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date: 17 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This article begins with a brief exposition of a theory that has been presented in various publications. Then it describes two other non-Meinongian theories of the ontology of fiction, those of Nicholas Wolterstorff and Amie Thomasson. Wolterstorff and Thomasson's theories are, in a sense, in substantial agreement with this article's; they differ from this one in being much more specific about the metaphysical nature of fictional characters. A non-Meinongian theory of fiction (that is, a theory of fiction that allows only one sort of existential quantifier) must answer questions such as: How are we to deal with the fact (or is it a fact?) that when fictional discourse is translated into the quantifier-variable idiom, it can be seen to imply that fictional characters like Tom Sawyer and Mr Pickwick are or have being, that they exist?

Keywords: existence, non-Meinongian theories, ontology of fiction, fictional characters, existential quantifier, ontological commitments

Peter van Inwagen

Peter Van Inwagen is the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He has delivered the Maurice Lectures at King's College, London, the Wilde Lectures at Oxford University, the Stewart Lectures at Princeton University, and the Gifford Lectures at St Andrews University. His books include: An Essay on Free Will (OUP, 1983), Material Beings, Metaphysics (2002 [2nd ed.]), God, Knowledge, and Mystery, Ontology, Identity, and Modality, and The Problem of Evil (2006). He is at work on a book called Being: A Study in Ontology. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, and was president of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, 2008–2009.

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