Fictional Characters and Their Names

Hanoch Ben-Yami (Central European University)

The Slovak-Austrian Philosophy of Language Network (https://danzeman.weebly.com/slovak-austrian-cooperation.html) announces an online talk by Hanoch Ben-Yami (Central European University), entitled "Fictional Characters and Their Names". The talk is on Monday, MAY 17, 11.00 CEST, as part of the regular seminar of the Department of Analytic Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences. Please write to [email protected] or [email protected] if you want to participate.

Here is the abstract of the talk:

Fictional characters do not exist. Names of fictional characters refer, to fictional characters. We should divorce the idea of reference from that of existence. (The Predicate Calculus with its standard semantics has misled people on this.) Many puzzles are resolved this way, e.g., negative existentials. (Some biblical characters existed, while some did not). And non-existent, fictional characters can have real effects through their representations.