Linguistique de l’écrit

Revue internationale en libre accès

Revue | Volume | Article

234537

Reference fiction, and omission

Samuel Murray

pp. 235-257

Résumé

In this paper, I argue that sentences that contain ‘omission’ tokens that appear to function as singular terms are meaningful while maintaining the view that omissions are nothing at all or mere absences. I take omissions to be fictional entities and claim that the way in which sentences about fictional characters are true parallels the way in which sentences about omissions are true. I develop a pragmatic account of fictional reference and argue that my fictionalist account of omissions implies a plausible account of the metaphysics of omissions.

Détails de la publication

Publié dans:

Huneman Philippe, Kostić Daniel (2018) Mechanistic and topological explanations. Synthese 195 (1).

Pages: 235-257

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-016-1211-0

Citation complète:

Murray Samuel, 2018, Reference fiction, and omission. Synthese 195 (1), Mechanistic and topological explanations, 235-257. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1211-0.