Pub Date : 2021-04-09DOI: 10.31577/orgf.2021.28302
Pekka Väyrynen
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Pub Date : 2021-01-28DOI: 10.31577/ORGF.2021.28110
L. Rouillé
In this article, I contribute to ongoing debates about the status of fictional names. The main debate in the philosophy of language focuses on whether fictional names should be thought of as non-referring terms (this is anti-realism) or referring terms (this is realism). This debate corresponds to a debate in metaphysics about the ontological status of fictional characters: the anti-realist claim that fictional characters do not exist while the realist say that they do exist in some sense. Although anti-realism is pre-theoretically intuitive, it has been challenged by a powerful argument in favour of realism based on so-called “metafictional” uses of fictional terms. This argument puts a lot of pressure on the anti-realist, for they have to come up with a theory of metafictional sentences which is in keeping with the anti-realist central tenet. I show that the existing antirealist account of metafictional statements is wrong-headed. I thus propose a new one. In doing so, I hope to free the anti-realist from the realist pressure. However, I do not offer any argument against realism. Consequently, I merely claim that anti-realism be a live
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Pub Date : 2021-01-28DOI: 10.31577/ORGF.2021.28106
Eleonora Orlando
The main thesis I want to defend in this essay is that a fictional name refers to an individual concept, understood as a mental file that stores information, in the form of different descriptive concepts, about a purported individual. Given there is no material particular a fictional name could be referring to, it will be construed as referring to the concept of a particular, with which many descriptive concepts are associated, in the context of the set of thoughts constitutive of a fictional narrative. A fictional narrative will be thus characterised as a conceptual world, namely, a set of sentence-types semantically correlated with a set of thought-types.
{"title":"Fictional Names and Fictional Concepts: A Moderate Fictionalist Account","authors":"Eleonora Orlando","doi":"10.31577/ORGF.2021.28106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31577/ORGF.2021.28106","url":null,"abstract":"The main thesis I want to defend in this essay is that a fictional name refers to an individual concept, understood as a mental file that stores information, in the form of different descriptive concepts, about a purported individual. Given there is no material particular a fictional name could be referring to, it will be construed as referring to the concept of a particular, with which many descriptive concepts are associated, in the context of the set of thoughts constitutive of a fictional narrative. A fictional narrative will be thus characterised as a conceptual world, namely, a set of sentence-types semantically correlated with a set of thought-types.","PeriodicalId":43025,"journal":{"name":"Organon F","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43462806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-28DOI: 10.31577/ORGF.2021.28107
J. F. Lima
What is the content of beliefs expressed by sentences with fictional names? Millianism has notoriously struggled to give a satisfactory answer to this question. Some Millians have argued that fictional names are empty names. But such a view entails that the belief that Superman has impressive superpowers and the belief that Aquaman has impressive superpowers have the same content, contrary to our intuitions. Others have argued that fictional names refer to fictional entities. But this view has a long-standing problem, Frege’s Puzzle, and many philosophers are skeptical that Millians have successfully addressed it, despite commendable efforts. In this paper, I put forward a different Millian Theory of fictional proper names that by-passes these and other objections related to belief content. The novelty of my proposal partially rests on a distinction I draw between semantic content and belief content—as opposed to a distinction between belief content and belief state or a way of grasping the content, as it is commonly found in Millian accounts—in a framework where belief contents are not part of the meaning of names.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-28DOI: 10.31577/ORGF.2021.28103
M. Sainsbury
Definite linguistic expressions, for example proper names and singular and plural pronouns, are easy to introduce. Indefinite expressions may pave the way, but are not essential. It is also not essential that there be entities to which the successfully introduced definites refer. This is the underlying fact that makes fiction possible, and it gives guidance about fictional names: we have no need in general to suppose that there exist entities to which they refer. 1. Discourse referents and speculation ... the appearance of an indefinite noun phrase establishes a discourse referent just in case it justifies the occurrence of a coreferential pronoun or a definite noun phrase later in the text. ... We maintain that the problem of coreference within a discourse is a linguistic problem and can be studied independently of any general theory of extra-linguistic reference. (Kartunnen 1976) Kartunnen is focused on the way in which an indefinite noun phrase can “justify” a subsequent definite one, as in the classic example “A man came into the bar. He ordered a martini”. A singular pronoun like “he” is normally supposed to refer to a specific (male) person, and it is natural to suppose that understanding a token of the pronoun requires knowing what it refers to. In a sense, we do know what this occurrence of “he” refers to: the man who came into the bar. But more demanding tests for knowledge of reference may fail: we may have no further information to offer concerning the man, and we might be unable to distinguish him from other men. Since we understand the classic two-sentence example perfectly well, including its occurrence of “he”, these failures shows that the tests for understanding were overdemanding: understanding a definite pronoun does requires neither any substantive ability to distinguish its referent from other things nor the possession of further information concerning the referent. Furthermore, our understanding is not undermined by our ignorance of whether the two sentences are true, and whether they were uttered with full assertive seriousness, or with some non-truth-involving intention. Understanding does not require that we believe that there exists a real referent for “he”, or even that we believe the utterer believes this or wants us to believe it. A discourse referent, as I understand its role in Kartunnen’s theory, and in the Discourse Representation Theories his work inspired, is a definite mental representational vehicle, singular or plural. There may or may not be some entity or entities to which it refers (so the expression
{"title":"Fictional Names: Reference, Definiteness and Ontology","authors":"M. Sainsbury","doi":"10.31577/ORGF.2021.28103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31577/ORGF.2021.28103","url":null,"abstract":"Definite linguistic expressions, for example proper names and singular and plural pronouns, are easy to introduce. Indefinite expressions may pave the way, but are not essential. It is also not essential that there be entities to which the successfully introduced definites refer. This is the underlying fact that makes fiction possible, and it gives guidance about fictional names: we have no need in general to suppose that there exist entities to which they refer. 1. Discourse referents and speculation ... the appearance of an indefinite noun phrase establishes a discourse referent just in case it justifies the occurrence of a coreferential pronoun or a definite noun phrase later in the text. ... We maintain that the problem of coreference within a discourse is a linguistic problem and can be studied independently of any general theory of extra-linguistic reference. (Kartunnen 1976) Kartunnen is focused on the way in which an indefinite noun phrase can “justify” a subsequent definite one, as in the classic example “A man came into the bar. He ordered a martini”. A singular pronoun like “he” is normally supposed to refer to a specific (male) person, and it is natural to suppose that understanding a token of the pronoun requires knowing what it refers to. In a sense, we do know what this occurrence of “he” refers to: the man who came into the bar. But more demanding tests for knowledge of reference may fail: we may have no further information to offer concerning the man, and we might be unable to distinguish him from other men. Since we understand the classic two-sentence example perfectly well, including its occurrence of “he”, these failures shows that the tests for understanding were overdemanding: understanding a definite pronoun does requires neither any substantive ability to distinguish its referent from other things nor the possession of further information concerning the referent. Furthermore, our understanding is not undermined by our ignorance of whether the two sentences are true, and whether they were uttered with full assertive seriousness, or with some non-truth-involving intention. Understanding does not require that we believe that there exists a real referent for “he”, or even that we believe the utterer believes this or wants us to believe it. A discourse referent, as I understand its role in Kartunnen’s theory, and in the Discourse Representation Theories his work inspired, is a definite mental representational vehicle, singular or plural. There may or may not be some entity or entities to which it refers (so the expression","PeriodicalId":43025,"journal":{"name":"Organon F","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47663113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-28DOI: 10.31577/ORGF.2021.28109
Nathan Hawkins
Frege claims that sentences of the form ‘A’ are equivalent to sentences of the form ‘it is true that A’ (The Equivalence Thesis). Frege also says that there are fictional names that fail to refer, and that sentences featuring fictional names fail to refer as a result. The thoughts such sentences express, Frege says, are also fictional, and neither true nor false. Michael Dummett argues that these claims are inconsistent. But his argument requires clarification, since there are two ways The Equivalence Thesis has been formulated, according as the thesis equates the senses or the referents of the relevant sentences. I have two aims in this paper. The first is to demonstrate that a sameness of sense thesis is inconsistent with Frege’s other theses. The second is to argue that a sameness of reference thesis is consistent with them. Thus, all else being equal, Frege ought to endorse a sameness of reference, rather than a sameness of sense thesis.
弗雷格认为形式为" A "的句子与形式为" it is true that A "的句子是等价的(等价命题)。弗雷格还说，有些虚构的名字无法指代，因此，以虚构名字为特征的句子也无法指代。弗雷格说，这些句子表达的思想也是虚构的，既不真实也不虚假。Michael Dummett认为这些说法是不一致的。但他的论点需要澄清，因为等价命题有两种表述方式，即等价命题将相关句子的意义或指称等同起来。我写这篇论文有两个目的。首先是证明意义同一性论题与弗雷格的其他论题是不一致的。二是论证参考论题的同一性与二者是一致的。因此，在其他条件相同的情况下，弗雷格应当赞同指称同一性，而不是意义同一性的论点。
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