Abstract
In recent work, Stacie Friend has highlighted a problem of “co-identification” involving fictional names such as ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Odysseus’: the problem to explain judgments that different uses of these names are “about the same object”, on the assumption of irrealism about fictional characters, on which such expressions do not refer. For instance, intuitively when Nabokov argues with other critics that Gregor Samsa metamorphoses into a beetle rather than a cockroach, he takes himself to identify the same character that Kafka invented and that his opponents misconstrue. To deal with this issue, she contrasts a Kripke-inspired “name-centric” approach to dealing with the problem, pursued among others by Sainsbury, with an Evans-inspired “info-centric” approach, which she prefers. Part of the setting-the-stage picture is her rejection of descriptivist ways of dealing with her problem. In this paper, I outline the presuppositional, reference-fixing form of descriptivism I favor for the semantics of names, and I explain how it helps us deal with Friend's problem, which I take to concern primarily the semantic contribution of names to ascriptions of representational content to fictions, i.e., a particular case of indirect report; as I'll show, the result is a form of the “name-centric” sort of approach that Fried rejects, which can (I'll argue) be defended from her criticism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Azzouni, J. (2010). Talking about nothing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bonomi, A. (2008). Fictional contexts. In P. Bouquet, L. Serafini, & R. Thomason (Eds.), Perspectives on context (pp. 213–248). Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Braun, D. (2005). Empty names, fictional names, mythical names. Noûs, 39, 596–631.
Braun, D. (2012). Hob, Nob and mythical witches. In W. P. Kabasenche, M. O’Rourke, & M. H. Slater (Eds.), Reference and referring (pp. 149–187). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Burge, T. (1983). Russell’s problem and intentional identity. In J. E. Tomberlin (Ed.), Agent, language, and the structure of the world. Essays presented to Hector-Neri Castañeda, with his replies (pp. 79–110). Hackett: Indianapolis.
Cumming, S. (2014). Indefinites and intentional identity. Philosophical Studies, 168, 371–395. doi:10.1007/s11098-013-0131-9.
Currie, G. (1990). The nature of fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Donnellan, K. (1974). Speaking of nothing. Philosophical Review, 83, 3–32.
Edelberg, W. (1986). A new puzzle about intentional identity. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 15, 1–25.
Edelberg, W. (1992). Intentional identity and the attitudes. Linguistics and Philosophy, 15(6), 561–596.
Edelberg, W. (2006). Intersubjective intentional identity. Journal of Philosophy, 103, 481–502.
Evans, G. (1973). The causal theory of names, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 47(suppl), 187–208.
Evans, G. (1982). The varieties of reference. Oxford: Clarendon.
Everett, A. (2000). Referentialism and empty names. In A. Everett & T. Hofweber (Eds.), Empty names, fiction and the puzzles of non-existence (pp. 37–60). Stanford: CSLI.
Everett, A. (2005). Against fictional realism. Journal of Philosophy, 102, 624–649.
Everett, A. (2007). Pretense, existence, and fictional objects. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74, 56–80.
Everett, A. (2013a). The nonexistent. Oxford: OUP.
Everett, A. (2013b). Sainsbury on thinking about fictional things. Acta Analytica. doi:10.1007/s12136-013-0209-1.
Fine, K. (2007). Semantic relationalisms. Oxford: Blackwell.
Frege, G. (1980). Philosophical and mathematical correspondence (G. Gabriel., H. Hermes., F. Kambartel., C. Thiel., & A. Veraat, Eds.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Friend, S. (2000). Real people in unreal contexts. In A. Everett & T. Hofweber (Eds.), Empty names, fiction and the puzzles of non-existence (pp. 183–203). Stanford: CSLI.
Friend, S. (2011). The great beetle debate: A study in imagining with proper names. Philosophical Studies, 153, 183–211.
Friend, S. (2014). Notions of nothing. In M. García-Carpintero & G. Martí (Eds.), Empty representations: Reference and non-existence (pp. 307–332). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
García-Carpintero, M. (2000). A presuppositional account of reference-fixing. Journal of Philosophy, XCVII(5), 109–147.
García-Carpintero, M. (2006a). Recanati on the semantics/pragmatics distinction. Crítica, 38, 35–68.
García-Carpintero, M. (2006b). Two-dimensionalism: A Neo-Fregean interpretation. In M. García-Carpintero & J. Macià (Eds.), Two-dimensional semantics (pp. 181–204). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
García-Carpintero, M. (2007). Fiction-making as an illocutionary act. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 65, 203–216.
García-Carpintero, M. (2010a). Fictional singular imaginings. In R. Jeshion (Ed.), New essays on singular thought (pp. 273–299). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
García-Carpintero, M. (2010b). Fictional entities, theoretical models and figurative truth. In R. Frigg & M. Hunter (Eds.), Beyond mimesis and convention – representation in art and science (pp. 139–168). London: Springer.
García-Carpintero, M. (2013). Norms of fiction-making. British Journal of Aesthetics, 53, 339–357. doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayt021.
García-Carpintero, M. (2014a). Accommodating presupposition. Topoi. doi:10.1007/s11245-014-9264-5.
García-Carpintero, M. (2014b). Introduction: The problem of empty representations. In M. García-Carpintero & G. Martí (Eds.), Empty representations: Reference and non-existence (pp. 1–22). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Geach, P. (1967). Intentional identity. Journal of Philosophy, 64, 27–32. Also in (1971). Logic matters (pp. 146–153), Oxford: Blackwell.
Glick, E. (2012). A model approach to intentional identity. Noûs, 46(2012), 386–399.
Grice, H. P. (1969). Vacuous names. In D. Davidson & J. Hintikka (Eds.), Words and objections (pp. 118–145). Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Hawthorne, J., & Manley, D. (2012). The reference book. Oxford: Oxford U. P.
Heim, I. (2008). Features on bound pronouns. In D. Harbour, D. Adger, & S. Béjar (Eds.), Phi theory. Oxford: OUP.
Hunter, J. (2012). Presuppositional indexicals. Journal of Semantics. doi:10.1093/jos/ffs013.
Kripke, S. (1979). A puzzle about belief. In A. Margalit (Ed.), Meaning and use (pp. 239–283). Dordrecht: Reidel.
Kripke, S. (1980). Naming and necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kripke, S. (2013). Reference and existence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kroon, F. (1994). A problem about make-believe. Philosophical Studies, 75, 201–229.
Kroon, F. (2004). Descriptivism, pretense, and the Frege-Russell problems. Philosophical Review, 113, 1–30.
Lawlor, K. (2010). Varieties of coreference. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 81, 485–495.
Lewis, D. (1978). Truth in fiction. American Philosophical Quarterly, 15, 37–46. Reprinted with postscripts in Lewis, D. (1983). Philosophical papers (Vol. 1, pp. 261–280). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D., & Lewis, D. (1993). Many, but almost one. In J. Bacon, K. Campbell, & R. Ll (Eds.), Ontology, causality and mind (pp. 23–38). Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
Maier, E. (2009). Proper names and indexicals trigger rigid presuppositions. Journal of Semantics, 23, 253–315.
Pagin, P. (2014). Intersubjective intentional identity. In M. García-Carpintero & G. Martí (Eds.), Empty representations: Reference and non-existence (pp. 91–113). Oxford: OUP.
Pautz, A. B. (2008). Fictional coreference as a problem for the pretense theory. Philosophical Studies, 141, 147–156.
Perry, J. (2012). Reference and reflexivity (2nd ed.). Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Priest, G. (2005). Towards non-being. Oxford: Clarendon.
Quine, W. V. O. (1948). On what there is. Review of Metaphysics, 2, 21–38. Reprinted in his From a Logical Point of View (2nd ed. pp. 1–19). revised, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Richard, M. (2000). Semantic pretence. In A. Everett & T. Hofweber (Eds.), Empty names, fiction and the puzzles of non-existence (pp. 205–232). Stanford: CSLI.
Sainsbury, M. (2010). Fiction and fictionalism. London: Routledge.
Sainsbury, M. (2014). Fictional worlds and fiction operators. In M. García-Carpintero & G. Martí (Eds.), Empty representations: Reference and non-existence (pp. 277–289). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Salmon, N. (1986). Frege’s puzzle. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Salmon, N. (1998). Nonexistence. Noûs, 32, 277–319.
Salmon, N. (2002). Mythical objects. In J. K. Campbell, D. Shier, & M. O’Rourke (Eds.), Meaning and truth: Investigations in philosophical semantics (pp. 105–123). New York: Seven Bridges.
Salmon, N. (2015). The philosopher’s stone and other mythical objects. In S. Brock., & A. Everett (Eds.), Fictional objects (pp. 114–128). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schiffer, S. (2003). The things we mean. Oxford: Clarendon.
Schroeter, L. (2012). Bootstrapping our way to samesaying. Synthese Online First. doi:10.1007/s11229-012-0099-6.
Soames, S. (1989). Direct reference and proposition attitudes. In J. Almog, J. Perry, & H. Wettstein (Eds.), Themes from Kaplan (pp. 393–419). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stalnaker, R. (1978). Assertion. In P. Cole (Ed.), Syntax and semantics (Vol. 9, pp. 315–332). New York: Academic Press. Also in Stalnaker, R. (1999). Context and content (pp. 78–95). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stalnaker, R. (2002). Common ground. Linguistics and Philosophy, 25, 701–721.
Thomasson, A. (1999). Fiction and metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
van Inwagen, P. (1977). Creatures of fiction. American Philosophical Quarterly, 14, 299–308.
Voltolini, A. (2006). How ficta follow fiction, a syncretistic account of fictional entities. Dordrecht: Springer.
Walton, K. (1990). Mimesis and make-believe. Cambridge: Harvard U.P.
Walton, K. (1993). Metaphor and prop oriented make-believe. European Journal of Philosophy, 1, 39–56.
Wolterstorff, N. (1980). Works and worlds of art. Oxford: Clarendon.
Wright, B. (2014). Many, but almost Holmes? In M. García-Carpintero & G. Martí (Eds.), Empty representations: Reference and non-existence (pp. 290–306). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yablo, S. (2001). Go figure: A path through fictionalism. In P. A. French & H. K. Wettstein (Eds.), Midwest studies in philosophy (Vol. XXV, pp. 72–102). Oxford: Blackwell.
Yablo, S. (2014). Aboutness. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Acknowledgments
Financial support for my work was provided by the DGI, Spanish Government, research project FFI2013-47948-P and Consolider-Ingenio project CSD2009-00056; and through the award ICREA Academia for excellence in research, 2013, funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya. Versions of the paper were presented at the PERSP Workshop on Fiction, Barcelona; the Workshop on Fictional Objects, World Congress of Philosophy 2013, Athens; the London Aesthetics Forum, and at the LOGOS Seminar. Thanks to the participants for useful comments, and also to Stacie Friend, Kasia Jaszczolt, Manolo Martínez, Joseph Moore, Daniel Morgan and Richard Woodward. Thanks to Michael Maudsley for the grammatical revision.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
García-Carpintero, M. (2016). Pretend Reference and Coreference. In: Capone, A., Kiefer, F., Lo Piparo, F. (eds) Indirect Reports and Pragmatics. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21395-8_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21395-8_16
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21394-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21395-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)