| In this dissertation, I present an account of truths expressed within, as well as about, literary fictions. To achieve this goal, I first give a semantic account of English sentences that include fictional characters' names. I then provide a metaphysical analysis of English sentences of the form, 'According to X, S', where X is a name of a work of fiction, f, and S stands for an English sentence. My account not only clears away some philosophical confusions regarding literary fiction but also gives us insight into the nature of the activities of creating, discussing, entertaining and appreciating literary fictions.;As a semantic account of English sentences that include fictional characters' names, I advocate the Fictional Name Theory. It states that many names appearing in fiction are proper names of fictional characters. Fictional characters are abstract entities, the existence of which depends on the creative activities of human authors and the responses of those who engage with their fictions. Together with the Millian assumption (the semantic content of a proper name is its referent) and the Russellian assumption (the semantic content of a sentence is a structure composed of the semantic contents of the sentence's parts) my view entails that the semantic content of 'Harry Potter is a wizard' is a structure composed of Harry Potter (the fictional character) and the semantic content of 'is a wizard'. I claim that 'According X, S' is a propositional relational property ascription. It indirectly ascribes a relation to the content of X and the content of S. 'According to X' expresses a property, and a sentence of the form 'According to X, S' ascribes this property to the proposition p expressed by S. But the ascribed property is a relational property. p has the property expressed by 'according to X' in virtue of standing in the according-to relation to the content of X.;For the metaphysical analysis of 'According to X, S', I suggest the Imagination View: an English sentence of the form 'According to X, S', where X is a name of a work of fiction f and S stands for an English sentence, is true if and only if there is a proposition p and a fiction f such that: (i) S expresses p, (ii) X denotes f and (iii) f prescribes imagining p to those who entertain f. Whether a work of fiction, f, prescribes imagining p to those who entertain it is determined by following three factors: (a) the semantic content of a relevant sentence (in this case, p) (b) the semantic contents of other parts of the work and (c) the linguistic and literary practices in the community of the intended readers of the work.;One apparent problem that the Fictional Name Theory faces is that the view entails that 'Harry Potter is a wizard' is false, whereas ordinary people who entertain the Harry Potter stories think that it is true. My answer is that the semantic content of the given sentence is not totally transparent to ordinary users of English, and thus their view is mistaken. By contrast, most ordinary people's judgments about the truth-values of 'According to X, S' are correct, because the conditions under which a proposition stands in the according-to relation to a work of fiction reflect the practices of discussing, entertaining and appreciating literary fictions. |
