Platonist should think that fictional characters exist. However, the pluralist approach to truth developed by WQright in (...)
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  52. Takashi Yagisawa (2001). Against Creationism in Fiction. Noûs 35 (s15):153-172.
    Sherlock Holmes is a fictional individual. So is his favorite pipe. Our pre-theoretical intuition says that neither of them is real. It says that neither of them really, or actually, exists. It also says that there is a sense in which they do exist, namely, a sense in which they exist “in the world of” the Sherlock Holmes stories. Our pre-theoretical intuition says in general of any fictional individual that it does not actually exist but exists “in the world of” (...)
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  53. Edward N. Zalta (2003). Referring to Fictional Characters. Dialectica 57 (2):243–254.
    The author engages a question raised about theories of nonexistent objects. The question concerns the way names of fictional characters, when analyzed as names which denote nonexistent objects, acquire their denotations. Since nonexistent objects cannot causally interact with existent objects, it is thought that we cannot appeal to a `dubbing' or a `baptism'. The question is, therefore, what is the starting point of the chain? The answer is that storytellings are to be thought of as extended baptisms, and the details (...)
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